Welcome to Season 6 of the Excel Stillmore podcast. I am your host, Chris Emerson, and I am here to encourage you in your walk with the Lord, and I'm glad you've joined.

Our program continues to be sponsored by Cunningham Financial Group. John is a good friend and he's helped me and my family in everything

from stock and mutual fund investing to annuities, life insurance, and retirement planning.

I certainly commend him to you if you have needs in any of those areas. You can reach him at

205-326736-3-64. Thank you again for your ongoing encouragement and support. Let's get started.

So one of my many character flaws is when I get my mind onto something or in a groove,

I tend to stay there for longer than probably I should have and have a very difficult time

deviating to anything else. So with that minor confession at the outset, I want to say that

today will be the fourth consecutive week where I'm sharing things with you that relate

directly to local churches. All of these different ideas are challenging you to ask questions like,

what is the culture of the local group of believers where I worship? What is my part in that?

Am I contributing to a culture, maybe even changes that align us more with first century

intentions? Part of that is speaking, sharing what you believe, oftentimes

defending what you know to be right, and yet sometimes what it means is less speaking and more

listening or observing to try to find out what's going on in the minds and hearts of the people

with which you work. So just to clarify that part of it, that's what the two episodes were recently

from the Wilson Adams articles. We got a glimpse into the mind of faithful, committed believers

in our local churches who are in that age range of maybe 15 to 45. They have questions. They have

concerns. They have a lot of genuine passion for first century principles,

like increased evangelistic effort, becoming a more potent light in the world around us, and

digging into the true intent of the text and the letters that we find in the Bible. They are

less impressed with big church buildings and big name preachers, and while

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