Rondi Pogue, who directs a ministry working in conferences, India and the local jails, preaches on the question her work puts her in front of constantly: am I bad? The distinction the message rests on is shame as a claim about what a person is.

“Lord, teach us to pray.” Pastor Adam takes Luke 11 as instruction rather than inspiration, and refuses to soften the parable that follows: Jesus commends a kind of asking that a polite person would be embarrassed by.

A joyful crowd, genuinely mistaken about what it is celebrating. Pastor Adam preaches Palm Sunday as a warning that popularity is evidence of nothing in either direction, and that what the road wanted was a political saviour rather than a universal king.

The disciples find Jesus praying alone and tell him everyone is looking for him. Pastor Adam builds on what he does next, which is not to go back, and on an agenda set in solitude before anyone asked for it.

Bryce Maurer, who pastors a revitalising church in Livingston, Montana, preaches Matthew 5 on salt and light — noting that both are stated as identity rather than instruction, which changes entirely what the warnings that follow are doing.

Eleven on a mountain, some worshipping and some doubting, and the commission handed to both. Pastor Adam opens Accelerate on the claim that precedes the command, and on there being no difference between believing for forgiveness and being sent.

Dr. James Smith III preaches the angel’s announcement as the answer to why Jesus came. The shepherds are not told to feel better; they are told something has happened, in a named town, with a verifiable sign attached, and the joy follows the fact.

Dr. James Smith III brings the early church into the room, letting the first Christian voices interpret John 3 alongside modern readers, and reads the passage from the end of chapter two so the famous verse sits where it actually belongs.

Harry Wilson preaches the verse everyone can recite and the three that follow, which fewer can. The judgment John names is preference rather than ignorance, and belief, after C.S. Lewis, is less one item among others than the light by which the rest is seen.