#197: What I Want You To Know: Receiving grace through community

INSIDE: Receiving grace starts by being in community, by belonging, and connecting. How does grace show up when producing a podcast? Take a listen for this behind-the-scenes look.

Author Daniel James Brown wrote, “Few things offer so much opportunity for common effort as the making of a book.” This was not how I viewed writing when I first started blogging in August 2016. Wasn’t writing a solo sport? Wasn’t it just you, Jesus, and a laptop? How was writing an act of collaborative community?

It didn’t take me long to learn because early in my blogging days, I realized I needed an editor, someone who could give focus and shape and structure to my swirly, whirly ideas, so I hired an editor.

I took what I learned from the writing life and translated it into my podcast life:

Receiving grace through community

Before I launched the podcast, I knew I needed a team around me. People to pray for me and the podcast, to give insight and ideas, to offer suggestions for guests and questions to ask those guests, to help me write a title that would appeal most to my listeners, and to come alongside me to determine if a guest was in theological and doctrinal alignment with the podcast’s statement of faith.

And the women you are about to meet rose to that challenge to love Jesus, love me, love Grace In Real Life, and love you, my sweet listener. This team has helped me with branding and graphic design decisions along with editing scripts and voting on series ideas. If you’ve loved this podcast, it’s because Amy, Angi, Eileen, Kira, Lauren, and Nina made it so good.

Community as a way to go about receiving grace

Dr. Curt Thompson was right when he said this about grace in Episode 188: “Grace is not a theological concept first; it only comes later. It first is a thing I actually experience because I’ve been in the room with others.”

I know grace because these women have been in the metaphorical room with me.

Our God wired us for community. We need people. We experience grace through God’s girls. Bringing people in might feel too hard, like too much trouble, or like you’re inconveniencing them by asking for their time and expertise. However, I have found just the opposite to be true. Building community through this podcast has never been too hard; it’s been life-giving. It’s never been too much trouble because my community always makes it better. Sometimes, it may have been hard or inconvenient for my podcast team to read an episode and offer feedback or pray and give their opinions, but good things are often the hard things. Perhaps they felt that because it asked for their time and talent, it just made it that much sweeter.

I know you’ll find out how they feel about it when you get this never-before-shared, behind-the-scenes look at what it took to make Grace In Real Life happen every week.

Together, we break down:

What the podcast team did and how I curated this team,
What God taught me through the podcast,
Podcasting surprises,
How I select guests and how I ask them to be on the show,
How I planned content and how I handled unexpected global events, like the pandemic and social unrest,
AND SO MUCH MORE

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like behind the scenes here and how community has shaped what the podcast is today, listen in.

Quotes about Community and Receiving Grace

“You’ve always invited Jesus into the conversation” – Angi
“In my four years of podcasting, I’ve learned how little I am and how big my Jesus is.” – Jill E. McCormick
“We experience grace through God’s girls.” – Jill E. McCormick
“The Holy Spirit has been trying to talk to me all these years through your podcast.” – Eileen

Mentioned in the podcast

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