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Welcome to the Unseminary Podcast, the place where church leaders get practical insights, tips, and strategies for ministry growth. Today, you're stepping into something bigger than just a conversation. This podcast is part of a bold mission to help 100 churches grow by 1,000 people. Whether you're dreaming of increasing your impact in your community, empowering your team, or reaching more people with the message of Jesus, you're in the right place. We're here to bring you the stuff you wish they taught in seminary, ideas and tools you can put into action this week to see transformation in your ministry. Let's dive in.
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Hey, friends. Welcome to the Unseminary Podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Really looking forward to today's conversation. We got multiple conversations happening on multiple levels today, and we've got a repeat guest, which, you know, when we have a repeat guest, what does that mean? This is a person I want you to listen in on and pay attention to. Today we've got the privilege of having Jeremy Norton with us. He is the lead pastor of Mountain View Church. It was established in the 1940s in the Yukon, the Yukon Territory, and went through revitalization here in 2017. It is now both English and Tagalog. Did I say that correctly?
C
Yes, that's right. Which is the language of Filipino peoples, which is fantastic.
B
He most recently wrote a book called Meeting Jesus, which I want you to check out, which walks through the Gospel of John, highlighting Jesus's relational encounters and how he crossed boundaries and transformed lives. You're going to love this, Jeremy. Welcome to the show. So glad you're here.
C
Thanks so much for having me. Excited to be back.
B
Always get a chance to connect with you. And you know, people when they say, I'm from the North, I'm like, no, my friend Jeremy, he really is from the north. You know, that's a long ways away. Talk to us about Mountain View. Tell us a little bit of the story, how you intersect there, if we were to arrive. You've been on in past episodes, but kind of update us a little bit.
C
Yeah, yeah. So I'm going on 11 years as lead pastor of Mountain View Church. Started as Whitehorse Baptist Church, revitalized Mountain View Church. All sorts of different changes there. Yeah, Lots of people are familiar with revitalization journeys. Went through that. It's hard work, but it's good work. And I'm on the back end of it. And we've seen crazy growth. We went to two English gatherings during revitalization. And then about. About a year and a Half ago we added part time Filipino pastor and he does a Tagalog gathering as well. And so same content, same or same theme and passage as the English gatherings, but obviously he writes his own content. So we still go through the sermon series together. His name's Byron, Pastor Byron. And so that's been really, really great. Most people don't know that in Whitehorse and I think Yellowknife as well, Canadian immigration about 10 years ago started kind of fast tracking Filipino peoples. And for those of us in Canada, all of a sudden, probably 10 years ago, we started seeing more and more Filipino people in the workforce. Amazing people, joyful people, resourceful people. And it got to the point in Whitehorse where we had a lot of, of Filipino immigrants and to the point where we're about 10% of our population in our city is Filipino. And so there's actually like, there's a Filipino Catholic Nazarene, and for us, we're Evangelical Baptist, so there's a number of congregations that are Tagalog speaking. And. Yeah, so that's kind of where we're at now.
B
That's very cool. That's, that's fun, fun to hear. And I. Yeah. And I'm thinking about man moving from the Philippines to White Horse. That's a move. That's a move right there.
C
Crazy. Yeah. A country that's constantly, what, over 30, over 35 degrees Celsius, and then now they're in negative 40 Celsius, which for Americans, negative 40 meets at Celsius and Fahrenheit. So it's just. Stuff's cold and it breaks. So. Yeah. Crazy. And it just shows you the, the desire of Filipino people to, to, I guess, make life better for their family and to take opportunities they're willing to sacrifice a lot. It's pretty incredible.
B
Love it. Well, we want to talk today about a book that you've recently released called Meeting Jesus the Transformational Encounters of John's Gospel. Why don't you give us the, the big picture first? Why did you write this book? What's the kind of story you're telling here? What are you hoping for? What were you thinking as you were pulling this together?
C
Yeah, well, it, it started as a sermon series in 2018 called Meeting Jesus. And I wanted to walk people through John's Gospel. But instead of ins. Instead of doing a. Just kind of an expository preaching series, I was like, what would it look like to go through the actual relational encounters that Jesus had with different people? You know, I guess starting with kind of Philip and Nathaniel and even working to Nicodemus women at the well, anyway, all the way right to, to the, to the famous moment of him and Pilate where Pilate's like, what is truth? You know, so the whole journey. And then after doing that in 2024, I can only assume the, the Holy Spirit led me to like just opening up those notes and I was like, I, I need to turn this into a book. This isn't quite a commentary. And yet it is a commentary. And yet it's, it's, it's a story because it's, each chapter is the story of Jesus and another person. And in the sermon series I had expanded on like who this person is in modern culture as well. Like this could be you, this person, you know, whether it be the, the legalist or the skeptic or like, you know. Yeah, again, you have, you have Nathaniel, who's the skeptic. Philip, who's the evangelist. You have Nicodemus, who's the legalist. You know, anyway, the, the woman of the well who's wounded and, and really disowned from culture. So there's all these people and, and then, so I, I started working to put the sermon series into a book. I use a publisher. I have a great publisher. Ambassador International sent it to them in. And then through 2025 it went back and forth to multiple edits.
B
Right.
C
They did a lot of work for me and yes. You know, and yeah, then it launched in March 10th and yeah, that's great and really fun so far I've got amazing feedback from it. So it's great.
B
Yeah, that's great. I'd love to. I think the framing of kind of the relational encounters of Jesus is interesting way to look at the Gospels. And you know, the, the, the incredible popularity of the Chosen, I think is built on a similar premise. Right. How do we see Jesus? The. Even if you have a kind of passing knowledge of Jesus, see these stories that maybe we've heard of before, but from a slightly different lens, just a slightly different point of view, which is like, hey, let's think through this at a, at a human level, for lack of a better word. Why do you think that that is an effective way to re. Encounter something like the Gospel of John? Why is that in a framework that you think God's used either in your series or when you talk about it here in the book?
C
Yeah, I think. And Well, I think John's Gospel in itself is, you know, different than Matthew, Mark and Luke. Like how he writes it. He wrote it later. Right. It's the gospel that came much later. And, and for whatever reason, God led him to, to focus so much on the conversation Jesus had with people. You know, the other gospels just detail things differently. And so I don't. We'll, you know, we'll meet John one day. But I imagine he, he's pretty pastoral. I, I, from his writing, I imagine that he's kind of the, you know, for a modern term, you know, coffee shop pastor, just wanting to know people's stories and saying, like, oh, I remember this one time Jesus had this conversation with so and so. And this is how it played out and this, you know, and so that's when I did the Sear sermon series, which became the book like that. I just envisioned John like that, and I just thought that John's like a lot of pastors with their congregations on those, like, coffee shop meetings, like, trying to help them through life and trying to point back to Jesus and the conversations he had. So, yeah, that's kind of, that's where, where it all kind of started. And I just wanted to explain that. Well, and there is tons of scripture in it and even going back to pointing back, like, for context, and it's not like there's not theological depth to it. Appointing back to some Old Testament stuff on what, what was talked about. Yeah. Especially with Nathaniel, who Jesus calls the true Israelite. You know, we get this picture that Nathaniel really wanted to follow God's law. He, he really, he really was waiting to see the Messiah, but, but desperate, you know, to see the Messiah. So anyway, that's cool.
B
When you went through the series, was there one of these vignettes that seemed to resonate or stick out with your church more than others or, you know, we like to think, oh, every, every message is like, people just love them. But were there any of them that just kind of like, oh, that seemed to resonate? And why do you think that resonated with your people? Because maybe that'll continue to resonate even through, you know, the book here.
C
Yeah, there's, there's, there's, there's two that I rem. That I remember. I, I mentioned them slightly already. But yeah, coming out of the revitalization. Yeah, coming out of the realization in, in 2017 and then, and then moving into 2018, this was like one of the, one of the sermon series that kind of got us in the journey and so, you know, hashing out Nicodemus as a, as a, as a legalist who, who's, you know, the midnight encounter with Jesus and, and processing like how to be born again. And we were getting a lot of visitors and so. And so that was an important thing. And it was an important thing, I think for a church that had been probably like a lot of churches pre revitalization, they. They tend to lean towards legalism a little bit. The rules, you know, thus saith the. And, and to understand, to just see it through Nicodemus eyes that his whole religious worldview was like breaking down at midnight. And, and you know, unfortunately, we don't really get the end of the story with Nicodemus. It's like I'm always desperate for it. Like, what happened in the end?
B
Right.
C
Like, did he just give up his religious position? Did he stay like a Christian spy? Like, you know, what happened? So that was the first one to, to just really help our church understand that being born again, like that is, that is the, the point. And, and all the rules and all the commands like of. Of God's law, they're a beautiful thing, but they were all leading us to the trajectory of Jesus and fulfilling the law, fulfilling the prophets and that. And that we, we. We need to be dead to self and, and born again. And, and then the second one was, which I already slightly mentioned was, was pilot and what is truth? And in 2018 in particular, there was. I'm sure pastors listening will remember that we weren't quite in. We weren't at Covid yet, but it was like, you know, a year and a half before and truth was a big thing. There was. There was a lot of identity stuff happening in 2018. It was just kind of really kicking off, especially in Canada. It was, it was a big deal. And so capturing truth. And what is truth? That. That's actually in 2018 was when we started hearing a common phrase now where like your truth and my truth. That was just kind of starting at that time. And so hearing Pilate, who is, you know, has so much authority and so much clout and, and trying to figure out Jesus and just clearly just so frustrated that he's in the whole mess of this and really doesn't want any part of it and. Yep. And for the Greco Roman world, like, they were definitely like in a lot of ways, like modern culture, like, right. You take a little apart A, a little part B, and you just form your own truth. God one, God two, God four, who cares? Yes.
B
Yes.
C
Yeah. So that really resonated too. And that was like the last, that was the, the last message in the series. And we actually saw people come to know Christ and baptized at the end of the series and, and ending. Doing it actually right before Easter and. Yeah, it, yeah, it was great.
B
That's good. Yeah. I love that there's, you know, it's. I think it's great to relook at a book like the Book of John from this kind of perspective because I think sometimes as pastors, people as we, you know, deal with the scripture and it can become routine. We don't want it to become routine. That's not our heart for that to happen. But I think that can happen. That's like, it's. I've said in other contexts that's like an occupational hazard we have with the scripture is, you know, we're, we're constantly just opening this book up to find, you know, I got to find nuggets to give to other people and you know, I miss that. Speak to a pastor who might be listening in today that this book could help them because I was struck by that. This could be the kind of thing that I think even for us as we're thinking about our own walk with Jesus, I think this kind of book could help us, help us think. Think about this book from that perspective.
C
Yeah, this. For a pastor that wanted to go through John, they could just grab this book and do a like, like further church either. The whole church, hey, we're going to be walking through John and we've got this book meeting Jesus and, and it's going to be available in our small groups and because in the back of every chapter there's discussion, questions, action items like the, the publisher really helped me flesh out the end of the chapter to make it very applicable so you can walk through John's gospel and meeting Jesus could be a discussion even for like you, for like senior high youth. Totally doable in that through all your community groups and to, for, for a pastor to preach through John but then get more, more out of it I think would be. Would be quite valuable. Obviously I'm biased, but. But I. If you're. Look, if you're looking for a resource to give your people to get the fullness out of your John series, this being for sure, love it.
B
One of the things I love about this is like sidebar. Taking back back to school. I did a class on. Actually one of my favorite classes in school was on John and my Prof. Was just amazing. And, and I oftentimes when I'm reading John I hear his voice. You know, my Prof's. Voice. And yeah, I remember he used to make there's all those places in John where maybe it's not that many. You probably would know often because you're a better preacher than me. There's those places where John refers to John as the one who Jesus loved. And, and my Prof. Used to always make fun of that all the time and be like, you know, here, there he is. He's like writing about himself saying. Or maybe it's the community writing about him saying, well, you know, the John, the one who Jesus loved, you know, which is funny, but it is to. Speaks to your point. It's a personal text. It's a, it has a relational edge to it that I think we can miss. We can miss. Or as an opportunity for us to highlight for our people. Hey, let's, let's think about this from a slightly different perspective.
C
Yeah. And even, even how John talks about the discovery of the empty tomb and who's with who and who's running back, like, how he, how he does it. It's just, I'm. For me, I'm always like, that's what's great about the New Testament writings is like God in his wisdom, didn't take the personality out and yet kept the truths. And so you see a little bit like, like, was John, if he really was the relational guy and, and just the, the shepherd, was he also a little bit insecure? Like, it kind of comes across a little bit like, I don't know for sure. I don't, I can't do the full exegesis of it, but I, I often wonder that.
B
Yeah, it feels very human. That part of the, that part of the. Well, and even that whole story.
C
Yes.
B
Well, that, to me, is one of the most compelling reasons for why I believe the text. Because it's like if you were trying to make up a story about a guy coming back from the dead, there's a bunch of stuff in there, including the women, including the way you're telling me that the guys that were the closest were not here. You know, like, that just doesn't make sense. Like, you, if we were writing this story, you would be like, hey, let's put that, let's put us all in there. Let's put us. That we stood by and maybe we beat up the centurions. Like, let's put that in. Like, that'll make us look better. But that, to me, is one of the, to me, it's like one of the most compelling. There's a bunch of that in the New Testament, but that's one of them. That, to me, is a key text that speaks to why you can believe this text to be true, because you wouldn't write it that way if Totally. Unless it actually happened.
C
Yeah. It makes me think of Mark Clark's book, the Problem of Jesus. He does an excellent job, like, explaining the resurrection and, and, and from like an investigator's point of view. I'm like, that this is so erratic. It has to be true. Yes. You know. Yes.
B
When it feels very human. Feels very human. Right. You're like, you say, like, that feels like the kind of thing I can relate with for sure. Think about it at a church level. You kind of mentioned this because similarly, I thought, man, this could be a great study. I was actually struck by, I think an interesting context for it might be, hey, you've got a group of leaders at the church that you're trying to invest in. And, you know, my friend Dan Ryland from 12 Stone said, you know, the core of his leadership development over the years has been find a group of 10 people, say, here's a book. Let's read it and talk about it. To me, this is one of those ones that could be great because it'll get. It'll open up all kinds of other conversation. What are some other contexts that you kind of pictured this being used in the church?
C
Yeah, I think. Well, personal. Personal devos, I think, would be great. Like, if you're reading through John just on your own, like the, the back sections can. Yeah, it can be discussion guides. Can also be like a personal journal. I. If people went into a deep dive of, of this book, reading along with John's Gospel, obviously there's lots of scripture just like right in the book. But then let's say they answer reflection questions, go through the action items. There's just so much. There's lots of space in that end of each chapter. And I could see someone turning it into like a journal. And, and yeah, I, I also think, you know, I guess it could. It could also be a. A great gift. I. I think if you're, if you're, you know, you could keep giving people a coffee mug with your church's logo on. You really could if you wanted to. Right. I'm, I'm. I think, I think books are with the pen and the candy bar or whatever, you know, whatever you're going to do. I think a book as a gift is a. Is a good way to do it. Obviously, it's my book, I'm biased, and there's lots of great books out there, but this would be a book whether. Whether someone's first coming to know Christ or exploring Christianity or whether they're, they've been long discipled and mentored for a long time as your, as a first time guest in your church to give them a little welcome package. This, this would, would fit, I think.
B
Yeah, for sure. That's good. Let's pivot to actually that, that you know, wants me to pivot to a different kind of a different conversation but about the book which is even that as a pastor, so kind of the meta conversation, it's a lot of time, effort, energy, I can say as a, a third time author who's working on the fourth and is it's taken time, it's a lot of time to invest to put this together as a pastor of a church. Talk to me why you would invest the time, effort and energy in writing a book like this. What, how do you see that fitting in to, you know, the mission of what you're doing at the church?
C
Yeah, well, I want a lead pastor now. Over a decade and you go through sermon series. You know, there are those pastors who will do like two years in Matthew and they're doing like one or two verses a time. Excuse me. And so you know that I can't turning that into like that's going to be a full on commentary, very theologically deep. But for a lot of us we're doing thematic, thematic series or like this where you're doing an overview of a book like catching highlights, encouraging your congregation in their personal study to read through the meat of it and the details but you know, maybe one chapter at a time, a highlight. So there's lots of times pastors do that and so you write these sermon series and then they just get archived and you know, I, I, I have them every pastor listening has them where you have, you know, your folders and you open your folders and it's like you have the year and then you got the months or, or maybe you just have the service years and then you open that folder and it's like manuscripts, notes and you don't want to delete them because you've put so much heart and soul and prayer and, and work into it. And I just, I really feel it's a ton of work. Like so much work, so much work. But you get better at it. And pastors that you, you can, you can let those sermon series live on in books.
B
Right?
C
And you can do the hard, the hardest work. You know, I've done both ways having a publisher and self publishing. You can do the self publishing. You know, Amazon has those tools. It gets easier over time. You know, having done a number of them now and some of them looking ugly and some of them now looking. It's like okay, I got it. I've got it locked in now. Right. And with you go a traditional publisher. You know, when you're first getting started, you know it, it costs money. But there is something amazing when you see your sermon series in print and you can give it to your. You could give it as a gift to your people welcome gift or you could just sell it and. And you. You've got people in your congregation that will support your writing anyway. They love your sermon series. That's why they're there. The main reason they're coming there's. They may come for different reasons to your church but they're staying for the teaching. Like.
B
Right.
C
We just know that the stats are there and can enter consistent. So to have to have your teaching in a book form. They will buy it for friends. They will buy it for themselves though especially if they really love to sermon series.
B
So.
C
But it's a lot of work. I get it.
B
Yes. A lot of work. Yeah. I like it from. And we said this before we started recording but from on the like invite culture, church growth side of work that I do, one of the tactics that I recommend that churches seriously look at is writing a book like this. Take a sermon series, do the work to. And you know it takes time. It's not a. Like you can't pull that trigger and a month later you've got a book. That's not how that works. It takes time. But it is a great tool and we've seen it with the churches, we work with multiple churches where it is like you're saying it's a great in the new year gift. It's a great tool for there but it's frankly a great tool for your people. On the invite side people will give the book to other folks. It's a way to interact in town with other, you know, like other leaders, that sort of thing. And you know your people there is still there's like a perceived prestige is too strong of the word but there's like a, it's. There's a validation in putting together a book that you know, you, you've put the work in and that it probably means more than it should in the culture. But it is a tool. It's something that you could use. And so I love that you're doing this. When you think about if you were sitting across from a pastor was thinking about the kind of series that would translate well into a book based on your experience. Obviously not all series are. Could, could translate well. What would be the kind of thing that you think could translate well for someone?
C
So there's a. Yeah. A few caveats would be like it has to be a minimum that you've done. It's got to be in order to get it to book form. I would minimum two months but that's going to be a slim book. So I would say like I guess if you really wanted to. But the sweet spot is three to six month series. In a three to six month series you're going to have enough content for a book but not so much content that now you've written a textbook. That's why I was saying like you're doing the year in Matthew or the two years in Matthew which you know, lots of that seems to be a thing especially with Matthew. I hear that more than anyone else is. Is doing the deep dive of Matthew probably because a lot of the touch points to the Old Testament in, in Matthew for sure. But it's too, it's too big. You're. You're. It'll be too academic. It won't be accessible. It'll just be a monster. So three to six months of sermon series and, and yeah, just you. There's lots of, there's AI tools out there that you can use to, to be cautious with the AI tools because if you lose your voice, you're done like it does. People see it. If your book is full of M dashes they will know that Chat GPT wrote it. Yes. Yes. You know, so yeah, yeah. It's, it's. It's something that I think later on I, I want to help pastors with. I think I really would. That's cool.
B
Yeah, I do. I think there's a. I think there's an opportunity there for a lot of pastors to think about that and say hey, what is there a way for us. I like the idea of like I think that's a good tangible three to six months. Even if you're. I'm thinking about even the lead pastor at our church we typically do four or five week series. He doesn't. We don't typically do super long series like that. We're changing the channel. But he's done a number of. He's come back to similar topics over time. So he's. We just finished up a series on the Holy Spirit. It's actually the third time in maybe three years we've done a series on the Holy Spirit. You could see where maybe it's piecing together a couple different series and say, hey, there might be a, or you could think about that on the front end. Like, hey, maybe over the next two years I'm going to do three or four series together, you know, or over this next couple years that I eventually I'm going to pull together into one, you know, overarching kind of idea that we can put together in a book.
C
And even in that like hearing, okay, so three years doing the Holy Spirit, you could definitely do. Just take those three, if they're like four to six weeks or whatever, a three part book and actually separate into parts. And again using AI tools, you can upload those documents and say, you know, anything that's duplicate, you know, please categorize for me and you know, put it into cowork or something like that and, and then go into the docs, pull, pull that out and yeah, it would, it could work. It could work, right?
B
Yeah, yeah, that's similar. Like when I wrote the, the and I don't know if I've ever talked about this publicly, but the books I've written, I've similarly like I, the process I've gone through is I write an outline and then I actually, I actually speak the chapters like a presentation. So because that's my most natural form, like is I'm doing or I do it all the time. I'm constantly like, you know, I'm doing it later today, meeting with the church and we're gonna talk for a bunch of hours about stuff. And so I'm like very used to that. I'll use then the transcript from that. I'll take that and then I write the, from that transcript. I'm basically editing that transcript to turn it into something that sounds like it's written. And then I've done iterative back and forth processes with an actual editor. So you know, it's like, then it's like it goes to her and then comes back to me. Goes back to her back and forth over time to kind of get that whittle down into okay, here's a text. And you know, the thing I've said to other leaders, even that process that gets you started, people get stuck looking at a blank page, right? They get stuck at the beginning. So even finding a process to get the ball rolling is, is and getting the information down on the page. I think it was Ernest Hemingway who said, which stay with me friends, don't hang up on the podcast. I think he said write drunk, edit sober. And which you should not do as a Pastor. But what he's saying there is like, just get it onto the page. Like, just get it out. Like, you know, and if you take forever at that first stage, you'll never get to a book. Right. And you've already done that as a, as a pastor. You've spoken these. But how do we get the ball rolling? Thoughts on any of that? Except for the get drunk thing, don't comment on that. But any comments on the rest of that?
C
Don't write drunk, but so I guess I. So there's some guys out there that like, you know, they'll have just like a few little notes and they, they're not manuscript preachers. Some guys are manuscript preachers. Nothing against that. You know, I'm kind of a both and guy. I manuscript for like our. And manuscript and teleprompt for our YouTube channel. And then. But then I take that like, so that manuscript I just have highlights. And then when I live preach, I just have highlights and I walk around and talk. So there's lots of passages or different versions. But if you are the guy that's just got an outline, you're probably going to have an audio. An audio of your sermon and you can put it into a like otter AI or I don't know, there's probably loads of different tools now and run that transcript and then just export every sermon as a. As you know, the first sermon, your series, you know, introduction. Right. Second one in your series, you know, chapter one. And you, once you have those documents now, you will, you will notice. Well, there's lots of things you're going to notice when you get a transcript. You're going to notice how much you say and, and like. And all these different things. You're gon, you're going to be just like, oh, my goodness, is that how I sound like? Which can be a good thing. When you read that, when you're, when you move from the transcript of your sermon into a book, you're like, oh my goodness, this is. Would be the most awful thing to read. But there's also tools now that remove all. All that for you. Yes.
B
Yeah. That's fun.
C
Then you go through and you edit it and. Yeah, yeah. And it's a beautiful thing when it's done.
B
Yeah, that's great. Well, this has been a good conversation. Where could people. I want to get people to pick up copies of this. I'm assuming they can buy it at Amazon or in fact, I know you can buy it at Amazon because that's where books come from. But are there Other places we want to send people to pick up. I think this would be. Even if you're listening in today and you're thinking, I wonder what it looks like to have sermons transformed into a book. Like, hey, you should pick up a copy even as just a reference to get a sense of h that I could see what that could look like even if you're not going to read it. So Amazon, where else do we want to get. Send them anywhere.
C
Anywhere books are sold. I don't, I don't know if anyone buys books at anywhere else. Like does people. Do people still buy books at Indigo or Chapters or Christian book? Like I don't know who does. But if you do, it's, it's there, there. One of the benefits of going with a publisher is they just have access to just right. Every book distributed. They just can get your book everywhere. When you self publish, you know, with Amazon, it's locked in Amazon. But then again people go to Amazon and yeah, it's a, it would be a great thing for pastors to, to look through and say, hey, you know, I think I could do this right. I see how this works now. So that would be good. And obviously there's print copy or a digital copy. You know, if you want more information on the book and stuff like that, you can go to my website, lead biblically.com. there's lots of other stuff there. My other books that I've written, self published and published by Ambassador International, they're all there too. You can have a look. Yeah, that's great.
B
Well, Jeremy, I really appreciate that. I appreciate you being on the show today and, and letting us peek under the hood. There's obviously a lot more we could talk about there, but I want to encourage people to go pick those up and, and check out your website. Lee Biblically and thanks for being here today.
C
Thanks so much. Love it.
A
Thanks for tuning in to the Unseminary podcast. Drop by unseminary.com for more helpful resources for you and your team. There you will find articles, online courses and so much more unseminary stuff you wish. They taught in seminary. Presented by CDF Capital. Visit them at CDF Capital Unseminary.
Host: Rich Birch
Guest: Jeremy Norton, Lead Pastor of Mountain View Church (Yukon)
Date: April 2, 2026
This episode explores how Jesus’ relational encounters in the Gospel of John reveal His transformative approach to people, featuring insights from Jeremy Norton’s new book, Meeting Jesus: The Transformational Encounters of John’s Gospel. The conversation unfolds both as a deep dive into the content and context of the book and as practical encouragement for pastors—particularly how sermon series can be turned into lasting resources for churches and communities.
“It just shows you the desire of Filipino people… willing to sacrifice a lot.” (Jeremy, 03:50)
“Each chapter is the story of Jesus and another person… I had expanded on like who this person is in modern culture as well.” (Jeremy, 05:22)
“I imagine that he’s kind of the…coffee shop pastor, just wanting to know people’s stories…” (Jeremy, 07:03)
Nicodemus:
Pilate:
“Hearing Pilate…just so frustrated that he’s in the whole mess…and the Greco-Roman world, they were definitely…like modern culture…form your own truth.” (Jeremy, 12:34)
On Jesus’ Human Relational Approach:
“That’s what’s great about the New Testament writings…God in his wisdom didn’t take the personality out and yet kept the truths.”
— Jeremy (16:38)
On Authenticity of the Gospels:
“If you were trying to make up a story about a guy coming back from the dead, there’s a bunch of stuff in there… that just doesn’t make sense… you wouldn’t write it that way unless it actually happened.”
— Rich (17:28)
Regarding Pastors Publishing Sermon Series:
“You write these sermon series and then they just get archived…you don’t want to delete them because you’ve put so much heart and soul and prayer and work into it…I really feel… you can let those sermon series live on in books.”
— Jeremy (22:16)
On Practical Advice for Turning Series into Books:
“Minimum two months…but the sweet spot is three- to six-month series…you’re going to have enough content for a book but not so much content that you’ve written a textbook.”
— Jeremy (26:20)
On Writing Process:
“Just get it onto the page… get it out…if you take forever at that first stage, you’ll never get to a book…You’ve already done that as a pastor, you’ve spoken these.”
— Rich (29:37)
Pastors:
Church Leaders:
Individuals:
Jeremy Norton’s approach to John’s Gospel re-humanizes a familiar text by drawing out Jesus’ one-on-one, transformative encounters—helpful for anyone seeking to make scripture fresh, practical, and personal. The episode encourages pastors to steward their sermon material beyond the pulpit, turning seasons of preaching into lasting resources that spark faith, conversation, and growth within the church.