Marc Jolicoeur (aka "Jolly Thoughts"‪)‬ A repository for reflections on life, God, the Bible, etc.

Tim Perry has some strong feelings about the state of the Church at large, and he’s not afraid to lay them out for open & honest dialogue. In this wide-ranging conversation we discuss:
* the unique place of Mary in Christian Theology throughout history, and how that intersects with today
* the potential dangers of “dismissing” Mary
* the latent worth of the Old Testament in the Church today
* the value of embracing a whole-person, embodied worship experience
We get into some nitty gritty weeds a few times in this conversation, and I walked away with some areas of potential disagreement, but I deeply valued Tim’s time and his expertise, and hope you’ll enjoy this conversation. You can find some of Tim’s books at Lexham Press, but might need to hunt / bid for some of the others.
“I would say to evangelicals, ‘Be very careful in disparaging or getting rid of Mary, because she’ll go (she’s not a bully), but she’ll take her son with her… and you end up with a Jesus who is a motivational speaker, or who’s a politician haranguing you to get on the right or the left side of whatever is the cause du jour, but you don’t have the divine-human Saviour anymore.’” - Tim Perry
Keywords: connections, Christian traditions, denominations, research, Mary, Evangelicals, Catholicism, Orthodox, Protestant churches, Bible, Mary, Christian theology, worship, Scripture, grace, unique place, fully divine, fully human, Old Testament, embodied worship


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A few episodes back I shared my conversation with W David O Taylor, wherein we got nerdy on the question of whether or not Jesus could have been considered an “artist”. I shared part of that conversation during the Sunday morning message attached to Moncton Wesleyan Church’s annual arts fest (Imagine). This podcast is the remainder of that message...


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Imagine ‘24 (an annual Arts Fest that I’m quite involved in) is well in the rearview mirror now. Soon I’ll be posting the message I was pleased to be able to share as part of Moncton Wesleyan’s Sunday morning service (a service that featured live dance, live painting, and some other beautiful artistic expressions), but this episode is actually a panel conversation with visual artist Leanne Prescott and songwriter Aaron Bartlett, both of whom are on Imagine’s Lead Team. We recorded this conversation live & in real-time as part of Imagine ‘24’s Saturday Sessions, and the technology was giving us a little grief, so please bear with some of the glitchiness. I’m grateful for these two folks, and am glad to be able to share this wide-ranging conversation about art, the church, and the space(s) between.


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This episode of the pod is me riffing briefly on the waiting that Holy Saturday interposes into the celebration of Easter, followed by a sermon that was part of Moncton Wesleyan’s “Domino Effect” series.

I’m releasing this episode just a few hours after what amounted to a historic Good Friday service in the city of Moncton. Officially 5 churches (and several others “unofficially”) joined together in remembrance, and it was immensely powerful. Right after the service, I got into a brief conversation with someone I know who’d been participating in Lent this year a little more intentionally than has been their typical practice. He said to me, “It was… less impactful than I thought it was going to be.” Honestly, to me, this was beautiful to hear. I feel we need to be honest with ourselves & with others, honest with our expectations, honest with our gains & with our losses. I acknowledged to this individual that this is often my experience, as well. The kinds of practices I advocate for in this podcast (and that I typically practice, to greater or lesser degrees) occasionally lead me to moments of significant impact. More often than not, though, they seem to lead me nowhere at all.
Sometimes (often, even), Holy Saturday seems to lead us nowhere at all… but we can’t see what’s happening underground.
(In my message I heavily reference Justin Earley’s book The Common Rule.)


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In this episode of the podcast I am overjoyed to be able to share my recent conversation with none other than Dr W David O Taylor (hereinafter merely “David”). David is the associate professor of theology & culture at Fuller Seminary, the author of a ton of books… oh, and he was the guy responsible for pulling Bono & Eugene Peterson together for this magical conversation a few years back. Relevant to this conversation, David was (for a significant period of time) a pastor in a church that consisted almost 25% of artists, and he intentionally pastored these artists for their own apprenticeship to Jesus.  He also helped them think through how their vocations served the church and the world.  A lot of that wisdom and experience ended up in Glimpses of the New Creation (the book we primarily talk about), as well as his most recent book, A Body of Praise. I was particularly grateful for the opportunity to chat with David so close to the launch of the 4th annual Imagine Arts Fest, which I help lead in my own local context.  This was a wide-ranging conversation, to be sure, but we kept circling around questions like:
Was (is?) Jesus an artist? Does God care about “aesthetics”?
The conversation may get a little highfalutin’ at times, but (surprisingly) these esoteric questions keep getting grounded back down to earth… earthiness… the ground of being, the ground beneath our feet, and the ground of which we are composed.


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Guys, this was a suuuuuper fun convo for me!!! Nostalgia + philosophizing = a great day. In this convo, Leah Payne and I take a peek at her forthcoming book (God God Rock & Roll To You), geek out a little about her fabulous Weird Religion podcast (before her equally fabulous Rock That Doesn't Roll podcast was even a thing), and reminisce about the bookcase credibility trend which is no more. In actual fact, for the most part, we spend our time asking questions about the rise & fall of a juggernaut industry; Contemporary Christian Music (CCM).



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