Episode Details

John Rogers—Year C Easter 7 through Proper 8

Welcome to the Gospel Reverb podcast. Gospel Reverb is an audio gathering for preachers, teachers, and Bible thrill seekers. Each month, our host, Anthony Mullins, will interview a new guest to gain insights and preaching nuggets mined from select passages of Scripture in that month’s Revised Common Lectionary.

The podcast’s passion is to proclaim and boast in Jesus Christ, the One who reveals the heart of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And now onto the episode.

Anthony: Hello, friends, and welcome to the latest episode of Gospel Reverb. Gospel Reverb is a podcast devoted to bringing you insights from Scripture, found in the Revised Common Lectionary, and sharing commentary from a Christ-centered and trinitarian view.

I’m your host Anthony Mullins, and it’s my delight to welcome our guest, John Rogers. John is the founder and director of Peterson House in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Peterson House is a place for people to slow down, sit with Scripture, listen to it and each other, and have it shape their lives. You can find out more information at https://www.petersonhousenc.org, and we’ll place that in the show notes. Prior to starting Peterson House, John spent 22 years in various campus ministry roles, and he earned a Master of Divinity degree from Duke Divinity School, right here in Durham, North Carolina.

John, thanks for being with us and welcome to the podcast. And since this is your first time, we’d like to know a little bit about you, your story, and how you’re participating with the Lord these days.

[00:01:35] John: Thanks, Anthony. It’s good to be here. I think the best summary of who I am is someone that is a pilgrim on the way, trying to be close to the one who gives me more life than I can ever imagine. And I feel like my story speaks to that, a story that started back in 1972 when I was born in Raleigh, North Carolina.

My dad a banker, my mother an insurance agent, and coming from a family; not any clergy. I think you had to go back a good bit on my mother’s side to find someone that was in the Lutheran church out in the Midwest.

But I thought, when I was a kid … we soon moved to Florida where I had a lawn mowing business as a kid. I went to the beach, and I played a lot of golf. And I thought that’s just what I was going to do. I was really good — at the golf part. I think I was really good at the lawn mowing part too. It was, they looked really good. But I was recruited by a college back in North Carolina to come back and play collegiate golf for four years, where I was an all-American, and really was given a lot of opportunities with that.

And my body started to take the toll from that twisting and turning. And it was a time in my life where I was in college, and I had a campus ministry program at a small Methodist college that took an investment in me. And when I figured out pretty quickly after interning at my father’s bank one summer that I probably was not meant for an office job and personal finance. And an intro class in my freshman year also suggested that I probably wanted to find some other things to do.

[00:03:22] Anthony: Do you want to share your grades? Is that what you’re inviting us to do?

[00:03:23] John: Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. Well, it was a C, and I realized that there were other things I probably loved doing more that I might be able to make a career out of. And so, it’s interesting. I know a lot of people find their way to studying religion and philosophy from a heart for it early on. But I found my way to the religion and philosophy program, because I had both a campus pastor and members of that faculty that took an interest in me. And I think that’s all often