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This episode is a part of a continuing series to enable you to hear the spectrum of American Indian/Native American/Indigenous/First Nations voices, especially in their response to Christianity and its history in the United States.

If you are interested in this interview, you may also be interested in my interview with Dr. Tink Tinker, an Osage man, in Episode 8.

My guest for this episode is The Reverend Dr. Tim Ross. Tim is a close friend of mine. Until Covid, we were in a prayer/conversation group together for over a decade.

Tim is a pastor, teacher, cross-cultural worker, husband, dad of four grown children, and grandfather of five grandchildren. He is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation (West). He has served as minister of the Hopwood Christian Church in Elizabethton, TN since 1996. Prior to that, Tim and his family served with Christian Missionary Fellowship among the Maasai tribe in Kenya, Africa. Tim is an instructor at Emmanuel Christian Seminary, mentors ministers and missionaries, and is passionate about building relationships with folks of all cultures, with immigrants, prisoners, and folks who struggle to get by. He is a graduate of Milligan College and Emmanuel Christian Seminary.

Tim is here to share with us his experience as a Cherokee, a Christian, a minister, a missionary, and his beginning work with NAIITS (originally referred to as North American Institute for Indigenous Theological Studies).

You can learn more about NAIITS at naiits.com.

Other resources related to our conversation:

Cherokee Nation

Eastern Band of Cherokee Nation United Keetoowah Band

The Cherokees and Christianity, 1794-1870: Essays on Acculturation and Cultural Persistence, by William G. McLoughlin

Journeying into Cherokee: Help and Encouragement for Learning the Cherokee Language, by Mary Rae and Ed Fields

Rescuing the Gospel from the Cowboys: A Native American Expression of the Jesus Way, by Richard Twiss

Native American Contextual Ministry: Making the Transition, by Casey Church (author), Ray Martell (editor), Sue Martell (editor)

Monuments to Absence: Cherokee Removal and the Contest over Southern Memory, by Andrew Denson

First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament

The intro and outro music for this episode is from a clip of a song called ‘Father Let Your Kingdom Come’ which is found on The Porter’s Gate Worship Project Work Songs album and is used by permission by The Porter’s Gate Worship Project.

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My guest for this episode is the Reverend Dr. Jonathan C. Augustine. But that is the name that appears on his books. In his personal relationships, Dr. Augustine goes by Jay.

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My guest for this episode is Jim Jinkins. Jim is a progressive Christian who is an American animator, cartoonist, and children’s book author. He is most notably known for his animated character, Doug. Jim is here to tell us the story of his career and work in creating and producing children’s educational animation series and writing children’s books and to talk about how he has integrated his work and his faith.

You can learn more about Jim from his Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jinkins

His IMDB page:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0423132/bio/?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm

Searching him on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=jim+jinkins&crid=QA49K336B5O9&sprefix=jim+jenkins%2Caps%2C116&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

Doing a Google search:

https://www.google.com/search?gs_ssp=eJzj4tTP1TcwTc8uLDNg9OLOysxVyMrMy87MKwYAWrUH2Q&q=jim+jinkins&oq=jim+jinkins&aqs=chrome.1.0i355i512j46i512j0i512l3j69i60j69i61l2.11399j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

And his Doug Fandom page:

https://doug.fandom.com/wiki/Doug_Wiki

The two music clips used during this interview come from Doug theme music and are used with Jim’s permission.

The intro and outro music for this episode is from a clip of a song called ‘Father Let Your Kingdom Come’ which is found on The Porter’s Gate Worship Project Work Songs album and is used by permission by The Porter’s Gate Worship Project.

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My guest for this episode is Robin Russell Gaiser. Robin is a Certified Music Practitioner who, for over sixteen years, offered live acoustic bedside music to the critically and chronically ill, elderly, and dying in hospitals, hospices, rehabs, and nursing and private homes. She gives us in-depth insight into her experiences in her wonderful book, Musical Morphine: Transforming Pain One Note at a Time which won a Best American Book award in 2017 and was the subject of a TEDx Talk in 2018.

As a Christian, Robin has understood her work as a ministry and has been shaped and guided by Hildegard of Bingen’s insight that “All music is an adornment of God. Sound is our true abode…all things are formed in sound.”

Robin is also the author of Open for Lunch which was the subject of an hour-long National Public Radio (NPR) interview.

You can learn more about Robin, her books, and interviews at her website:

robingaiser.com

Robin is here to help us understand the nature of the work of a Certified Music Practitioner, and to share with us some of how it is done.

The intro and outro music for this episode is from a clip of a song called ‘Father Let Your Kingdom Come’ which is found on The Porter’s Gate Worship Project Work Songs album and is used by permission by The Porter’s Gate Worship Project.

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My guest for this episode is Mark Yaconelli.

Mark Yaconelli is a writer, retreat leader, community builder, spiritual director, storycatcher, husband, and father. He is the founder and executive director of The Hearth. Previously, he co-founded and served as program director for the Center for Engaged Compassion where he helped develop a unique set of practices and training programs for assisting individuals, organizations, and communities in cultivating compassion.

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In this episode my guest, Adam Tice, share with us two of his hymns and talks with us about his work.

Adam was named a Lovelace Scholar by the Hymn Society of the United States and Canada. He served as a member of the Society’s executive committee from 2007 to 2010. He was Associate Pastor of Hyattsville (Maryland) Mennonite Church from 2007 to 2012. Adam now lives with his family in Goshen, Indiana. He is text editor for the 2020 Mennonite hymnal, Voices Together. In early 2020 he joined GIA as Editor for Congregational Song. Adam also leads workshops in writing congregational song, currents in congregational song and a cappella congregational song.

You can learn more about Adam and contact him at:

giamusic.com/store/artists/adam-tice

The intro and outro music for this episode is from a clip of a song called ‘Father Let Your Kingdom Come’ which is found on The Porter’s Gate Worship Project Work Songs album and is used by permission by The Porter’s Gate Worship Project.

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One of the things I have recently learned it that there isn’t just capitalism and socialism, but different kinds of capitalism and different kinds of socialism. In addition, there are alternatives to both of these approaches to economics, like ecological or steady state economics. Some forms of capitalism work better that others. Some forms of socialism work better that others.

What is clear, is that the ways we have done and are continuing to do capitalism in the United States has significant problems. So there are innovative experimentations happening in this country to provide alternative capitalisms. Among those are innovators exploring local economics and economies. Two of those innovators are Stephanie Swepson Twitty and Kevin Jones. 

Stephanie is President and CEO of Eagle Market Streets Development Corporation. Eagle Market Streets is headquartered in the “oldest thriving African-American Commercial Business District in the country” in downtown Asheville, North Carolina. Stephanie is a 20+ year veteran in the Not-for-Profit Industry. She is an economic development specialist, focusing on small business development asset building and wealth creation.

Kevin, and his wife, Rosa Lee Harden, are serial entrepreneurs. Together they founded Social Capital Markets, SOCAP, and began Neighborhood Economics. Kevin has seven successful startups and turnarounds and is a co-leader of the Swannanoa Watershed doughnuteconomics.org social action team in partnership with the Hendersonville, North Carolina based Latino Coop, Tierra Fertil.

They are here to help us understand both what they each are doing individually and what they are doing together collaboratively.

The intro and outro music for this episode is from a clip of a song called ‘Father Let Your Kingdom Come’ which is found on The Porter’s Gate Worship Project Work Songs album and is used by permission by The Porter’s Gate Worship Project.

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Hospice care and palliative care are closely related and sometimes overlapping, but both of these areas of medical care still greatly misunderstood. This episode focuses on hospice care. For a better understanding of this important and vital ministry and form of care I turn to the Reverends Leah Brown, Kelly Belcher, and Jody Griffin.

Leah Brown is Associate Pastor, Pastoral Care at First Baptist Church, Asheville, North Carolina. She joined the FBCA staff in 2008 and was ordained in 2010.  She coordinates and provides pastoral care for the congregation. Leah graduated with a B.A. in Psychology from UNC-Asheville. She received her Master of Social Work from UNC-Chapel Hill and is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. Her clinical focus is aging and end-of-life care. Leah worked as a hospice social worker at CarePartners Hospice and Palliative Care from 1994-2007.

Kelly Belcher is a graduate of Meredith College and Southeastern Seminary. She has ministered in churches in NC and SC, and served as a writer for a Baptist news journal and has served as a hospice chaplain for the past 10 years.

Jody was a United States Army Reserve Chaplain with the 167TH Military Police Battalion and a Retired North Carolina Army National Guard Chaplain serving in United States Army and Navy confinement facilities. From 2016-2022 he was a community funded chaplain at Avery-Mitchell Correctional Institution. He is currently the pastor of Central Baptist Church, Spruce Pine, North Carolina and chaplain at Medi Hospice, Boone, North Carolina.

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In this episode, my guest, Dr. Caroline Knox, helps us understand palliative care as a developing area in medical care.

Dr. Knox is a graduate of Wesleyan University and Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. She trained in Family Medicine at St. Mary’s Family Medicine Residency in Grand Junction, CO. She was a general practitioner in New Zealand before pursuing further training in Palliative Medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. Dr. Knox has practiced palliative medicine at Mission Hospital since moving to Asheville with her family in 2014.

The intro and outro music for this episode is from a clip of a song called ‘Father Let Your Kingdom Come’ which is found on The Porter’s Gate Worship Project Work Songs album and is used by permission by The Porter’s Gate Worship Project.

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I had interviewed Stephen and Rachel Mosley as a part of the Foundling House Interview (PGE 33) and wanted to do a full episode on their music.

Rachel and Stephen Mosley  met in a freshman year high school geography class sometime late last century.  Married for twenty years, they’ve just recently begun to write and perform their own earthy, soft brand of folk, and to share it beyond their own front porch. Their music is heavily influenced by whatever they’re reading – Flannery O’Connor, Wendell Berry, and G.K. Chesterton are favorites – as well by their five wild and unruly red-headed children. You can learn more about Stephen and Rachel at themosleysmusic.com. The songs heard on this episode, ‘It’ll All Work Out,’ ‘Brighter Days,’ ‘Quiet on the Porch,’ and ‘Running Out the Road,’ come from their album, Ordinary Time and are used by permission.

Rachel, Inspired by her artistic, book-loving family, discovered her love of children’s illustration and was delighted to find that she has a real knack for it. She uses a combination of hand drawing and digital illustration in her work, and loves to experiment with new and unique printing processes. As the proud mom of five little citizens of the world, her work is particularly inspired by travel, nature and classic children’s literature. You can learn more about Rachel’s work at rachelmosley.com.

The intro and outro music for this episode is from a clip of a song called ‘Father Let Your Kingdom Come’ which is found on The Porter’s Gate Worship Project Work Songs album and is used by permission by The Porter’s Gate Worship Project.