496: Session 10 Intro

Summary

The BEMA Podcast

Episode 496: Session 10 Intro

Release Date: February 12, 2026
Hosts: Marty Solomon and Brent Billings

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Episode Overview

This episode marks the beginning of Session 10 (also referred to as "Season 10") of The BEMA Podcast. Marty Solomon and Brent Billings share an honest and heartfelt conversation about the changes coming to the podcast in the wake of co-host Joshua Bosse’s passing. The episode introduces a slower, more intentional pace and outlines plans for new teaching series, upcoming interviews, resource updates, and ongoing community engagement, all while honoring Josh’s legacy.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Entering a Season of Mourning and Change

• The hosts begin by acknowledging the fresh grief and transition after the loss of co-host Josh Bosse.
• Marty shares the Jewish tradition of mourning:

  “In the Jewish world, when you have somebody that passes away, there’s an immediate seven day period that they call sitting shiva… And then for the next 33 days… you’re in a period of mourning. …What it does is it creates a space, like a formal space where you get to be in that weird, awkward space of grief and lament.”
  — Marty (01:02)

• The team is treating all of Session 10 as a communal “season of mourning,” intentionally slowing the podcast rhythm.

Honoring Josh Bosse’s Legacy

• The hosts recount a story from a leadership retreat and prayer labyrinth, illustrating Josh’s unique and intentional approach to life:

  “He was going to do what the moment was inviting us to do, and he got it. And that is just a beautiful picture of what we’re going to do this season. We’re going to slow down…”
  — Marty (05:04) “He was walking so slow. So slow, it’s almost unimaginable…”
  — Brent (04:53)

• The plan is to publish new episodes every other Thursday rather than weekly for Session 10, in honor of Josh’s pace and priorities.

What’s Coming in Session 10

Scheduled Interviews

• Upcoming conversations include:
  • Brad Gray and Brad Nelson discussing their Lord’s Prayer project (06:31)
  • David Rudolph on Passover-themed content

Long-Form Teaching Series for Each Host

• Marty: "Four Pillars of BEMA" series – 12 episodes (07:18)
• Elle: "Women of Joshua and Judges" – about 11 episodes
• Reid: "Book of Samuel" – approximately 16 episodes (order to be determined)
• Occasional additional episodes, such as movie discussions by Brent.

Memorial Episode for Josh

• Planning an extensive, special episode (possibly the longest ever) to memorialize Josh, to be released later in Session 10:

  “We may honor him by making his memorial episode the longest episode that we’ve ever released, because it would be fitting.”
  — Marty (13:31)

Rebooting Earlier Sessions

• The team is actively recording a Session 2 reboot, updating and deepening the original teaching, and integrating additional co-host voices.
• This follows the successful “Session One Reboot,” which replaced older episodes in the main feed.

Resource and Community Updates

YouVersion Bible App Reading Plans (19:24)

• Multiple BEMA reading plans now available:
  • “Binge” plans for quick progress aligned with episodes
  • “Deep Dive” plans for more thorough study
  • A 450-day “Whole Bible plan” (20:20):

    “Everybody’s whole Bible plan is approximately 365 days. And ours, I think, is like 450.”
    — Brent (20:33)

New Resources: The Companion Guide and Amber Miller’s Work

• Amber Miller has joined the team, contributing creative, curated resources including group guides, Spotify playlists, written prayers, and running BEMA’s social media accounts.

  “If you’ve been a part of the reboot, you’ve noticed this new resource … a wonderful little guide for walking through the episode with your group or with yourself…”
  — Marty (21:13)

• Listener prayers (written by Amber) are now voiced by the BEMA community in episode endings.

Website and Group Facilitation

• The BEMA website offers extensive resources, searchable content, news on upcoming events, and a map of discussion groups:

  “We’re not running those groups. They’re all independent, they look a hundred different ways. But that map is there.”
  — Brent (27:16)

Listener Guidance: Where to Start

• For new listeners: Start at Season 1, Episode 0—not with the current episode or latest season.

  “This is not where you should start. You should go back to season one. Start at episode zero… That’s the core content that will take you through the full narrative arc of the Bible.”
  — Brent (23:15) “Don’t skip session five. We are not church history experts… But even more so, Brent, to your point, we wrap up the BEMA stream of consciousness at the end of session five. That’s where we pull it all together. That’s the good stuff.”
  — Marty (25:13)

Financial Update and the Heart of BEMA’s Ministry

• BEMA’s non-profit funding model: Supported entirely by donors; no advertising (29:06)
• End-of-year giving successfully met fundraising goals; most supporters give modest, recurring amounts ($22/month average).

  “Our team continues to grow in healthy ways because people are giving in that way and playing a critical role.”
  — Marty (32:26)

• Emphasis on college student ministry origins and vision for a mentored network of BEMA-aligned professionals.

  “Our entire vision is that when they leave our college campus, we have equipped them with the tools to go make a difference… as you listen to this podcast, we’re planting seeds and we’re dripping that vision.”
  — Marty (36:00)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Marty on mourning tradition:

  “What it does is it creates a space, like a formal space, where you get to be in that weird, awkward space of grief and lament.” (01:31)

• Brent on Josh’s slow labyrinth pace:

  “He was walking so slow. So slow, it’s almost unimaginable…” (04:53)

• Marty on slowing down the podcast:

  “This is a chance for you to binge what you can and then go back and revisit some of those favorite portions of your podcast… or join us in a slow, steady pace and join us in that as well.” (11:29)

• On the BEMA website resource map:

  “That map has blue pins and that map has green pins and that map has orange pins… So that map has Seattle Seahawks colors, Cincinnati Bengal colors, but no red or yellow pins on that map.”
  — Marty (28:20)
  “No, no, I don’t… red and yellow is like McDonald’s colors.”
  — Brent (28:38)

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Timeline of Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment/Event | |-----------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:02 | Marty introduces Jewish mourning practices and relates relevance to BEMA team | | 04:33 | Story about Josh at the prayer labyrinth | | 06:31 | Brent outlines upcoming interviews | | 07:18 | Introduction of new long-form teaching series per host | | 12:01 | Josh’s memorial service and details about forthcoming memorial episode | | 15:06 | Session 2 reboot and reasoning behind reboots | | 19:24 | YouVersion Bible App reading plans announced | | 21:13 | Introduction and praise for Amber Miller’s contributions | | 23:15 | Guidance for new listeners—Where to start BEMA | | 29:06 | Financial update and non-profit funding policies | | 36:00 | College ministry origins and future vision for BEMA |

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Final Takeaways

• Session 10 is a transitional and contemplative season for the podcast, intentionally moving at a slower, more reflective pace in honor of Josh Bosse.
• Listeners can expect new long-form teaching series, special interviews, and rich new resources—as well as a focus on community and sustainability.
• The deep heart of BEMA remains its commitment to contextual biblical study, discipleship, and practical community engagement, especially for students and young adults.
• Listeners, especially new ones, are encouraged to start at the beginning for the full transformative experience.
• The BEMA team continues to value and thank their community for ongoing support, participation, and generosity.

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For further exploration, resources, group connections, and to support BEMA, visit:
baymadiscipleship.com/496

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“We want people to engage. We want to live this out. We don’t want to just be consumers of a podcast. We want to make a difference in the world.”
— Brent (38:14)

Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

This is the Bama podcast with Marty Solomon. I'm his co host, Brent Billings. Today we begin session 10 of the podcast and discuss what comes next.

[A]

That's right, it's our intro episode and this session, this season, this session. What do we call these things, Brent? We, I use them both interchangeably on purpose.

[B]

We called them session a long time ago and then they added a season function to Apple Podcasts and the podcasting world has adopted that terminology because of course, why wouldn't they? It's the normal language. And so we kind of do both.

[A]

That's right. Well, this session and season is going to be different. And so this intro episode, we wanted to just let you know kind of what was coming and allow you to kind of adjust expectations and why and the reason for all of that. And Brent, as we record this, I know we don't usually talk about, like when we're recording it is January 7th today. And I mean, at the end of session nine, you heard all about the passing of John Josh Bosse and our beloved friend and brother and co host. And we are still kind of wrapping up the final days of what we might call a formal mourning period, even as we record this. And maybe, if you don't mind, I'll give just a little bit of background to this from a Jewish perspective, because it's kind of where we went for our wisdom here in the Jewish world, when you have somebody that passes away, there's an immediate seven day period that they call sitting shiva. So when you read the book of Job, his friends are there and for seven days they say nothing. And that's the shiva period. You just show up and you're just present with the one who is mourning and grieving. You don't offer words, you don't offer explanations, you don't offer platitudes. You just show up and you're just there with them. And then for the next 33 days. So all combined, it's a 40 day period of mourning. For the next 33 days, you're in a period of mourning. And the Jewish tradition does all kinds of things. They, they cover the mirrors in their house, they don't fix up their hair or put on makeup or anoint themselves in any way. It's a time of mourning. But what it does is it creates a space, like a formal space where you get to be in that weird, awkward space of grief and lament. And then beyond that, after that, grieving. There's no timeline on grief, so it doesn't mean that mourning is done. Doesn't mean that you have to stop being sad, but. But it means that the formal time is over and you kind of you re engage life, and life will never be normal like it used to be. It will never be the same, but you get to reengage life as it has continued, moving on. And that's how morning works. And so that's the space we're coming out of. And it doesn't mean that we're all going to be better and back to normal at the BayMob podcast. And we're going to be in a space, but that's where we're coming out of right now as we record this.

[B]

And we're kind of taking this whole session as sort of a season of mourning. On the podcast. We're going to be doing a different rhythm. We're going to have ongoing podcast episodes, but it's going to be a different pace than we're used to, and perhaps a pace that might honor Josh's lifestyle.

[A]

Yeah, I can remember I actually asked Brian if anybody knows Brian Trushinger. You've probably got an email from him if you've ever given a gift or something, if you know Brian and you get a chance to ask him about this story. I told Brian I wanted to share this, but it's really Brian's story, and if you ever get a chance to hear him tell it, it's a great way to honor Josh. We were all together, Brent, on a retreat with Baymon Impact Leadership, and we went to a prayer labyrinth, which, if you've ever gone to a prayer labyrinth, it's like this kind of this prayerful maze that you walk through, and it's just designed to slow you down and help you really contemplate and meditate and pray. And so we're walking this as a team, and Reid Dent is reading out loud the prayer of Des Chardin, the Slow work of God, which you can probably link that in the show notes, but I think we've even used it on the podcast before. It is the prayer about trust in the slow work of God. And it's kind of lousy weather. Like, it's kind of rainy and wet and cold.

[B]

Yeah, it was miserable.

[A]

It was miserable. And we're all in it, and we're trying to do the thing and we're taking our time, but Josh is kind of two thirds of the way. He's towards the back of the group, but there's still three or four people behind him. And Brent, he was walking so slow.

[B]

So slow, it's almost unimaginable I don't really know how to convey without having experienced it and seen it. Like, I intentionally started the walk out as the first person going out, and I went as slow as I could possibly go, and. And Josh still took twice as long.

[A]

Absolutely. And when it was happening, I was all over the map, emotions wise. Cause I was kind of watching it as an observer and a leader, and I was like, okay, Josh, like, come on, get with the program. But then another part of me was like, no, Josh actually gets it. And I was like, all over. I was back and forth and back and forth. But what I love about that story, as Brian told it, you know, as we were all talking about just our own grief space, is I went. That was exactly Josh. Josh was going to do it. He did not care about inconvenience or expediency. He was going to do what the moment was inviting us to do, and he got it. And that is just a beautiful picture of what we're going to do this season. We're going to slow down, and it's going to be a lot of things. And we'll talk about some of the reasons and considerations why here in just a moment. One of the reasons we're going to do this is just going to honor Josh. Josh would not have cared that we. Brett, we publish an episode every Thursday. Every Thursday. And we have since 2016, we've published an episode, except for the holidays, every single Thursday. And Josh would not have ever. Josh would not have cared. And so we're going to. We're going to take our time with. With session 10, but we do have some interviews right off the bat that are going to be on our normal schedule. You want to talk a little bit about what we have coming up, Brent?

[B]

Yeah, we've got one with Brad Gray and Brad Nelson on this whole project that they're doing on the Lord's Prayer, which is pretty exciting. Like, oh, man. I just. Every time we do something about the Lord's Prayer, I just fall more and more in love with this thing.

[A]

I know.

[B]

And so that part of that came out, part of it is still coming out, but we're excited to talk to them about that, share that stuff. And then we have an interview with David Rudolph, and that's kind of a Passover theme situation that'll come a little bit later. But we're putting that maybe sooner than we would otherwise to time it with Passover stuff. So we have those two coming up and more interviews later, but we don't have anything else nailed down yet besides those two?

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. And you have some notes here. Tell me what you mean by long form teaching series, one per host. Tell me about this, Brent.

[B]

Yeah. So you have a series that you're doing this season on the four pillars, the four Pillars of Behemoth specifically, not the four Pillars of Hellenism. If you go back to the early session three episodes, we talk about the four pillars of Hellenism, and then we close out session five talking about the four pillars of Bama. And those are text wrestling, discipleship, and community. And so we're going to have three episodes apiece on those. It was going to be four apiece. Yeah. Each of the hosts, we're going to kind of have a focus episode. And so we are without Josh. And part of the spacing of how we're doing things this season is just like, hey, we are remembering that we do not have Josh with us. And so that's a reality for that series, I think maybe more than the others. Of course, he had his own series that he was going to do on Yaakov's redemption that we just don't get to experience. And so we mourn that as well.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

But you'll have 12 episodes. El is going to do a series on the Women of Joshua and Judges, and that will be about 11 episodes, I believe. And then Reid is doing a series on the Book of Samuel. His series will come last. And he is the least planned of the. You know, he's not as much of a planner as you and El are, so he doesn't have it quite as mapped out, but he's thinking about 16 episodes. So we're gonna have those. I'll probably try to sneak in a couple of movie episodes. Every time we do, you know, we get some good feedback. I don't. You know, we don't. We're not a movie podcast. We're not gonna go crazy with it. But I do like movies, so I'll probably probably sneak one or two in there. And, you know, of course, the interviews, but it's just gonna be a different pace. There were a couple of very early on when we first started Bama, when we still thought it was only college students, we actually did slow down during the summer. We didn't stop, but we slowed down during the summer. And then eventually we're like, yeah, we did.

[A]

You're right.

[B]

We probably shouldn't do that. But we're kind of. We're going back to that and we're doing it for the entire season.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. And you do have your supporters for the movie episode. So it's probably a good idea, but we are. We're going to take this season a lot more. A lot slower. And about halftime, we're going to like season 10. It's going to be every other Thursday, for the most part, every other week, we're going to do a session 10 episode. And there's a few reasons why, a few considerations. Number one, it's a way to honor Josh and his. The spirit and the way he approached things. Two, Josh was working on a lot of stuff that now we had already planned. Session 10 out. Josh was working on Behemoth Liturgy Part 2 with El. And so now we're kind of like backing up and, like, what will that look like? What will Bayma Liturgy 2 look like without him? And so creating some of the space feels right for that regard. I'm going to be super busy. This is a year where we got three study tours. It's a year where I have book tour from April to August. So I'm going to be literally, it's going to be a challenge for me to even record the episodes I need to record for the year. So we have that. But the other thing, Brent, is you have a sabbatical coming up. Not this coming year, but. Did we say late 2027? Is that when it's coming up?

[B]

I haven't actually nailed that down yet, but, yeah, part of that is just being able to give me space and time to prepare for the sabbatical and actually take it and make it a. I don't want to say productive. Productive in a way, but, yeah, I want to adequately prepare for a sabbatical. And so if we just push ourselves too much in other ways, then I'm not actually going to use that time well. So that's part of it, too.

[A]

Yep. Yeah. Brent is definitely. He carries by far the weight of the podcast production. So in order for him to take a sabbatical, he's going to have to kind of get ahead of the ball game so that he can step away for 100 days, and we want to equip him to do that. Part of how we're going to do that is slow down session 10 so that we can make it stretch kind of longer over that sabbatical space. And when you put all these things together, when you put together the fact that Josh is no longer with us, when you put together the fact that it's kind of the way he would have loved to do something, we're honoring his speed and his pace and his posture. When you put together the fact that I've got a busy year, when you put together the fact you've got a sabbatical, that's the reason why. And we know that some of you will be like, oh, I want my regular diet of Bama. And this is a chance for you to binge what you can and then go back and revisit some of those favorite portions of your podcast. There's all kinds of ways. Or join us in a slow, steady pace and join us in that as well. But those are some of the considerations for why we're going to. We're going to pace this season the way we're going to pace it.

[B]

And I just realized, Marty, that this episode comes out February 12th. So if you are listening to this, like the moment it comes out this upcoming weekend is Josh's memorial service.

[A]

Yes, you're right.

[B]

That's going to be in Cincinnati. And there will be a live stream component. So I'll put a link to that in the show notes. If you want to watch that live, I assume you'll be able to watch it after the fact too. But the Bama team, some Impact staff, some of Josh's students, it's kind of a small, private, in person gathering, but there are a lot of his students who can't make it to that in person. And just so many of you, I mean, I just. It's incredible, the outpouring of messages that we've received from people. So we know there's a lot of people who would want to be a part of that. And hopefully you've already heard about that some other way. But if you're listening to this now and want to partake, I'll get that link in the show notes. But in addition to that, we are planning a Josh Memorial episode of some kind. Maybe a small series of episodes. It's going to be somewhere in the middle of session 10. We don't know exactly where that's going to land. We want to give ourselves time to do that justice and figure out how we want to do that in podcast audio form. There's just so many different ways that we're remembering Josh and we don't want to short sell this one. So we don't know when that's coming. But at some point in the season, we're gonna do maybe our longest episode ever in honor of Josh.

[A]

We did. Yeah, we talked about. We really feel like this ought to be, you know, for all of our listeners that have gotten this far, probably, they probably know this and it wasn't a secret. But we. Josh was always the longest episodes. We always were like, josh, you gotta keep it within. And we may honor him by making his memorial episode the longest episode that we've ever released, because it would be fitting.

[B]

How are we going to do that without Josh? That's the question.

[A]

I know. Yeah. How will we ever talk enough?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But that will be a part of this season. You can look forward to that. It will not be soon, but it will be. Unless something goes totally wrong by the time we're done with the season, we'll have that memorial episode out, and somewhere in there, the Chosen is set to come out. Brent, talk about that.

[B]

I mean, I don't know if anything officially has been announced, but it sounds like season six is coming in 2027, which, if that's the case, that might conflict with my sabbatical. And so we've been trying, like, every time, it's like, okay, this season, we're gonna, like, we're gonna be right on top of it. We're gonna get those episodes out, like, right after. And I just. I don't know why, but we can't seem to make that happen. So we'll get to it when we get to it. We will get to it, because that's the kind of people. But we'll get to it when we get to it.

[A]

I.

[B]

It is the way it is. But that's coming in. We don't have any release dates or anything, so we can't plan that at this point anyway. But just. We're on it. And then also tomorrow, as we record now, we are starting the recording for the Session 2 reboot.

[A]

Ooh. Yes, we are.

[B]

So that is coming. But if somebody's way past that and they're catching up to real time and they don't know what the reboot is, maybe Marty, you can give a quick. Why are we doing the reboot? What does that mean?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, we released the reboot of Session One, which for all the people that are like, I never saw it. Where is it? It replaced all the old Episodes. So if you go to Session one today, those are the new reboot episodes. Even though the date is the old date, it keeps the podcast feed intact. So the new episodes replace the old episodes. The old episodes are in that legacy content. The show notes at the bottom, you can still get to them. But we did this reboot because it's just good to freshen up the content. I mean, the original session two, I see in your notes, that was 2017 through 2018. And because of that, like the content of session two, it's kind of been stuck in that time vacuum. So we recorded that almost, I mean, eight years ago, and it hasn't changed since. Well, the world has changed a lot in eight years. We've changed a lot in eight years. I've learned new things. There are things that I would say differently, things I was wrong about. Believe it or not, Brent, I found out every now and then I say something that's just incorrect. I'm just wrong.

[B]

I mean, it's a rare gem, but it's fun when it happens.

[A]

Not as rare as you would think. And so the reboot gives us a chance to clean up those things, fix mistakes, say things a better way, and work in the other co hosts. Because the first time we did, the first five sessions, we didn't have Josh or Elle or Reid. And so now we get to work in those co hosts into the reboot experience. So there's that. And even now, it's going to be a new dynamic without Josh being a part of that. He was already on the schedule for all those things. And so everything keeps changing and evolving. So, yeah, we're going to probably, we hope, some of those profit episodes, Brent, they were pretty short.

[B]

Yeah, like 15, 20 minutes.

[A]

And that was because I didn't have a whole bunch of body of work and I wasn't just going to show up and fake it. So it was what it was. But now we've got a bigger team, and so we're hoping that some of our co hosts will take some of those real short episodes and build them out and make them a little bit more robust. We've got some of those, and that's going to be our session two. Session one went great. People love the reboot for the most part. I think I just got a ton of positive feedback. We hope to keep that train rolling with session two, and that is in a lot of ways. Brent, when we talk about slowing down session 10, session two is going to be kind of our priority. We're going to make sure that those episodes are produced and they come out as close to on schedule, weekly schedule, as we can. So that that is all done. You've told me that the reboot is a little bit more technically complex, so if you can get that done before your sabbatical, that's where we're going to try to put our energy and our priority so that you can rest well when you get there. Is that well said?

[B]

Indeed, yes, that is the plan. And it is because of the way we're doing it, we're replacing it. And the reason we're replacing the feed is, like, if you've listened to all of Bama, like, you've come on the journey with us, you've grown with us. Like, you probably don't necessarily need those earlier episodes to be changed because you've already experienced the whole journey. You're on board with what's going on. But for somebody who's starting Bama today, and there are. There are a bunch of people, dozens, maybe hundreds of people starting the journey every single day, and we want to give them a better foundation because why give you the stuff that we learned 10 years ago, 15 years ago, when we've learned so much since then? So that's why we're replacing it. And we keep it at the original date so that everything remains in order because the journey is still the same. You're still going from Genesis to Revelation through church history. So that's why we're doing. But it's weird. So there's just a lot more potential complications, potential things that can go wrong. We're adding a bunch of elements. We were adding the companion, and we'll talk about that in a second. But, like, there's just a lot of things that go into it. So we want to get that session two reboot done, and then I can go on sabbatical and not worry about anything.

[A]

Yep. That is well said. Yeah. All right. What else do we need to talk about today?

[B]

Well, another thing that is new in the last. Since we started last season, we were just starting to come out with some YouVersion Bible app reading plans.

[A]

Ah, yes, the reading plans.

[B]

So during session nine, we launched four plans that covered all of the Bama liturgy. And we have binge plans for sessions one and two, and we have a deep dive plan for session one. And I believe what that means is the binge plans are just like, minimum versus needed, and then the episodes that go with them, and then the deep dive is like every single verse that those episodes cover. Is that right?

[A]

So the binge is what if you listen to one episode a day, and then the deep dive is like, what if you stayed on a weekly rhythm and just did a deeper dive? And then we've even created the every verse with Bemo.

[B]

Yes. Just in the last few weeks, at the beginning of 2026, we launched a whole Bible plan.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Which, in typical Bama fashion, we have to do it a little bit different than everybody else. Everybody else's whole Bible plan, Like, you get on The Bible app. Everybody's whole Bible plan is approximately 365 days. And ours, I think, is like 450.

[A]

Yeah, of course. Why not?

[B]

Because you know why not. But that will take you through every verse of the Bible, along with the BAAL podcast. So if you want to do that, that is all in the YouVersion app.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. And they're really great tools. A little bit of something for everybody. The binge option, the weekly rhythm, or I want every verse of the Bible. I just really like how that's come together over time. So that's awesome. And the person that's helping us create that is a new person on our team as of a year, year and a half, I don't know how long ago, but her name is Amber Miller. She's helping us with all kinds of things. She's doing the reading plans, but she's also helped us create the companion for the reboot. If you've been a part of the reboot, you've noticed this new resource that's in the show notes, which is. It's more than the group resource video. It's definitely better produced. It's beautiful. And it's this wonderful little guide for walking through the episode with your group or with yourself or with others, and gives you a little bit of discussion points, things to reflect on. Sometimes there's a playlist, a Spotify playlist that she's curated and put there. Half the time. She runs our social media account, so if you've noticed, like some of the quotes or the Sabbath reminders every Friday or the Advent series that goes out in our social media, whether it's Instagram or our Facebook or whatever it might be, that's all Amber Miller. And she's done some pretty great work. Yeah. What'd you say, Brent?

[B]

Yeah. Very creative, writing oriented person, and just beautiful words. My brain is not wired that way, and so I am constantly in awe of what she does.

[A]

The prayer at the end of every reboot episode, that's kind of part of her. I mean, the team did that, but she kind of helped design that whole concept and just love it. Love it.

[B]

Yeah, she was already writing those prayers. And we. We kind of got an idea from a friend, Dan Gummel. We connected with him through the Bible project, and he's like, you should get some more listener voices on there. And then we realized, like, oh, Amber's already writing these beautiful prayers. Let's have listeners read these. And that has been super fun.

[A]

So it's one of my favorite parts of the reboot.

[B]

Episodes. Yeah. Yeah, I love it.

[A]

All right, let's say, Brent, that somebody has just wandered in here. They've been told to listen to the Baymouth podcast. It's the beginning of season 10, and they've wandered in here unawares.

[B]

We probably should have put this section at the beginning of this episode.

[A]

That's okay.

[B]

I'll say that for our future self. So when we do the session 11 intro, note to self, please put this at the beginning of the episode. I love it.

[A]

Well, what would you tell them nonetheless?

[B]

Yeah, listeners, if you open up Apple Podcasts, I think specifically it defaults you to the most recent season. And so if you are starting to listen to Bama, as season 10 is the current season, this is the episode right now that you're probably going to be given first. And this is not where you should start. You should go back to season one. Start at episode zero. We have to number things. A little funny, but we wanted episode one to be Genesis one. So episode zero is really that introductory lesson that lays a lot of those foundational ideas and then continue on sessions one through five. Seasons one through five, that's the core content that will take you through the full narrative arc of the Bible. And then session five is church history, and that's very important. I feel like I hear of a lot of people who go one through four, and then they loop back around and repeat. Don't skip season five, because that church history element brings it to where we are today. Because that's the burning question. It's like, okay, if that is what happened in the Book of Acts and in the New Testament and all this stuff, how did we get to here? And that's what season five does. And it's a very short season. It's not a big burden. We're not church history buffs. We don't really know that much, but we do create a little thread that brings you up to where we are today. So don't skip that part. And then once you're done with that, then season six and beyond, that's deeper exploration. That's application. There's lots of good stuff there. Not so important to go necessarily in order.

[A]

Sure. Once you get to that breaking point, you can jump around a whole lot more because you've gotten that the essence of the tools. You've got the whole toolbox. I still love to listen in order because you get to hear us change. You get to follow us literally through our journey. And session six is kind of like we're trying to figure out what do we do without the core content, who are we? We try this, we try that, and we figure it out over the course of a very long session six.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

But you do have the freedom to. I want to go verse by verse through John. Go grab the John series. I want to study Ecclesiastes. There you go. And you'll find that wandering through those future seasons. But, yes, don't skip session five. We are not church history experts. Although I just had to wrap up a church history class this last semester in grad school, and I was really, really pleasantly surprised at how close that class matched almost exactly what we did in session five. So I was like, okay, I don't feel so bad, because I kind of felt like maybe I shouldn't be doing this. But even more so, Brent, to your point, we wrap up the Bama stream of consciousness at the end of session five. That's where we pull it all together. That's the good stuff.

[B]

Yeah. Those four pillars of Bama we talk about at the. I can't remember if it's the capstone or the episode before that, but, like, you have a couple of longer passages that you share that people always fall in love with. There's some really solid stuff in five, so don't skip it.

[A]

Yeah. Make sure five is a part of the core content, because it is. All right, Brent, you're the website expert. Tell us what we're going to find on the website.

[B]

I don't want to go at length on this, but I would just say if you haven't explored the Baymaw website, check it out. There's so much stuff there, it's kind of impossible to talk about. And I feel bad because it's probably too much. But there is a search function. You can use the search function, which is helpful for finding some things. It doesn't search transcripts, but it will search titles and show notes and guests. So you can sometimes find what you're looking for with that. There's the news tab with our upcoming events, live stream, Q and A's, lots of things there. We try to keep that up to date. The groups page shows you local discussion groups, but I have a new layer we've made a change recently where we are indicating virtual groups for groups that are like, yeah, we are just open for anybody anywhere around the world. Feel free. So we have orange pins on the map, and I actually separated those out into their own layer. So you can even. I would highly recommend looking at this map on a desktop or laptop because the mobile experience on Google Maps for What we're doing is atrocious, but if you scroll down on the left, you can just see all the virtual groups together. So if you're just like, I don't have anybody around me, I need to find a virtual group. They're all grouped together now, so that's a change that we've made. But these groups are not curated, they're not overseen by us. We're just trying to help facilitate some organic connection as much as possible. I use this map when I travel as a way to help me find listeners and meet people when I go. And I've heard of a handful of people who have traveled. And one of our staff members, Ben Caspersen, was recently over in London and he contacted a group and got together with a guy and had a meal or something. So it's a fun way for listeners to connect with the each other. But we're not, we're not running those groups. They're all independent, they look a hundred different ways. But that, that map is there. And then I would just encourage people. If you haven't already, sign up for the Bama messenger that's at the top of the news page. And then we will email you monthly with all the stuff that you need to know about and that is changing and moving forward.

[A]

So that map has blue pins and that map has green pins and that map has orange pins. Is that what I'm hearing you say?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So that map has Seattle Seahawks colors, Cincinnati Bengal colors, but no red or yellow pins on that map.

[B]

No, no, I don't tend to really good, especially together. My wife hates it more than I do. But red and yellow is like McDonald's colors.

[A]

It's horrible.

[B]

That's not good for you.

[A]

Yeah, if you had a football team that had red and yellow. Gross. Okay, let's see here. What else do we got next on our little agenda? If you're new here, you're going to need to know that that's all an inside joke between Brian and Reid and myself. Should we give us people a little financial update?

[B]

Yeah, we're almost done, but yeah, we just rolled over the end of a calendar year and so I thought maybe you could give us an update. We had that special episode at the end of. So let us know what happened. How did it work out?

[A]

Yeah, so we'll start here. Bama, we're a nonprofit ministry. We're a non profit minist with Impact Campus Ministries. Impact is actually the organization. Bama is just kind of one of the arms of Impact Campus Ministry. And we're Supported by just personal supporters that give nonprofit tax deductible donations like they would to any other parachurch ministry or their local church. And we've always loved that. We don't monetize, we don't do ads. You might use a platform for our podcast that they do ads, but we don't do advertisements. We make that decision really intentionally because we really like it. We could move in those directions. We could move towards a Patreon or a. We really like having people that just give generously as they feel led. And that's how we're supported. And so we did, we did an episode at the end of season nine, towards the end of season nine, at the end of the calendar year, just really giving people an update at that point. We needed 240, was. It was $420,000 in the middle of December when we did that episode that we needed to bring in. And with three days left, we still needed $240,000 to come in. And those last three days of the year are always just crazy. And it was crazy. And we, we hit all of our goals. We're pretty sure we even surpassed some of our goals. Not with some unbelievable number, but we not, we didn't just hit our goals, we surpassed them. And we're just really grateful for the generosity of our donors. We're in the middle of trying to grow as an organization. We talked a little bit about that. We're in the middle of trying to make sure that as we become kind of a, I don't want to say bigger thing, but we used to be this small little nonprofit, piece it together. And as we're growing, we need to make sure that we're becoming the kind of organization that we talk about, that we preach about, that we teach about on the podcast. And so we're needing to make some good changes. And so we're right in the middle of that change. And this next year is going to be kind of the last year of this multi year expansion that we've been trying to pursue. So we're going to need another $400,000 kind of above what our normal income streams would bring over this next fiscal year. And then hopefully we're in a spot where we're, we can kind of ride the wave of what God's been doing without having to always just press for more and press for more. That's not a space that we ever want to live in, but people give. Brent. Our average donation is $22 a month. I probably need to get some updated numbers. I'M sure it's changed. As of a year ago or so, it was $22 a month. And what that means is there's a lot of people giving above $22 a month, but it also means that there's just as many people giving below $22 a month. And that's the power of volume, the amount of people that believe that a small donation, a small $10 a month donation, some people are really able to give. And those big gifts really power what we do. And that's awesome. But a lot of people don't have the ability to write a $100 a month gift or a $5,000 at the end of the year gift, but they are able to just. I can do $10 a month. And there's enough people that are doing that kind of a gift that it's made for years now. It's what enabled you to come on board years ago full time. And now our team. We just talked about Amber a moment ago. Our team continues to grow in healthy ways because people are giving in that way and playing a critical role. And then there are all those people that can give $5,000 at the end of the year, and they do give $300 a month. And you put all of that together, and it's how God makes this thing work. So just a big thank you to all of the people that do that for us.

[B]

Huge thank you. I wish I could sit down and have a meal with every person who listens and, and, and contributes. And it's just. Yeah. The scale is beyond what any human can manage.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so we just bless God for that and try to steward what he has given us as well as we can.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. And it's probably worth stating, just kind of reminding people, we always. We've tried to do a better job of putting this out in front of people, especially with the reboot. When we originally started the Behemoth podcast, we were assuming college students because that was where our roots were. Bama's roots are in campus ministry. Bama was started as a class for college students on the college campuses of University of Idaho and Washington State University. That's where it was started. So for the first two or three seasons, we are assuming a group of college students that we know that they come to our church and we see them at discussion groups. And it's not for a while until we realize we've got a much larger podcast audience. And so what that meant was that somewhere along the way, the things we were assuming never got communicated. And that Is that Bama's heart, our heartbeat, our organizational mission? The thing that we do every day is very much college students and a lot of people don't know that one. So we're trying to do a better job of communicating that. So we're communicating it today. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people say, oh man, if I would have known this when I was 20 years old.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

How many times have I heard somebody in their 50s or their 60s say, oh man, if I would have known this 30 years ago.

[B]

I said that when I got into Bama and I was 27.

[A]

Yeah, for real. And that's what we want. We want that to be true. Like we want 22 year olds, we want 20 year olds to hear this stuff. We want them to be equipped with this. And that is really our focus and our goal. And it is what Josh did for us. Josh was our virtual campus minister. Even after his liver transplant, when he had to move to a more online, virtual, digital role, what he did was he worked with college students. He found a way for college students who felt isolated or struggled to get connected in real, in person relationships. And he gave them a connection point and a place where they could at least begin a discipleship journey. And that's a part of what Josh was doing, and it's a part of what we continue to do and will continue to do. And we have to keep that going, to keep what Josh was doing. We're not going to let that fall apart. We're going to make sure that that lives on and we're going to need to staff that and do all those kinds of things. But even beyond that immediate campus ministry need, there's also the fact that all those college students that I just spoke about, all those college students that we care about, eventually graduate. So they move on from college campus and they take on some job somewhere, whatever it is, that they start a business or they take an engineering job or they become a cpa, or maybe they don't. Maybe they go home and they become a stay at home dad. Maybe they're an artist. Maybe they get a job doing something totally different than what they were trained to do in college, but they go on to do something in the world. And our entire vision is that when they leave our college campus, we have equipped them with, with the tools to go make a difference. What we would love to do is build a network of mentors that when they graduate, they can be, if they so choose, they can be connected to people that have gone ahead of them, people that are already in their field, people that share a Bama language and a worldview, and they're flung out into the world and caught on the other side by somebody that's like, I've been doing this. I've been trying to walk this out. And albeit imperfectly, we're chasing after Jesus. Let's go do accounting together. And those are our big dreams. And we're still kind of building that step by step, brick by brick, piece by piece. But as you listen to this podcast, we're planting seeds and we're dripping that vision so that eventually we're going to come and we're going to say, it's time for you to sign up and say yes to this opportunity and help us reach that generation and help them steward their next chapter. So that's kind of the college ministry piece. Brent and I kind of started to get rambly and preachy there, so I better stop and let you say something.

[B]

All right, Well, I will just say that session 10 is now officially launched. So there it is.

[A]

It's official.

[B]

I would encourage people to go explore the website, the resources we have. I'll put a bunch of links in the show notes for this episode. You can find those show notes in your podcast app, hopefully. But if not, they're on the website. The shortcut, if you want to get to any particular episode, is baymondiscipleship.com episode number. So if you want the show notes for this and you can't see it in your app for whatever reason. Baemon discipleship.com 496 and that will get you straight to it. But we want people to engage. We want to live this out. We don't want to just be. Be consumers of a podcast. We want to make a difference in the world. We want to be a part of bringing God's kingdom to Earth. So whatever you need to do to get connected and find a way to live that out like, we are here to give you the resources and what you need to do that.

[A]

Absolutely. Well said.

[B]

So with that, thank you for joining us on the Baymo podcast today. We will talk to you again soon and. And continuing through this season at our modified pace. But we will be here and we are thankful for our community.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

You know what you forgot to complain about was how you don't know what the music is.

[A]

Oh, no.

[B]

I should have put that in as a bullet point.

[A]

Shoot. Yeah, it's okay. Goodness.