Lessons from NAMS Servant General Jon Shuler as he dives into 50 years of stories of church planting, leadership and disciple-making while exploring what it means to be a reforming Anglican in the 21st century.
143 - "There's No Such Thing as New Testament Church Planting" — What NAMS Actually Aims to Reproduce - September 24th, 2026
There's No Such Thing as New Testament Church Planting" — What NAMS Actually Aims to Reproduce
Description: Over breakfast, a friend who grew a church from 125 people to over 5,000 kept using a phrase Jon Shuler couldn't let stand: "New Testament church planting." So Shuler challenged him — there's really no such thing. The early church spread across the Roman Empire before the New Testament existed as a book in anyone's hands. What shaped those first congregations wasn't a text but a living pattern, carried from Jerusalem by the people who had been formed there. In episode 143, back from training church planters in Arkansas, Shuler traces that pattern from Pentecost through the Jerusalem Council to the letters of Ignatius of Antioch — and shows how, by the end of the first century, one consistent order had taken hold everywhere: a single bishop, elders, and deacons. That, he says, is what NAMS aims to reproduce — the church of Antioch by the end of the first century, under the full authority of Scripture. A rich and clarifying episode for every church planter and Great Commission Christian.
1 Sept 2026
142 - You Seem So Focused on the Spread of the Gospel — And That's Not Normal - September 1, 2026
"You Seem So Focused on the Spread of the Gospel — And That's Not Normal"
A Presbyterian pastor once told Jon Shuler he didn't seem like an ordinary Anglican: "You seem so focused on the spread of the gospel, and that's not normal." In episode 142 — the third and final part on branding — Shuler takes that offhand remark and turns it into a searching question about what NAMS has become and what it could be. He faces the hard reality that by 2006 the society had helped plant over 227 churches in North America, yet most, however faithful, quietly resembled ordinary Episcopal parishes and were missing the apostolic DNA that makes a church plant churches. Overseas, where leaders expected conversion, the New Testament pattern flourished; at home, Anglican culture impeded it. So Shuler offers a vision to pray over: what if the world heard "NAMS" and instantly thought Kingdom Advance — disciples who make disciples, churches that plant churches, the kingdom of God furthered the way it was in the beginning? A candid, hopeful, and clarifying episode for every church planter and Great Commission Christian.
25 Aug 2026
141 - "It Was Easier to Understand the Koran Than to Understand Anglican" - August 25th, 2026
"It Was Easier to Understand the Koran Than to Understand Anglican"
In episode 141, Jon Shuler keeps pressing on branding — and lets a string of painful, honest moments do the work. A mission student, required to study the Koran for his degree, told Shuler he found it easier to grasp than the word "Anglican." A respected church planter turned down the NAMS family with a single line: "I really don't have energy to join your Anglican Civil War." Two senior clergy pulled him aside to say his vision of a growing, missionary church wasn't Episcopalian at all. And on two recent Sundays, preaching in two lovely, faithful, half-empty congregations, Shuler found himself asking whether a spiritually hungry stranger would ever return. He isn't offering answers yet. He's asking the question every NAMS companion now has to sit with: is the way we're understood in our culture quietly undermining the call God has given us? A candid, humble, and searching episode.
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