The Semi-Seminarian

What if the wilderness isn’t punishment… but formation? 🌾

On this First Sunday of Lent, we step into Matthew 4:1–11 and trace the story back to the Jordan River — where the sky split open, the Spirit descended, and the voice declared, “This is my beloved Son.” 💧🕊️

Before the hunger. Before the testing. Before the desert.

This episode explores the theology of identity before trial, the biblical meaning of forty days, and why Lent is not about self-improvement — but about trusting God in the wilderness. 🔥

If you’ve ever wondered why God allows hard seasons… If you’ve tried...

Ash Wednesday doesn’t begin with answers. It begins with dust. 🕯️

This special Ash Wednesday homily reflects on the imposition of ashes, human mortality, and the quiet truth our bodies already know: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Instead of a traditional Bible study, this episode shares a live recording from the sanctuary, including the homily and the invitation to receive ashes and Holy Communion.

What does it mean to face mortality without fear? Why does the church mark foreheads with ash? And how does the Lord’s Table meet us exactly as...

Why does Jesus ask questions He already knows the answer to?

“Who touched me?” “What do you want me to do for you?” “Do you love me?”

In this episode, we walk the shoreline of John 21 and sit by the charcoal fire where Peter faces the smoke of his denial. We stand in the crowd with the bleeding woman who tried to stay anonymous. We sit in the dust beside blind Bartimaeus and hear Jesus dignify a desperate voice.

Jesus doesn’t ask because He’s confused. He asks because He’s kind. His questions aren...

t’s noon in Samaria. The sun is high. The shadows are gone. And a woman who has learned how to move unseen walks toward Jacob’s well carrying more than a jar. 🌞💧

In this immersive Bible study of John 4 (WEB), we step into one of the most personal conversations in Scripture—Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well. What begins with a simple request—“Give me a drink”—becomes a holy collision of truth and mercy. Boundaries fall. History is exposed. Thirst is named. And living water is offered not after repentance, but in the middle of reality.<...

The story of Daniel in the lion’s den is usually told as a tale of bravery and miracles. But the Bible may be asking a much harder question. 🦁📜

In this episode, we step into Daniel 6 and slow the story down. No cartoon lions. No flannel-board courage. Just an old man, a sealed stone, and a system that cannot admit it’s wrong. Daniel doesn’t rebel. He doesn’t escalate. He simply keeps praying as he always has. And that quiet faithfulness becomes a threat to an empire built on unalterable laws and fragile egos.

We’ll look a...

In this episode of our midweek Bible study, we turn our eyes to Genesis 33, where Jacob, renamed Israel, limps across the river Jabbok into a sunrise he didn’t ask for—and a confrontation he can’t avoid. This isn’t a story wrapped in sentimentality. It’s not a Hallmark reunion. It’s Scripture telling the truth about what happens when faith meets consequences, and when grace walks beside you, not to rescue you from the meeting, but to carry you through it.

Tonight, we explore what it means to face the things we’ve been running from—n...

What happens when the shape doesn’t hold?

In Jeremiah 18, God sends the prophet down to the potter’s house—not to the palace or the temple, but to a low place where clay collapses and hands keep working. This episode listens in as Jeremiah watches a vessel lose its shape mid-spin and discovers that failure, pressure, and reworking are not signs of abandonment, but of presence.

Along the way, Isaiah reminds us we are not self-made, and Paul insists that God’s mercy is freer than our categories. This sermon is for anyone who feels un...

What happens when you finally run out of road—and God meets you there?

In Genesis 32, Jacob stands alone beside a river at midnight, carrying twenty years of unfinished business, fear, and a name he’s been trying to outrun his whole life. By morning, he will walk away limping, renamed, and blessed—but not in the way he expected. This Bible study explores one of Scripture’s strangest and most intimate encounters: a man wrestling God in the dark, refusing to let go, and discovering that grace sometimes comes with a wound.

This teaching was orig...

What do you do with truth you can’t un-hear? In Acts 26:24–32, Paul stands in chains before King Agrippa, Governor Festus, and the “principal men of the city,” and he does something holy and dangerous: he aims past the crown and into the conscience. This isn’t a soft conversation. It’s a courtroom turned crossroads—where resurrection truth gets spoken out loud, and a man who “almost” believes is forced to reckon with what belief actually costs.

This episode is a full Bible study + sermon in a rich narrative style, walking you into Rome’s power-scented room where ridicule...

What happens when a culture turns sacred things into props—and calls it a party?

In Daniel 5, King Belshazzar throws a lavish banquet while Babylon is surrounded and the empire is cracking. He brings out the holy vessels from the temple in Jerusalem, drinks from them, and praises dead idols like nothing can touch him. Then, in the middle of the music and the laughter, God writes on the wall: MENE, MENE—numbered, counted, accounted for.

This Bible study walks verse-by-verse through Daniel 5 and asks a question that lands right in modern life: What do we t...

Ordinary Time can feel like the “in-between” season—after the holidays, after the big moments, back to work, back to routine, back to normal. But what if “normal” is exactly where Jesus trains us? In this Bible study through Matthew 6:1–18, we walk straight into the hidden places: prayer behind a closed door, generosity without applause, fasting without performance, and a faith that doesn’t need a spotlight to be real.

Jesus warns us about practicing righteousness to be seen—and then offers something better: a steady life with God that grows in the quiet. This episode connects the teaching of...

In this midweek Bible study, we step back into one of the most familiar stories in Scripture and discover something we’ve almost always missed. God gives Noah exact instructions for building the ark—measurements, materials, design—but leaves out one critical detail: there is no rudder.

The ark is not designed to steer. It is designed to float.

Walking slowly through Genesis 6–9, we explore what that absence reveals about faith, obedience, and grace. The flood is not framed as arbitrary divine anger, but as the grief of a wounded God confronting a world that has beco...

✨ Epiphany is not about finding God after you’ve figured everything out. It’s about recognizing God when He draws near—often in ways you didn’t expect.

In this Epiphany Sunday Bible study and sermon, we sit with the story of the Magi and the gifts they bring: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. These are not sentimental offerings or decorative details. They are theological confessions—naming Jesus as King, God-with-us, and the One who will suffer for the life of the world.

This episode explores what Epiphany reveals about God’s heart for all people, why outsiders...

A star rose in the night sky, and it didn’t wait for permission, certainty, or consensus. It moved. And some followed.

In this midweek Bible study, we linger in the in-between space of Matthew 2, on the long road between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, between what we know and what we haven’t figured out yet. The Magi don’t have all the answers. They don’t have a map. They just have enough light to take the next faithful step.

This study is for anyone who’s heard something true on Sunday and is still trying to...

What happens when the people with the right answers never take a single step?

In Matthew’s Epiphany story, strangers arrive in Jerusalem asking about a newborn king. The priests and scribes know exactly where to point them. They quote the prophecy. They name Bethlehem. And then they stay home.

This episode sits with the ones who knew the answer but didn’t go looking.

Set in the quiet days just after Christmas, this sermon explores how knowledge can become insulation, how certainty can replace seeking, and how faith can slowly turn into mana...

What happens after Christmas is over—after the angels stop singing and the shepherds go back to their fields? On the First Sunday of Christmas, we sit with Matthew 2:13–23 and follow the holy family as they leave Bethlehem, flee danger, and eventually settle into Nazareth—an ordinary, overlooked town where Jesus grows up in obscurity.

This sermon explores the often-skipped part of the Christmas story: the quiet days after the miracle, when faith becomes faithfulness and glory gives way to ordinary life. If you’ve ever wondered “now what?” after a holy moment fades, this message is for you.

On Christmas Eve, the gospel doesn’t begin in a sanctuary—it begins in a field. In this reflective Christmas Eve homily on Luke 2:8–20, we step into the long night with the shepherds and witness the moment heaven interrupts ordinary darkness. This episode invites listeners into the ancient story of the angels’ announcement and into the living tradition of a small-town candlelight service, where generations have gathered to hear again that the good news is for all people. A quiet, pastoral word of hope, comfort, and incarnation for anyone who needs light to break in where they are.

What if love didn’t stay safe? What if it showed up at your door, moved in, and asked you to make room?

In this fourth and final week of Advent, we look beyond sentiment and into the soul of the Gospel—where the Word became flesh and refused to love from a distance. In a world that talks about love as a feeling or a slogan, John’s Gospel proclaims something scandalously real: God’s love arrives in skin, breath, and vulnerability.

This sermon explores what it means for divine love to dwell among us—not w...

🎄✨ No Room, Still God ☕📖 Midweek Bible Study | Luke 2:1–7

Just days before Christmas, we return to the part of the story that rarely gets enough air. Luke doesn’t give us a quiet night or a tidy scene. He gives us crowded roads, closed doors, tired bodies—and God showing up anyway.

This midweek fellowship dinner Bible study walks slowly through Luke 2:1–7, asking what it really means that there was no room—and why that didn’t stop God from coming. This isn’t a lesson about preparing your heart or getting everything in order. It’s about the scandal of inc...

🕯️💗 Joy doesn’t wait for everything to be fixed. Joy doesn’t ask permission. Joy enters the room.

In this Advent Week Three Bible study, we sit with one of the most surprising moments in Scripture: Mary and Elizabeth, two women carrying promises the world doesn’t yet understand—and joy showing up before anyone explains it.

This is not sentimental joy. This is not manufactured happiness. This is joy that recognizes mercy when mercy walks in the door.

Walking through Luke 1:39–56, we explore how joy arrives in ordinary rooms, among weary people, before certainty...

Some stories in Scripture thunder. Joseph’s barely whispers. But sometimes the quietest man in the room is carrying the heaviest load.

Tonight we sit with a carpenter who didn’t get angels while awake, didn’t get a song, didn’t get applause—just a dream, a dilemma, and the strength to stay when walking away would have been easier.

This episode walks tenderly through Matthew’s telling of Joseph: the man who chose mercy over reputation, obedience over image, and faithfulness in the shadows over applause in the light. 🌾✨

If you’ve ever stayed when...

This week on the Semi-Seminarian Podcast, we step straight into the tension between the peace the world expects you to hold together and the peace Christ actually brings. 🌱✨

Isaiah shows us a stump where everything looked finished… and a shoot that shouldn’t exist. Jesus offers a peace the world can’t mimic or manufacture. Paul tears down the walls we’ve lived behind for generations. In this Advent reflection, we explore how real peace doesn’t come from our effort—it arrives as a Person.

If you’ve ever tried to keep the family calm, hold your emo...

✨ Welcome to Week One of our Advent journey. Tonight we step into Luke 1:26–38—the moment the angel Gabriel showed up in a nowhere town and spoke world-changing hope to a girl nobody expected. If you’ve ever wondered whether God can start something holy in a life like yours…this study is for you.

📖 What we explore tonight:

🍽️ And it all happens on a Wednesday night, surrounde...

Hope isn’t something you muscle through. It isn’t a feeling you manufacture or a ladder you climb. Scripture tells a different story—one where light breaks into darkness long before we’re ready for it, long before we can summon the strength to believe. In this episode, we walk through Isaiah 9 and Luke 1 to rediscover a hope that descends instead of demands. A hope that comes as gift, not achievement. A hope that shows up in forgotten places, unexpected people, and unsteady lives.

If you’ve ever felt tired of pretending you’re fine… If you’ve ever fe...

Tonight we step back and look at the entire journey we’ve taken through the Parables of Jesus—from the Sower to the Prodigal, from the Mustard Seed to the Vineyard, from the Lost Sheep to the Leaven in the dough. 🌾🐑🍞

And because it’s the night before Thanksgiving—and because Jan and Gigi deserve a well-earned Sabbath from the church kitchen—we’re recording from the vestry tonight, letting the quiet carry the Word.

This episode is a full recap of our series on the Parables of Jesus, exploring how these kingdom stories shape us, soften us, and in...

🔥 When God shows up, nothing stays the same. In this week’s episode of The Semi-Seminarian Podcast, we step into Malachi 3 — that razor-sharp moment when the Lord says He’s coming to His temple, not with applause… but with fire.

This is a story for anyone who’s ever prayed, “Lord, fix this,” not realizing that God might start with you. Malachi won’t let us hide behind ritual, nostalgia, or half-hearted obedience. He talks about a God who refines like silver, burns like holiness, and loves us too much to leave us the way we are. ✨🔥

Walk the rubble wit...

Tonight we walk the dusty Galilean road with Jesus as He tells a story we’d rather not hear — a parable about forgiveness, mercy, debt, and the violence we do to ourselves when we cling to grudges we were never meant to carry. Peter asks the question we all whisper in the dark: “Lord… how many times do I really have to forgive?” And Jesus answers with a story that breaks the calculator and rewrites the ledger.

In this episode, we explore the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant (Matthew 18:21–35) with Red Dirt gospel honesty, lyrical storytelling, and deep scriptu...

In this week’s message, we step into the rubble of Haggai 2, where the returned exiles stand staring at a temple that looks embarrassingly small compared to the one they lost. Their memories torment them. Their comparisons paralyze them. And into that ache, God speaks a word that still reaches us today: “Be strong… Work… For I am with you.”

If you’ve ever felt crushed by what used to be—if the glory days haunt you more than they help you—this sermon is for you. We’ll walk through the dust with Zerubbabel, Joshua, and the old men who ca...

In this week’s study, Pastor Jim Wilhelm walks us straight into one of the most unsettling—and most hope-filled—teachings Jesus ever gave: the separation of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31–46. It’s a passage about recognition, compassion, and the quiet ways grace reveals who we’ve become when no one’s watching. What if the face you passed in the parking lot, the grocery store, or the fellowship hall wasn’t just “someone in need”… but Christ Himself?

Join us around the Wednesday-night table at a real church with real people opening a real Bible as we explo...

What do you do when the walls are rebuilt but your soul’s still in ruins? In Nehemiah 8, the exiles return, the city stands again—but something is still missing. And then, right there in the square, they ask for the scroll. They ask for the Word.

This episode walks into that sacred moment—where tears fall, names are remembered, and joy becomes strength. If you’ve ever come back from a hard season unsure if the covenant still holds, this one’s for you. The Word doesn’t return to a throne room. It returns to the crowd. I...

It’s Wednesday night in a small-town church, and the coffee’s still warm. Pastor Jim Wilhelm opens Matthew 25 : 1-13, the Parable of the Ten Virgins—a story of lamps, delay, and the long hush before joy arrives.

This isn’t studio religion or slick production. This is real church. Forks clink. Friends laugh. Grace keeps showing up in the Fellowship Hall.

In this episode of The Semi-Seminarian, Pastor Jim walks us into Jesus’ teaching on watchfulness and grace—why faith isn’t about panic at midnight, but oil that keeps burning when the wait feels endless...

The story of Noah is more than animals and an ark—it’s about what happens after the storm. In this Bible study through Genesis 8, we look at how God remembers, restores, and renews creation after judgment.

This lesson walks through the key moments between the flood and the rainbow: the waiting, the worship, and the covenant. It’s a study about faith that holds steady when the world starts over, about grace that smells like rain, and about the God who never forgets His people.

If you’re studying the book of Genesis, exploring Old Test...

Step inside a mid-week Bible study at First Christian Church in Cushing, Oklahoma. The casserole dishes are cleared, the coffee’s still warm, and Pastor Jim Wilhelm opens Luke 16:19-31—The Rich Man and Lazarus. In this Red Dirt-flavored study, we explore the gulf between wealth and mercy, the blindness that comfort can cause, and the grace that still breaks through. It’s Scripture spoken slow, like conversation after supper—honest, hungry, and a little holy. So pull up a chair, wherever you are. It may not be Wednesday where you sit, but in your headphones, it is. Welcome to The S...

Between Cain’s city and Seth’s altar, humanity learns again to call on the name of the Lord.This episode explores grace after grief, faith after failure, and the quiet persistence of worship even east of Eden. It’s a message of mercy, memory, and redemption set against the Oklahoma red dirt sky—where grace still walks dusty roads and altars still burn slow.

What happens when your plans run out before your time does?

In this vivid, poetic teaching on Luke 12:13–21, we explore the Parable of the Rich Fool — a man who built bigger barns but forgot to prepare his soul. With storytelling rooted in Scripture and layered with pastoral depth, this episode challenges us to ask: What does it mean to be rich toward God?

Whether you’re leading a Bible study, preparing a sermon, or just feeling the pull of something deeper, this message unpacks spiritual truth through vivid metaphor, reflective teaching, and quiet urgency.

If y...

Cain and Abel. Two altars. One silence that changed the world. This week, Pastor Jim Wilhelm walks us east of Eden—where worship turns to rivalry and mercy still hums under the soil. What happens when heaven looks away, when grace touches someone else first, and when the ground itself remembers blood?

This isn’t just a sermon. It’s a Red Dirt gospel story—gritty, scriptural, and full of grace for wanderers and weary believers alike. Come sit in the static, breathe deep, and listen for the sound of mercy still speaking through the dirt.

Themes...

What if the real work of grace happens underground?

In this week’s episode of The Semi-Seminarian Podcast, Pastor Jim Wilhelm takes us into one of Jesus’ most misunderstood parables—the Parable of the Weeds—where good and evil grow side by side in the same soil. With the storytelling warmth of a Red Dirt preacher and the depth of a theologian, Pastor Jim digs beneath the surface of Matthew 13 to uncover a truth that most of us miss: God’s patience is not neglect—it’s mercy with a long timeline.

This isn’t just a sermon. I...

What did Jesus really mean when He talked about divorce? In this episode of The Semi-Seminarian Podcast, Pastor Jim Wilhelm walks the dusty road south of Capernaum to uncover the heart behind one of the hardest teachings in Scripture.

When the Pharisees tried to trap Jesus with a legal question about marriage, He answered with compassion for the broken—not condemnation for the divorced. This sermon digs beneath the rules to the ache beneath the surface: What do we do with what’s already broken?

Whether you’ve walked through divorce, loved someone who has, or wre...

What happens when grace starts rewriting the seating chart?

In this Wednesday-night Bible study, Pastor Jim takes you inside the Pharisee’s banquet where Jesus tells a story that unfolds right before everyone’s eyes. The Parable of the Guests (Luke 14 : 7-11) isn’t just about manners—it’s about the gospel that flips the table. As guests scramble for the best seats, Jesus quietly shows what happens when humility becomes the invitation and pride gets unseated.

Step into the lamplight, hear the clatter of dishes, and feel the tension as the Host of Heaven teaches fr...

After the last crumb and sip, something holy still lingers. In this World Communion Sunday sermon, Pastor Jim Wilhelm of The Semi-Seminarian Podcast walks you back through the silence that follows the table—the breath that tastes like grape and mercy. From Luke 22 (:14–20), he explores how the Disciples of Christ center worship not around preaching, but around participation—the bread and cup as the heartbeat of belonging.

This isn’t nostalgia—it’s digestion. It’s what happens when gratitude becomes muscle memory, when the taste of grace follows you out the church doors and into the week.

Pu...