Taylor Mertins

Mar 16 2025 425 ep. 18 mins 23
Taylor Mertins Podcast artwork

thirty something pastor, podcast host, and fan of parables

  Religion & Spirituality
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The Spirit Meets You Where You Are

Mar 16 2025 16 mins  
Our God is nothing if not incarnational. That is, despite what others may say, we have a very materialistic faith. God takes on flesh and moves into the neighborhood. Which means God meets us where we are, and not where we ought to be. We might imagine that to get close to God we have to do all sorts of things like sit idly by while the flood waters rise high. We might imagine tha

You Might Not Love What You Think

Mar 09 2025 15 mins  
Amazon, Instagram, and Facebook (just to mention a few) are frighteningly good at captivating and capturing our imaginations as we spend our days exploring the digital architecture of the modern mall we call the smart phone. That why I really love that one line from the prayer of confession I shared earlier. “We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.�

You Are What You Love

Mar 05 2025 14 mins  
Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of The Little Prince, explains the power of the heart over the mind like this: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” And "teaching the longing" is exactly right. For love is a habit. We, of course, may imag

The Commands

Feb 22 2025 15 mins  
Will Willimon tells of having once served a church where there was a long standing tradition in which lay leader would rise at the conclusion of the sermon to offer a prayer. And, one Sunday after preaching a tough sermon on a difficult text, the lay leader stood up and prayed a simple, clear, and direct prayer. “Lord, today we’ve heard your word. And we don’t like it.” We

The Teaching

Feb 15 2025 14 mins  
Robert Jenson once said, “It is a great achievement to know yourself a sinner.” It sounds paradoxical, but to know you’re a sinner puts you (and me) in a place to really listen to what Jesus is saying. Hence the parable of the publican and the pharisee. The dirty rotten scoundrel of a tax collector leaves worship justified, rather than the do-gooding religious adherent, becau

The Call

Feb 08 2025 14 mins  
People always assume that the church’s primary business is to get people to behave themselves, to teach morality, and then keep them on the right track. Which is fine, except it often leads people to feeling more overwhelmed than they were before they walked through the door. Jesus doesn’t meet Peter by the lake and clobber him with calls to righteousness and goodness and the

The Response

Feb 01 2025 15 mins  
There’s nowhere Jesus goes without outsiders becoming insiders. That’s part of the mission. But it’s nothing new! Over and over and over again in scripture God commands the people to care for the people no one else cares about. Open your eyes, God says, to the plight of your neighbors who have no bright hope for tomorrow. Open your ears, God says, to the anguish of your e

The Sermon

Jan 25 2025 16 mins  
Whenever there is deliverance, liberation, recovery, and release, there is the preaching of the Gospel. In other words, preaching isn’t just for preachers, it’s also for all of you. Preaching doesn’t just happen in church. It happens in our words and actions in the classroom and at the grocery store. Preaching happens at the bank and in the backyard bbq. Preaching happens

The Wedding

Jan 18 2025 13 mins  
Robert Farrar Capon said, “Whatever the church is, it should enable us to realize we are at a party of outrageous proportions; and, at the same time, it should make us want nothing so much as to shout the invitation to that party at the top of our lungs.” Is that how we feel about the faith? Is that how we feel about church? Does all of this feel more like a funeral, or a wed

The River

Jan 11 2025 13 mins  
With the magi and the manger we discover how the kingdom inaugurated in Jesus extends even to the Gentiles. And with the baptism in the Jordan we learn that we do not have the righteousness we require to acquire the kingdom, but that’s okay because Jesus fulfills all righteousness. In other words, the heavens open at the river not just for Him, but also for all of us.