MarsCast
The opinions presented in each episode are those of the individual speaker and do not necessarily represent the views of the Seminary.
Episodes
335 episodes
328. Can You Forgive Someone Who Isn’t Sorry?
In the fifth petition of the Lord’s Prayer, we ask God to forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Does that make our forgiving others the condition of God’s forgiving us? In Part 2 of our series on repentance and forgiveness, Dr. J. Mark Beach examines the question with Calvin, the Heidelberg Catechism,…
327. Does God Only Forgive the Sins You Know About?
What if the way you were taught to forgive undermines the way you’re told to trust God? Many of us grew up hearing that God forgives only those who repent, so we should forgive that way too. It sounds biblical enough. But what happens to our assurance when we sin in ways we never notice? In Part 1 of a three-part…
326. Discerning a Call: A Guide for Pastors and Seminary Graduates
Don’t think that you need to take the first pastoral call that comes along. Don’t wait for a perfect one, either. Somewhere between paralysis and presumption is a faithful way to decide, and most men facing a call have no map for finding it. In part two of our series on the pastoral call, Dr. Paul Ipema explains…
325. How To Run a Faithful Pastoral Search
Reformed churches are facing more pastoral vacancies than at any point in Dr. Paul Ipema’s lifetime, and the elders left to fill them are rarely trained for the work. Send a letter of inquiry today, and perhaps one pastor in ten will even consider a call. So how does a search committee avoid both the three-year…
324. Why Paul Recommended Singleness
Why would the apostle who calls marriage a living picture of Christ and the church also tell some people not to marry? In the final episode of our Christ and culture series, Dr. Marcus Mininger takes up 1 Corinthians 7 and a claim that rarely makes it into church life: good things can still be the wrong things to…
323. Why Unbelievers Can't Fully "Do" Marriage
In part two of this series on Christ and culture, Dr. Marcus Mininger dives into Paul’s stunning move in Ephesians 5 — quoting Genesis 2’s account of marriage, then declaring, "I am speaking of Christ and the church." Mininger unpacks what it means for marriage to be Christocentric by design, not just illustrated…
322. Is Your Job Christian? Rethinking Faith and Culture
Can your job as a plumber, your Monday to Friday at the office, or your Saturday grocery run be an act of worship, or is "Christian living" really just a Sunday thing? In this opening episode of a three-part series, Dr. Marcus Mininger unpacks two impulses every believer feels but rarely reconciles: the belief…
321. The Future of Biblical Counseling
Two of biblical counseling’s most influential leaders died within a year of each other (Adams and Powlison), and the movement has been fracturing ever since. In this series finale, Dr. Jared Poulton joins Jared and Dr. Alan Strange to bring the story into the present: the growing rift between "clinically informed"…
320. Van Til's Fingerprints on Biblical Counseling
Every biblical counselor assumes their approach comes straight from Scripture alone, but what if the underlying architecture came from an apologist rather than a counselor? In this third episode of our MarsCast series on biblical counseling, Dr. Jared Poulton joins Jared and Dr. Alan Strange to reveal the hidden…
319. The Legacy of Jay Adams
He was a pastor with a PhD in speech, no formal training in counseling, and a class he never wanted to teach, so how did Jay Adams end up rewriting the rules for how the church cares for hurting people? In this second episode, Dr. Jared Poulton returns with Jared Luttjeboer and Dr. Alan Strange to tell the origin…
318. The Birth of the Biblical Counseling Movement
What happens when the church stops trusting herself to help her own people—and hands the job to the therapist’s couch instead? In the 1970s, one pastor’s book sold a quarter of a million copies by daring to say pastors and elders were still competent to counsel their flocks from Scripture alone. In this first…
317. Calvin Against the Calvinists, And Why the Scholars Got It Wrong
For much of the 20th century, many academic theologians operated on the assumption that Calvin’s successors (Beza, the Westminster Divines, the scholastic tradition) had in some ways betrayed him and traded a warm, Christ-centered theology for cold, rationalistic system-building. Then Richard Muller spent decades…