Finding extraordinary purpose in life w/ Naomi Overton of Stonecroft Ministries - Podcast Episode 74

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Welcome to the

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God Questions Podcast and our series of occasionally spotlighting another ministry that we believe

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God is doing great things through. We're going to continue that series today, and today our focus is going to be on Stonecroft Ministries.

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Today I have with me Dr. Naomi Kramer -Overton, the CEO of Stonecroft Ministries.

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So Naomi, welcome to the show. Thank you. I'm grateful to be here, it's fun.

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So for listeners who may not be familiar with Stonecroft, what is Stonecroft all about? What's the mission that God has called the ministry to, and how do you seek to accomplish that?

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Well, I love a good story, so I'm going to actually start with our founder's story. So a woman, just like, if you're a gal listening to this or watching this, a woman just like you or me, named

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Helen Duffbaugh in 1938, was a housewife and a mother, that's how they described themselves in those days, and she wanted to see her community of San Jose, California be just a really special place, a place where people could see

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God's goodness. She started praying with some other women, and all of a sudden she started finding out that a lot of women had questions about God.

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And so this group of women who she was praying with had this passion to help people who wanted to find that full life in God through Jesus actually go on that journey and discover who

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Jesus was. And really, that's the same thing we're doing today, almost 84 years later, and it's a delight.

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We are both in the U .S. and around the world, and we are women who are fully alive in our faith and inviting others who are exploring what it might look like to live on purpose and to live in community with people who also want to live meaningfully and to discover that purpose together.

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So that's what Stonecroft is, and we've had a lot of different forms over those 84 years, but that's the trueness of what we're about.

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We're about women fully alive. So maybe give me a little more specifics, like how exactly does

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Stonecroft accomplish that? I mean, I know the answer to this, which I'll explain here in a minute, but what are the more concrete boots on the ground type of things that Stonecroft does?

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Yeah, well, I'll start with Helen again, back in 1938. She discovered this desire to learn more about God and to come alive in God among business and professional women.

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So she started business and professional women's clubs where women after work would get together and maybe have a nice relaxing time and then hear an inspirational story from a woman whose life had been changed by God.

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And then from there, if somebody was like, I want to know more, then they might be invited into a

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Bible study where they could open up the scriptures together and talk about what does this mean and in a really accessible way, which is one of the uniquenesses of Stonecroft.

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So Stonecroft will always have a special place in my heart and also my wife,

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Melissa's heart, because we launched GotQuestions when we were actually employees of Stonecroft Ministries in Kansas City.

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I was the supervisor of the shipping department and Melissa was a writer in the

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Friendship Bible Coffee, eventually Friendship Bible Study program, and when we launched GotQuestions, and it was the passion that we saw in people's hearts there for evangelism, for discipleship, for studying the

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Bible, for getting their questions answered, that played a big role. And then even some of the leadership at Stonecroft were instrumental in helping us.

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How do we establish a 501c3? What is this accounting thing?

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Can we do it this way or this way? So most of our initial board members were other Stonecroft employees.

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So Stonecroft played a huge role in helping us get GotQuestions started, and it's been great to see the continued connection over the years.

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And Melissa's now served on the board of directors for Stonecroft Ministries, and she's served in the local

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Christian Women's Connection the entire time since we moved here to Colorado Springs. So Stonecroft has a special place in our hearts, very grateful for our time there, and also for the continued aspect of the ministry.

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So Naomi, please keep doing what you're doing. Well, thank you. And we are really thankful for GotQuestions as well.

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I am often on your website as I'm looking at different Bible resources that we are developing, so I'm getting some good answers.

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So one thing God has really given you a passion for is to help people find, and you describe it as extraordinary purpose.

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So what do you mean when you say extraordinary purpose? Well, I think

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I want to start with where people tell us they're coming from. So we've done a lot of listening to women in different life stages, from just out of college or early in their careers, all the way up to grandmothering, or maybe almost going on to their glory.

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And one of the things that we hear throughout is that people have this question of, what am I here for? And not only what am

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I here for maybe in my career, that might be a younger in the lifespan question, but as it gets to midlife, what am

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I here for now? Maybe my kids are going off to college. Maybe my career is kind of really accelerating now.

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Empty nest stage is often a time where there's the, what am I here for now? And then there's this late in life question of, what am

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I here for still? Do I still have something to contribute? Are there still people I can love well?

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Am I relevant to what is going on today? So across the lifespan, no matter what walk of faith people may be coming from, if any, we're asking that question.

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And so then the question is, what are the answers? And so if we really looked at our lives, just like looking at your checkbook can tell you a lot, if we really looked at our daytimers, our phone organizers, whatever, we might see that we're just here to go through the motions, that we're just here to get through the morning routine, make sure that the checklist at work gets done, make sure that our kids or family members are well cared for.

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And that is a way of living, but it's not a way of thriving. It's not a way of having our own souls fed.

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It's not a way necessarily of being in community, particularly now during this continued global pandemic with isolation, just going through the motions won't give us the kind of life hope, joy that allows us to truly live an extraordinary life.

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So extraordinary doesn't mean one of the things I love that we've also heard is that we acknowledge, we know we are ordinary people.

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We live in everyday lives. We have some days where we're like, I've got so much energy. I can't wait to go do more good things in the world.

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We have a lot of days where it's like, wow, someone in my family is in crisis or I'm in crisis or I just am maybe struggling with anxiety.

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That's a very common need. And so what we're really looking at at Stonecroft is how do we live this life to the full that God offers in a relationship with him, not outside of our ordinary lives, but extraordinary right in the midst of the everyday.

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So what would you say are some of the most common hindrances to people finding their purpose in life for people to understand that God does indeed have an extraordinary purpose for them?

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Yeah, what's been really interesting is I've kind of had a front row seat to a lot of women's lives.

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And you know this, Shay, that before I served as the leader of Stonecroft, I was the

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CEO at Mops International, which is mothers and preschoolers, and both, which is a ministry that's to moms of kids usually before school aged and their families.

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Both of these ministries serve around 100 ,000 women a year. And so in listening to the different people we served,

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I've gotten to hear what people struggle with. I want to start with maybe kind of one of the enduring themes.

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But now we have layering on those themes that are the struggles to live this extraordinary life.

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One of the things that's long been around is a sense of overwhelm. Just with the advent of information on demand, it's not just on our demand, it's also demanding a lot of us.

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And overwhelm in our relationships and them getting more complex with family systems and structures having changed, with working and parenting and everything getting combined.

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Just overwhelm has been an ongoing barrier to living in a way that can feel fully alive.

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These layers that have really crept in in recent years add on to that a lot of mental health challenges.

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Overwhelm is one thing. That's a lot about busy and just like, I want to tear my hair out.

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But you layer on to that the mental health crisis that we see in our culture today.

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And that really a lot of people call that anxiety. That would be kind of an anxious, discouraged feeling.

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And a lot of that is fed by isolation. We're not as anxious when we're in healthy relationships.

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And then you have this new layer that's really emerged largely in the last two years,

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I'd say, where you have this divisiveness, where it isn't just maybe I'm overwhelmed and I'm anxious.

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But now I also feel like I'm almost like afraid to talk to people because I don't know if they're going to be on a different side of the issues than I am.

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I don't know what's going to happen when I post something on Facebook or Instagram. Am I going to get pushback when

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I was just expressing something I'm excited about? So all those layers, isolation, anxiety and this sense of overwhelm, all of those get in the way of us living

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God's extraordinary in the midst of our ordinary. I really don't know what you're talking about.

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I haven't detected any divisiveness or anxiousness over the last couple of years. So total mystery to me what you're talking about.

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No, I mean, we can even detect that in like the type of questions that we receive and that questions we've never been asked before these past in the whole

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COVID era. What has it been a little over two years now? It's just been so many people freaked out about things

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I've never been freaked out for. Or even we recently did an episode of the podcast where just interviewing three different pastors on their experience and how divided the church has been in having seemingly godly mature believers on such opposite spectrums.

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I mean, it's made it really, really hard to, like you said, want to say anything at all on social media, anything because you just feel you're just going to be torn apart by even people that you normally have a good relationship with.

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So I totally get the struggle that you're talking about. So in your experience, so we've talked about some of the hindrances, what's blocking it, but what is the key to finding

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God's extraordinary purpose for you, for your life? Well, OK, first of all,

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I'm a nerd. Earlier, before we started recording, I had my nerd glasses on and I took them off so like we could see each other eye to eye here,

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Shay. But I am a nerd. I love information. I love data that tells us about how things work.

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And so I've been really privileged to learn from various projects

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I've gotten to be part of about how does this actually happen? How do people spark into this, into faith in the first place, and then also into a really fully alive faith where they're like, wow, every day my life has meaning, not just theoretically, not just between me and God, but in how

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I live. And so some of the really important commonalities when I used to work for Compassion International as well and there with the

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Barna Research Group, we did a study. We studied people who were like these crazy, fully alive people. At Stonecroft, we did the same thing and we found the same pattern.

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What we found is that it starts with this kind of inspiration, this vertical relationship where someone, maybe they're brought in by a friend, but somehow they encounter

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God's story as expressed through the Bible and as expressed through another person's story.

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So a real person with flesh and blood and real life and real problems and whatever tells them about God and what

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God looks like through their life. And so this kind of inspirational phase that I think of as very vertical, that's the front door.

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But then what takes people deeper? Then it's about relationship. Then it's about maybe a one to one, a friend.

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And we sometimes call this friendship evangelism or just called friendship, where we walk with others or they walk with us and they walk us more into what is this meaning we're made for?

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Yes. Not only is there pain in life, but there's hope to be found. And how do we look at that?

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And often together we'll be looking at the Bible and again, we'll open it up and say, what does this say for us?

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That's how I came to faith personally in my story. And then the next and really, really, really important phase, if we just stay there, all kinds of research, whether it's

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Willow Creek study of 100 ,000 Christians and a thousand churches, that was called their reveal study.

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We'll say that if we just stay there with my God and I'm inspired and have this great community, we actually shrink back as Christians.

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We actually need to now live out our faith. We need to live it out in a couple of ways.

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One is we need to take those risks of sharing the good news. Now, I'm going to put that in two ways.

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Sometimes people think that means sharing the gospel through our lips or it's sharing the gospel through justice and through good deeds.

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But if we look at the life of Christ, I love this. Christ did both. And often he started with the good deeds and then he followed with the good words.

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So unless we actually put our faith into action by sharing our faith in deed and in word, we actually shrink back as humans.

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And so we need to do all those things, get inspired, get connected and get bold, get bold to act on it and to speak it.

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Yeah. So what you said just reminds me of I think it was a few years ago where it seemed like every ministry that I heard of was doing definitely

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Jesus hands and feet type of work where there's some rescuing people from human trafficking and drilling water wells in Africa, all these great, great things.

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But then you look at what they do and they never actually got to the point of sharing the gospel.

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And to me, that bothered me because it got questions on every single page on our site.

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We have a link to at least one article that presents the gospel because what's the good if we answer a question, even an important question, but they leave the site without having any exposure to the gospel.

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And so one thing I've always loved about Stonecroft is how focused on evangelism is not just doing good deeds and are helping people, but then they also explaining,

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OK, the reason I did that is because of what Christ has done in my life.

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So the both and sort of perspective and why do you think that's a struggle for some ministries to want to be able to do both or to find ways to do both?

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Well, you know, I think there's a lot of this is how we want to define ourselves. So, you know, if we want to say if we put our identity in us and maybe in our own gifting rather than in Jesus and in who

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Jesus says we are, then it's really easy to say, well, I'm a person who I'm a person who sees needs.

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I'm a person who cares about justice. I'm a person who loves children and wants to see them flourish. And so then we define our way of living out our faith according to us.

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Whereas who does Jesus say we are? He says we're ambassadors. Every one of us is an ambassador for Christ.

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And whether we are gifted in evangelism or we're pastors or we're teachers, we're moms, we're single professionals, it doesn't matter.

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We are all ambassadors. And so when we live in that, then we have to go, well, wait a minute.

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I'm not like some famous evangelist. I'm not a Billy Graham or, you know, if there was a female version,

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I'm sure there are many. I'm not her. I'm not gifted in evangelism, but I'm an ambassador.

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So then we live in that tension of, so Jesus, if that's who you say I am, then how do you use me?

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How do you use Naomi, who literally evangelism is one of my smallest spiritual gifts? How do you use me?

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And by the way, who have you put around me? Who can I love today? Who can I speak words of yours to today?

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And and so actually really living into the discomfort of not identifying ourselves by ourselves, but by Jesus, who says we are his imitators in this world.

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And he did both. He did the demonstration of the gospel and he did the proclamation of the gospel.

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Yeah. And that's an excellent point. And don't hear me in any way disparaging the ministries that do those sorts of things because those are good and great things.

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But to do something for Christ without ever even identifying you're doing it for Christ to me, that was a big struggle.

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And so that's something that I never want to do. Not that everything I have to do has to involve a gospel presentation, but at least pointing to, you know,

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I'm a Christian and the reason I do these things is because of my love for Christ. If you'd ever like to know more, please talk to me.

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Well, nothing about Stonecroft and you mentioned earlier with the importance of community. And I have found, especially in the last, again, back to the whole

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COVID era thing, that so many people either are either quarantining or soft quarantining that they're really, really hungering for community.

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And I believe Melissa has told you about this, but she's went on nextdoor .com for our neighborhood and sent out an invitation.

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Does anyone in our neighborhood be interested in doing a Bible study? And she picked a

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Stonecroft Bible study to do. And she had, I think it was initially like 10 or 11 people show interest.

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And then eventually seven actually came to the Bible study and they all, except one, is identified as Christians.

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But they were all like, they weren't going to church. They'd gotten into the watching church online.

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So they were having very, very little contact with anyone other than like their immediate family.

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So it's getting together for that Bible study. And the relationship has continued. They're getting ready to meet again next week to discuss what they're going to do next.

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So the power of something like that is hugely important right now.

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So with Stonecroft Bible study specifically, what's the main goal with that ministry?

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And how does it fit together with the other aspects of Stonecroft? Yeah, well,

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I love the tagline on most of our Bible studies are, they say, basically basic Bible studies for everyone.

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And I think that tagline really captures it. I'm going to tell you something. When I came to Stonecroft, which is about three years ago,

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I have a business background and I'm pretty strategic. So I'm like, why are we publishing

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Bible studies? I mean, there are so many wonderful publishers out there. Why are we doing this? And there's so many things we could be doing.

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And we're great at these other things, too. And as I went around the nation, I went to 21 cities and listened to over 3 ,000 women.

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And what I heard is these studies fill this unique niche of being a way to get into the

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Bible for people who have never opened the Bible. And so it doesn't assume that you know that Matthew is the first book of the

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New Testament. It actually simple things like there's a page number in the Bible study that references a page in a specific

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Bible that we make very available. And so people don't have to go. Maybe I was growing a tradition that didn't read the

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Bible a lot or didn't read it at all. And and there's a comfort. And then there's also a facilitation approach.

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We're not really teaching the Bible. We're inviting people into the Bible and we're allowing the shared experience, the resource and the questions.

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And now even some creative activities that go alongside our studies to invite people into God's word together.

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So those are some of the things I've heard from over 3 ,000 people. And Melissa, your amazing wife, you know, she used to help write our

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Bible studies. So some of the same approachable language that we see in God questions,

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I have to believe that some of that really reflects that same ethos of we want everyone to be able to understand

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God and to be able to get into the Bible and not to have to learn a second language called

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Christianese to do so. Exactly. So this has been the God Questions podcast with Dr.

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Naomi Kramer Overton, CEO of Stonecroft Ministries. So Naomi, I'll include some links to where people can learn more about you and also

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Stonecroft in the show notes, in the description on YouTube channel and also podcast .godquestions

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.org. But just kind of a closing pitch. If someone wants to learn more about Stonecroft, what's the best way for them to do that?

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I would say sign up for our weekly newsletter. It is called Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Purpose.

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And wherever you are on your faith journey, if you are just like wondering if there's good stuff for you in community or in the

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Bible, it will meet you there. And if you're someone who wants to go deeper, there will be opportunities to go deeper and to get connected.

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So that's what I'd say to do it. It's at Stonecroft .org where you can sign up. Excellent. Please do so.

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Again, Melissa and I love Stonecroft. It was hugely influential, especially in the very early history of Got Questions.

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And we will forever be grateful. So Naomi, thank you for being on the show today. Appreciate your time. It's a joy to be here.

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And thank you for having me, Shay. Yeah. This has been the Got Questions podcast, special spotlight on Stonecroft Ministries.