The UnSunday Show

Amber Stephens joins me in this episode of The UnSunday Show as we ask the question, "Is the gospel enough?" Does the gospel need our help? Why do we think it does and why do we add things to it that actually diminish it? Additionally, why do we get sidetracked from it become preoccupied with pet doctrines and teachings that have nothing to do with it? Let's explore that in this episode.  You'll find Amber here: Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/breathin.godsgrace/ YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@breathin.godsgrace247 On The Web at https://www.thegateofgrace.com/  ------ Other Places You’ll Find Me: The Grace Cafe Podcast: https://www.gracecafepodcast.com TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@unsunday.mike Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/unsundayshow/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/grace.podcasts Leave Me a Rating/Review: https://www.unsunday.com/reviews/new/ 

Four believers (Joel Brueseke, Amber Stephens, Mike Kapler, and Mike Adams) sit down for a powerful and honest conversation about grace, the New Covenant, and why mixing Law with performance is hurting people in the church. No titles, no pulpits, no sermons—just real talk about what it means to live in the finished work of Christ. We talk about: Grace apart from works The difference between the Old and New Covenants How churches occasionally preach grace but expect performance What it really means to live in freedom Our four talking points are:  Grace Without Mixture Is the Only Gospel The New Covenant is a Relationship, not a Contract What the Church ignores: The simplicity of the gospel What Does it Mean to You to Live in Freedom?  Join the roundtable and be part of a conversation that challenges, refreshes, and reminds us what the gospel is really about. This episode is available in video format at https://youtu.be/gfoZic6bz5w ---------------- Other Places You’ll Find Me: The Grace Cafe Podcast: https://www.gracecafepodcast.com TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@unsunday.mike Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/unsundayshow/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/grace.podcasts Leave Me a Rating/Review: https://www.unsunday.com/reviews/new/

Is signing a formal church membership contract a necessary expression of loyalty? Has the institutional church traded the freedom of life in Christ for institutional control? In this episode I explore how formal membership contracts — often loaded with behavioral clauses, doctrinal checkpoints, and institutional loyalty — distort the gospel of grace and reduce free flowing community to a legal transaction with rewards for compliance and punishments for non-compliance. Jesus brought us into a relationship, not a system. So why have countless churches made belonging conditional on paperwork? This episode is from a livestream on the UnSunday YouTube page. If you prefer to watch the full video, it's available at https://www.youtube.com/live/l8rXJSo1Cl4?si=VKichdClrUhBPyUp and at https://www.unsunday.com/community-without-roll-call-exchanging-freedom-for-a-contract Other Places You’ll Find Me The Grace Cafe Podcast: https://www.gracecafepodcast.com TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@unsunday.mike Instagram https://www.instagram.com/unsundayshow YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/TheUnSundayShow Leave Me a Rating/Review

What happens when church becomes a breeding ground for control, fear, and manipulation? This episode of The UnSunday Show exposes the patterns of church bullying, from toxic leadership to spiritual abuse that often occurs when the institutional church abandons the New Covenant gospel of grace in favor of a mixed-covenant version of a gospel of their own making.  This mixed covenant gospel is no gospel at all.  I'm excited to have Jeremiah Ryan join me as we explore the topic of church bullying, what it is, how to recognize it, and what to expect when it happens to you. You can find Jeremiah at The Way Ministries using these links: - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmMf-GnkloFWO1CUqNnFP6w - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100088074741276 - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_wayministries This episode is also available as video. You can view it by visiting https://www.youtube.com/@unsundayshow Other Places You’ll Find Me The Grace Cafe Podcast: https://www.gracecafepodcast.com TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@unsunday.mike Instagram https://www.instagram.com/unsundayshow YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/TheUnSundayShow Leave Me a Rating/Review

I'm continuing the topic of women in the church and how historically, the church's view of woman has been harmful and abusive. It's not a good track record. This is the fourth of four episodes that I brought over from our Grace Cafe podcast to share with you here. In this episode we talk about headship and submission. We use 1 Corinthians 11 and Ephesians 5 as the backdrop for our conversation and why we believe Paul's use of the word "head" (κεφαλὴ) wouldn't have meant authority or leader to the readers of his day. Here are a couple of online articles that you might want to take a look at. The second one is more detailed and contains a lot of good references. Inclusion here doesn't imply our agreement with everything in the articles, but they are a good thought-provoking read. ‘Head’ Does Not Mean ‘Leader’ in 1 Cor 11.3, by Ian Paul - https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/head-does-not-mean-leader-in-1-cor-11-3/ What About the Word Kephale ("head") in the New Testament?, by Laurie Fasullo - https://www.searchingtogether.org/kephale.htm Enjoy! Other Places You’ll Find Me The Grace Cafe Podcast: https://www.gracecafepodcast.com TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@unsunday.mike Instagram https://www.instagram.com/unsundayshow YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/TheUnSundayShow Leave Me a Rating/Review

This is part 3 of a 4-part series I'm doing on Women in the church that originally aired on the Grace Cafe podcast in 2023. In this episode we're going to take a careful look at 1 Corinthians 14:34-40. It's here that the passage says the law commanded women to be silent, therefore, women should not be allowed to speak when the body of Christ is assembled. The problem is, the law doesn't say that and even if it did, we (and the people Paul was writing to) are not under the law, so why does that matter even if it were true? We think there's something else going on here that needs to be talked about, so let's talk. I'm continuing with the topic of women in the church that I started back in episode 108. More specifically, how the institutional church has weaponized certain verses in the New Covenant scriptures and used them against women without fully considering the historical and cultural context. This has resulted in needlessly silencing half of the body of Christ and opened the door wide for abuse of every kind. Other Places You’ll Find Me The Grace Cafe Podcast: https://www.gracecafepodcast.com TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@unsunday.mike Instagram https://www.instagram.com/unsundayshow YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/TheUnSundayShow Leave Me a Rating/Review

In this episode we continue talking about the topic of how the institutional box church misrepresents and misinterprets passages of scripture that mention women in the body of Christ. We take a look at the historical and cultural context of Paul's first letter to Timothy and specifically, 1 Timothy chapter 2. In giving his reasons for writing this letter to Timothy, Paul instructs him to dispel myths that had arisen in the assembly (1 Timothy 1:3-4). In chapter 2 of his letter we see Paul begin to dismantle some of those myths and those myths centered around the worship of the pagan idol, Artemis. The culture in Ephesus was heavily influenced by the worship of Artemis. Artemis was a female goddess of Greek origin and the worship and culture of Artemis was female centric. While males could participate in the worship of Artemis, women were dominate and men had a lesser role (kind of the opposite of what we see today in most churches).  Here are some of the myths Paul addresses: In the Ephesian culture, Artemis was looked to as the protector of women in childbirth.  Women stood a better chance of Artemis hearing and answering their prayers if they wore expensive clothes and jewelry when petitioning Artemis. Artemis was born before her twin brother Apollo, meaning woman was created before man. We also need to keep in mind these important points: Timothy was not a pastor. There's no indication of that anywhere in Scripture. That's a church history-driven idea that is incorrect. The letters of 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus are not "pastoral letters" written to pastors. Calling them pastoral letters is another false assumption delivered to us from church history. The letters to Timothy and Titus are not across-the-board manuals for doing church. They address specific problems that arose in specific locations involving specific people at a specific time. Failure to recognize this and instead promote the false assumption that everything in them is applicable to every generation without regard to the historical and cultural context they were written in, has led to the muzzling of half of the body of Christ. Books mentioned in this episode: Artemis: Virgin Goddess of the Sun and Moon - https://tinyurl.com/2p9cfykc What's With Paul and Women? https://tinyurl.com/yp6n47xn I brought this episode over from the Grace Cafe podcast. It's part 2 of a 4-part series I'm re-posting here on the UnSunday Show. The link to the Grace Cafe podcast is below if you would like to see other episodes on this topic. Enjoy! Other Places You’ll Find Me The Grace Cafe Podcast: https://www.gracecafepodcast.com TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@unsunday.mike Instagram https://www.instagram.com/unsundayshow YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/TheUnSundayShow Leave Me a Rating/Review

This is part one of four episodes I'm bringing over from the Grace Cafe podcast on the topic of women in the church and how institutional Christianity uses scripture out of context to silent women. Here's a breakdown of the episodes I'm bringing over: Twisting the Truth: How Church Uses Scripture to Silence Women - Part One (this episode). Twisting the Truth: How Church Uses Scripture to Silence Women - Part Two (next week). Did The Law of Moses Silence Women? A Second Glance at 1 Corinthians 14:34-40 Headship and Submission This week and next, explore the question, did Paul command women to be silent in church? This episode is a much needed overview of what the New Testament says about women in the body of Christ. We look at several of the clear passages of scripture to lay a good foundation for this topic before jumping into the sometimes not-so-clear waters of 1 Timothy chapter 2 and 1 Corinthians 14 next time. Grab your favorite beverage and listen in! Other Places You’ll Find Me The Grace Cafe Podcast: https://www.gracecafepodcast.com TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@unsunday.mike Instagram https://www.instagram.com/unsundayshow YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/TheUnSundayShow Leave Me a Rating/Review

Let's talk about what happens when we stop going to church. This is from the livestream that I did on May 4th, 2025 on YouTube. Here's the link in case you want to watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/live/CHWejf9tjwk?si=tQtWdw1Jzf3VubJe You can follow the UnSunday Show on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/@unsundayshow Other Places You’ll Find Me The Grace Cafe Podcast: https://www.gracecafepodcast.com TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@unsunday.mike Instagram https://www.instagram.com/unsundayshow YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/TheUnSundayShow Leave Me a Rating/Review

The video version of this episode is on my YouTube channel at https://youtu.be/H89bdlfkwHg In this episode I share a quote from Michael C. Kapler's book, Clash of the Covenants: Escaping Religious Bondage Through the Grace Guarantee. This is an excellent book that I recommend without hesitation. You can find it on Amazon at https://bit.ly/3Rump8V I'm thinking of doing a live video next Sunday on YouTube. Is that something you would like to see? Would you watch it? Let me know here: https://www.unsunday.com/contact/ Other Places You’ll Find Me The Grace Cafe Podcast: https://www.gracecafepodcast.com TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@unsunday.mike Instagram https://www.instagram.com/unsundayshow YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/TheUnSundayShow Leave Me a Rating/Review

The gospel isn’t a group project. If grace is free, why do we try so hard to add to it? In this episode, I talk about how bringing nothing to the table isn’t a burden but is ultimate freedom. Grace apart from works is a death sentence for institutional religion that can't be tolerated there. Let's talk about grace! Other Places You’ll Find Me The Grace Cafe Podcast: https://www.gracecafepodcast.com TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@unsunday.mike Instagram https://www.instagram.com/unsundayshow YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/TheUnSundayShow Leave Me a Rating/Review

Holiness Isn’t a Hustle. Many believers feel trapped in a cycle of performance, thinking sanctification is about sweating for Jesus. Too often, we’re taught that sanctification, or holiness, is about working harder, doing more, and proving ourselves to God. But what if it isn’t about striving to do more but about resting in what's already been done?  Other Places You’ll Find Me The Grace Cafe Podcast: https://www.gracecafepodcast.com TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@unsunday.mike Instagram https://www.instagram.com/unsundayshow YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/TheUnSundayShow Leave Me a Rating/Review

"The moment the church of God shall despise the pulpit, God will despise her." -Charles Spurgeon The pulpit is in the way. Pulpits have a long history of being an obstacle that is in the way of the Body of Christ functioning as God intends for it to function. When the Body of Christ is gathered together are we limited to the voice of one person behind a pulpit telling us their opinion of what to believe, what to do, or scolding us for doing it wrong? Or is every believer qualified to participate and contribute with their spiritual gifts, building up the Body of Christ?  In this episode, I share examples of how the traditional church mindset elevates the pulpit as the focal point of our meeting together and disables the Body of Christ by limiting participation to the elite few; pastors and church leaders. Other Places You’ll Find Me The Grace Cafe Podcast: https://www.gracecafepodcast.com TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@unsunday.mike Instagram https://www.instagram.com/unsundayshow YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/TheUnSundayShow Leave Me a Rating/Review

"I don't want to read my Bible anymore. Is there something wrong with me? I need to fix this!"  This is a common theme that happens when we leave the institutional box church. Many times, any desire to read the Bible disappears and we start to think there's something wrong with us that needs fixed. We tend to think that losing a desire to have a regular Bible reading schedule makes us disappointing to God and getting back to having a daily Bible reading experience is imperative.  But there's a reason we lose the desire to read the Bible when we leave institutional religion and it usually because the Bible has been weaponized against you in some way in order to prevent you from leaving. This is one form of spiritual abuse, so is it any wonder that you've lost the desire to read it?  Next week: Breaking the Pulpit Barrier: Freeing the Body of Christ Other Places You’ll Find Me The Grace Cafe Podcast: https://www.gracecafepodcast.com TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@unsunday.mike Instagram https://www.instagram.com/unsundayshow YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/TheUnSundayShow Leave Me a Rating/Review

Let's talk about Jeremiah 17:9 and his statement that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Is it true? Are our hearts deceitful and wicked and not to be trusted or is there more to that description that needs clarification? Let's talk. Other Places You’ll Find Me The Grace Cafe Podcast: https://www.gracecafepodcast.com TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@unsunday.mike Instagram https://www.instagram.com/unsundayshow YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/TheUnSundayShow Leave Me a Rating/Review

Welcome to episode 100 of The UnSunday Show! I was so focused in this episode on what I wanted to say that I forgot to mention this is episode 100. Triple digits! Yay!!! This is the final episode on the subject of pastors, elders, and shepherds. In this episode I talked about how the word pastors, which only appears in Ephesians 4:11, was a result of church tradition. In every other occurrence of the Greek word translated pastors in Ephesians 4:11, it's translated as shepherds. We saw a few of those last week when we talked about elders in the body of Christ. This week we look at more occurrences of the same word and all are translated shepherds or shepherd. Why is that? I believe a big part of the reason is because the translators allowed the structure of the institutional church around them to influence and direct their interpretation of ποιμένας (poimenas) to mean pastors instead of shepherds and in so doing, the institutional church system of a top-down authority structure was reinforced.  Other Places You’ll Find Me The Grace Cafe Podcast: https://www.gracecafepodcast.com TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@unsunday.mike Instagram https://www.instagram.com/unsundayshow YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/TheUnSundayShow Leave Me a Rating/Review

This episode is a continuation of last week's as we turn our attention to the topic of elders in the body of Christ. Elders, overseers, shepherds, bishops, and pastors. How are these terms used in the New Covenant scriptures and are they related in some way? Let's sort these out in this episode. Other Places You’ll Find Me The Grace Cafe Podcast: https://www.gracecafepodcast.com TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@unsunday.mike Instagram https://www.instagram.com/unsundayshow YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/TheUnSundayShow Leave Me a Rating/Review

Do institutional church pastors have a special calling to be pastors? Let's take an honest look at this in light of the New Testament scriptures. Other Places You’ll Find Me The Grace Cafe Podcast: https://www.gracecafepodcast.com TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@unsunday.mike Instagram https://www.instagram.com/unsundayshow YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/TheUnSundayShow Leave Me a Rating/Review

This episode of the UnSunday Show is a conversation from the 2018 archives of The Grace Cafe podcast that Mike had with Mike Kapler of the Growing in Grace podcast. It centers around the content of Mike Kapler's book, Clash Of The Covenants: Escaping Religious Bondage Through The Grace Guarantee. We talked about many topics that often lead to confusion for believers, including the Sermon on the Mount, the Prodigal Son, the Old Covenant, the New Covenant, and more. I'm posting this on both the Grace Cafe and the UnSunday Show. Links we talked about in the episode: Clash Of The Covenants: Escaping Religious Bondage Through The Grace Guarantee (This is the link to the paperback version. The Kindle version can be found there) Growing in Grace Podcast Page - The podcast home of Mike Kapler and Joel Brueseke. They've been talking grace on this podcast for almost 20 years and 900+ episodes. All the episodes are there for your enjoyment. You can also listen on your favorite podcast app. I'm (Mike) bringing some episodes over from the old Grace Cafe podcast while I wait for my voice to heal enough to carry on a conversation.  Enjoy! Other Places You’ll Find Me The Grace Cafe Podcast: https://www.gracecafepodcast.com TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@unsunday.mike Instagram https://www.instagram.com/unsundayshow YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/TheUnSundayShow Leave Me a Rating/Review

I recorded this conversation with my wife on The Grace Cafe podcast but am posting it here as well. It's a short health update from yours truly. Push play and give it a listen and thank you for following my podcasts! I was recently invited to speak on the Grace at Last podcast with Corinne Kinstler on the subject of women in the church. I would really appreciate it if you would give it a listen as well. My conversations with Corinne are always well-seasoned with grace and this one is no different. It's one I really enjoyed! Here's the link to that episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/grace-at-last/id1689072652?i=1000655385359 Other Places You’ll Find Me The Grace Cafe Podcast: https://www.gracecafepodcast.com TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@unsunday.mike Instagram https://www.instagram.com/unsundayshow YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/TheUnSundayShow Leave Me a Rating/Review