Episode 51: A Holiday Roast

Jared: You’re listening to Faith for Normal People, the only other God ordained podcast on the internet. 

Pete: I’m Pete Enns. 

Jared: And I’m Jared Byas.

Brittany: Hi, everyone. Happy holidays! I’m Brittany, and I’m the producer of the Bible for Normal People and Faith for Normal People podcasts. 

Stephen: And I’m Stephen, the audio engineer and editor for the podcasts. 

Brittany: Well, Stephen, let’s tell our listeners what they’re hearing from us on the pod today. 

Stephen: So last year, we had so much fun with the Holiday Roast Blooper Reel, we thought we’d make it a holiday tradition here at the Bible for Normal People.

Brittany: So the two of us have been collecting our favorite blooper clips all year long so we can share some laughs with you, our listeners, as we begin a new year together. It’s also a bittersweet send off to Stephen, as this is his last episode as our amazing audio engineer for the podcast. It has been such a joy to work together for over a hundred episodes and get to grow as colleagues and friends. 

Stephen: It’s been an absolute pleasure to work around here, making podcasts I believe are making the world better. I’ve been a listener from episode one, and I’ll certainly be a listener after this episode as well. So I’d like to say personally, and on behalf of all of us at the Bible for Normal People, we extend our heartfelt thanks for being part of our community. Whether you’re an occasional listener, a dedicated community member, or a loving critic, we’re thankful for you and wish you peace, health, laughter, and joy through the holidays and beyond.

Brittany: And now we present: [Brittany and Stephen together] A holiday roast. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Pete: A link to the recording afterward and downloadable class slides. 

Jared: Sorry.

Pete: Did I mess up? 

Jared: Nope, I was gonna jump in, go ahead. 

Pete: What are you drinking in that? Is that iced tea or is that something else? 

Jared: It is iced tea. 

Pete: You sure? Okay, anyway. 

Jared: I think. 

Pete: No, okay. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Pete: Have I left you speechless?

Jared: Sounds good. Thank you for that. I don’t know, I thought you were gonna, you should get a volley, what are we going to say after that? 

Pete: Okay, now, now, this is the transition. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Jared: Should we end there? Yeah. If not, we’re all screwed. 

Pete: Yeah, we’re all screwed. Anyway, folks, on that kind and wonderful and uplifting note, we’re all screwed. There you had it. You’ve heard it here first. We’re all screwed. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Jared: How to overcome the black and white thinking that if any part’s not true, none of it is. I think that’s, uh, go ahead, wrinkle your paper. 

Pete: I am wrinkling the paper. 

Jared: Oh my goodness. 

Pete: This is not, you know, an eternal thing here that you’ll be looking at. 

Jared: It’s going to go into the microphone and that’s the podcast. 

Pete: But you can burp if you want to. This is, this is a SoNP live thing. We can, it doesn’t matter.

Jared: No, it, this is going to be, you do realize this is going to be an episode of the podcast. 

Pete: And they’re, and they’re going to see the real thing, not the fake Jared and Pete, the real Jared and Pete where there’s paper crinkling and I unplug cables. 

Jared: Not okay. 

Pete: And you have a stomachache, you ate too many of those nut things.

Jared: Nutty bars. 

Pete: I know. 

Jared: No, that’s, they get, they get to see the behind the scenes, but we don’t want people to hear the behind the scenes. 

Pete: What if I do? 

Jared: Alright, now I’ve lost my train of thought again. Um, I was talking, I was saying something important. 

Pete: We were talking about deconstruction or something like that. 

Jared: Yeah, no, it was Andrew, that’s what I was going to say.

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Pete: If I have no…if I had…if I have had no…

Jared: It’s not “if.” It’s not if, it’s just “I.” 

Pete: I have had no real what I would consider…oh okay, it’s not your Jordan, writing, it’s not your Jordan, it’s your writing, it’s my reading. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Jared: This is an audio format, so I just have to describe Pete’s flippantly throwing his arms around while he’s saying it.

Pete: Mockingly saying that. Um, and then others say. 

Sarah Bessey: Now, for the audio, sarcastic air quotes. 

Pete: Yes, right. Right. Right. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Jared: If you want someone to help you not talk, Pete is not your person, I gotta tell you that. 

Pete: Alas, okay. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Pete: Yeah, I think if we talk too soon, it comes out, it’s not digested. 

Jared: No. 

Pete: You’re just throwing up. 

Jared: Yep.

Pete: What’s the analogy? You want to poop and not puke. 

Jared: Okay. 

Pete: Is that a good analogy, Jared? You want to let it go through the system and let it get refined? I’m sorry. I just watched a show on Netflix called Hack Your Health, which is all about pooping. And it’s like the most fascinating thing, but that has nothing to do with this.

Jared: So you meant it in a real positive way. 

Pete: I meant it in a very positive sense. 

Jared: Because pooping is a good thing in this show. 

Pete: How many people did we just lose at The Bible for Normal People with everything we just said? Anyway, but um. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Jared: Good. Yeah. So we’ll take a couple of seconds of silence and we’ll welcome you to the podcast and then Pete will—Pat—Pete will ask the first question.

Pete: I’m Pete, Jared. Thanks. 

Jared: Good. Appreciate it. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Jared: All right. What resources do you six—oh my God. I only have one job. Read the question. I can’t even do that. 

Elizabeth Orr: It’s hard. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Jared: Hmm.

Pete: Why are people so complicated? 

Jared: I don’t know. 

Pete: Could be like dogs or something. 

Jared: It’s the world’s fault. 

Pete: I know. It’s the world’s fault. Yeah. 

Jared: It’s the world’s fault.

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Pete: Yeah. But they’re all written down for you, Jared. You can’t screw this up. All right. 

Jared: Oh, I can. And I will. Alright. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Pete: Well done. Alright, Jared, let’s blow through this. 

Jared: Yeah. 

Pete: So I can have my wine and cry about the elections. 

Jared: Yeah, sounds good. Alright. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Pete: Oh, I have a Santa hat I should have brought. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Jared: Get your s*** off the table, Pete.

Pete: Well, he’s got his s*** on the table. 

Jared: I just have a—

Pete: Can I put this [slams down item] on the table? 

Jared: No, that’s ugly. It’s humongous. 

Joel: We need to get mugs…

Jared: Get a mug or something. 

Pete: We should get mugs.

Joel: Are there not? 

Jared: There are, we just don’t have them. 

Pete: I have a mug, but I don’t want a mug because I’ll spill it. I need something with a top on it. You don’t know me. 

Jared: We’ll get some. Oh, he doesn’t know you yet. 

Pete: Not yet. 

Joel: I’m, I’m, I’m here though. This is a very small room. 

Jared: [To Pete] Your reputation precedes you. 

Joel: A lot of hours in here.

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Pete: Alright, so it’s 6:15. 

Jared: Yeah, so we need to be done by 7. 

Pete: Yeah, around there. Unless I’m really on a roll pontificating. I’ll do one of my own patented one and a half hour episodes.

Jared: Predictions, prophecies, and Pete’s pontifications. 

Pete: That’s it! No. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Jared: That can be the, that can be the title. Does the Old Testament predict Jesus’s birth in a certain pericope in the Gospel of Matthew? 

Pete: That’s it. Is it? I believe that, I believe that the plural is pericope, but—I’m just kidding. 

Jared: So sorry, I didn’t mean to…I’m such a dummy.

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Jared: Alienating and stressful. Can you talk about the community impact of—[sound of cymbal punchline plays suddenly in audio feed] …that’s a new system problem.

Jared: You were too late. The punchline, I haven’t got, Oh—there are some pads that he’s never touched before. And so…[cricket sound effect plays then wind chime sound effect plays] Oh here you go. Sound effects. Yeah. Okay. 

No touching those again. All right. Well, first time for everything. I didn’t ever knew what those buttons did. And now we know. Eight seasons in. Never knew. Um, so anyway, let me think of what, how I was going to say that. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Jared: Hillary, so was there something else you wanted to add there?

Hillary: I just said, get it. I was like, yeah, I was just being Preston’s—I was like, yes. 

Preston: We need the air horn. 

Jared: That’s right. 

Preston: With the cymbals. Yeah. 

Jared: Yeah. No, Joel, don’t touch it. I’m just kidding. Good. All right, well, let’s maybe take another turn here.

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Jared: …kind of talking about faith or faith expressions, but if something, if you use something kind of esoteric, like, you know, eschatology or the rapture or something and be able to, we need to take a minute to explain that.

Grace Baldridge: Oh, I see. So I probably won’t talk about the rapture, but it’s—

Pete: No?!

Jared: That’s unfortunate. 

Pete: That was the topic. That was the whole topic, Grace!

Jared: …in the rapture. 

Pete: I can’t believe this. What a disaster. What will we talk about, music, I guess?

Grace: I suppose we’ll have to pivot. 

Pete: We’ll figure it out. 

Grace: Predictions. Who’s going to make it? Semler weighs in.

Pete: Yeah. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Sarah: No, for sure. I appreciate you used the word veteran and not, uh, weathered. [All laughing] Or come to our leathered guide. 

Jared: I know better than that. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Pete: Journey of, and I do agree with your language, evolving faith to me is a much better way of putting this than deconstruction. 

Sarah: Oh, I’m going to put that in a blurb on the next cover of the book. 

Pete: “Pete Enns thinks I’m right.” Here’s the thing Sarah, nobody will care. 

Sarah: He says this was good.

Pete: Nobody will care. Least of all Jared, who’s laughing here next to me. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Jared: You know we got all the, all the intellectual stuff, Pete’s got that covered, um, as he always, as he always likes to remind us. 

Sarah: Pete ruins deconstruction.

Pete: Pete deconstructs deconstruction. Yeah. 

Jared: Oh my goodness. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Anna Case-Winters: Oh, and, and with regard to editing, if you’d edit out anything I say that’s really heretical. 

Pete: We’re keeping that in. Actually, we might add. We have to keep that in. 

Anna Case-Winters: That’s the fun part. 

Pete: For some people, your book is heretical. 

Anna Case-Winters: Uh, yeah, I know. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Anna Case-Winters: And I would say God is not with us in the sense of a dominating and controlling power that determines everything that happens in world process.

Anna Beal: What? That’s crazy. What? Where’s John Calvin right now? 

Pete: I won’t, I won’t, I’ll stop, I’ll stop praying for a parking spot at the mall then, okay? 

Anna: Yeah, yeah, this is my lover’s quarrel with Calvin, which was in my first book. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip— 

AJ Levine: Oh God, you would have to ask me to tweet. I don’t tweet. 

Pete: Okay, whatever it is you do. 

Jared: By the way, I think it’s like an X. I don’t know what the verb form of X is. 

Pete: Well, that is stupid. I love it. I’m going to say tweet for the rest of my life. How about a short Facebook post? You know what Facebook is, AJ? 

AJ Levine: Uh, my daughter runs my Facebook page. I’ve deliberately refused to learn how to, how to, how to use it. Actually, the short on the Pharisees is—

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Pete: Did you have a sense that I was a total fake? 

Jon Levenson: Uh, no. I thought you were an earnest young fundamentalist. [All laughing]

Jared: Nailed it. Yeah. Nailed it. 

Pete: Uh, was I earnest? 

Jon Levenson: Highly, highly intelligent. Thoughtful, learned, hardworking, young fundamentalist. Now you’re neither young nor fundamentalist. 

Pete: Yeah. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Jack: By the way, does the name Pavlov ring any bells for you?

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Jared: For a lot of people in the tradition I grew up in…

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Jared: Today on Faith for Normal People we’re talking a little bit, we’ll, we’ll talking, alright, let’s try it again. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Jared: People, ah, I did it again. A parrot. If you don’t give it to me straight, I’m just gonna say it wrong. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Pete: Hey everybody, on today’s episode, this is the last epizzzode, episode, I’ll do that again.

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Pete: Let’s talk specifically now, oh, sorry, another drink of coffee. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Pete: Consequences of his actions. Sorry, again. That was a coffee burp. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Pete: Oh gosh, I gotta blow my nose. Okay, I’m back. After about an hour of blowing my nose. You might be asking yourself, why is Pete doing this now when he has a stuffed nose? Because it’s gonna get worse and I want to get this to you. So. Sigh. It’ll work. Alright. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Pete: Okay, um, a truck’s coming by. I have to close the window. [Truck beeps loudly in the background]

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Pete: Anyway, that’s just an illustration of what I’m trying to say. Can’t knock into things. I’m sorry, Steven. My cat is crawling all over my mic. You probably can’t hear it. Marmalade, get out of here. Go on. Okay. Thank you. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Pete: Right, there’s sort of two groups. So let’s look at the first group. Chapter four has a genealogy of the descendants of Cain. I want to say that again because my cat’s been messing around here. Chapter four has a genealogy of the descendants of Cain. That’s Kitty, come on. You’re annoying. Okay, now she’s purring into the mic. I gotta pause. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Pete: Okay, I’m back. How about I feed my cat, that may help. So for example, let me just read to you. My cat just meowed.

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Pete: Thus all the days of Seth were 912 years and he died. I hope my cat doesn’t start meowing. I want to say that last part again. One name per generation for Jen. Gosh, too early in the morning here Stephen. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Pete: Okay, then rounding out our summoning. Gosh. How do you put up with me folks?

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Pete: Okay. God tells Abraham to take Isaac to the land of Moriah and offer him as a burnt offering to God. I really need to figure out how to say Moriah. Why? Because Isaac—

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Pete: Again, we’re such freaking professionals. 

Jared: Freaking professionals. All right, let’s do this. 

Pete: We don’t know. 

Jared: Speaking of, we have to do this Kickstarter promo for the 15th time because we keep effing it up. 

Pete: Yeah. How do we keep effing it up? 

Jared: Surely out of the 19 times we’ve done this Kickstarter promo, you’ll get something good here.

All right, let’s try it again. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Pete: Did you know fast? Oh, I’m yelling into the mic here. Gosh, that hurt my ears. [Jared laughs]

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Pete: Did I tell you that Brittany—hi Brittany—they got me a windscreen. So I saw, yeah. So it’s like, okay. 

Jared: Trying to tell you something. 

Pete: How’s that? 

Jared: How’s those plosives? Puh. Puh. Plosives. 

Pete: Okay, anyway—

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Jared: So Brittany, we just had a—Brittany and Stephen, we had a powwow. I can say that cuz I’m Choctaw.

Pete: I don’t want to appropriate your culture for myself. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Jared: Exactly. But the title can be “it’s okay to deconstruct.”

Pete: And if you don’t like that Britt, just get your lawyers involved and we’ll be fine. 

Jared: That’s right, or you know what? Just come up with a better title.

Pete: Okay.

Jared: Beat us. Beat us at our own game. 

Pete: Beat us at our own game, Britt.

Jared: Yeah. All right. We got to go now, record 800 ads that you just threw in our lap 10 minutes ago. So. All right. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

AJ Levine: Which means if this microphone doesn’t work, you will have some other way… 

Jared: We have a backup. Yeah, exactly. 

AJ Levine: Good. That makes me happy. 

Jared: Yeah, Brittany wouldn’t trust us with just one way to do this for sure.

Pete: Well, I wouldn’t trust us because so much can happen. 

Jared: Oh yeah. 

Pete: Wacky stuff. 

Jared: Yeah, I’m sure we’ve all had those experiences where it’s like, Oh no, that didn’t record. Oh, sorry. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Pete: Perfect. 

Brittany: Perfect. 

Pete: We have brilliant people. 

Aaron Higashi: I’m sorry. Some, some, some poor schmuck has got to go in there and find the one word. 

Brittany: Yep. And his name is Stephen.

Aaron Higashi: Thank you. Stephen. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Pete: I think we should call it that. There we go. Oh.

Jared: Oh, we had a lot of promos to read. 

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Jared: All right. Well, that was vulnerable. Let’s end it. 

Pete: That’ll be, I think Brittany will make sure that goes on. All right, kids.

—Beep signals next blooper clip—

Brittany: If you’re still listening, we hope you had a couple of laughs at our expense from our behind the scenes clips. Just a few more things before we wrap up. Stephen, how can our listeners keep up with you in your next adventures? 

Stephen: I appreciate the chance to share. I am accepting more audio work. So if you’re a podcast creator and want to hire me to help make your show, you can visit my website at stephenghenning.com to find out what I offer. I also host two podcasts of my own. One is called Ravel. Look for the red, blue, and yellow yarn ball, wherever you get podcasts. We share a drink and talk about the same themes we talk about here on Faith for Normal People. And the other is a solo artistic project called two steps with Stephen Henning.

Brittany: Well, we will dearly miss having you on the team in 2025, even though there’s so much to look forward to: video podcasts, live stream interviews, and our long awaited children’s Bible called God’s Stories as told by God’s Children, which comes out in the spring. And lastly, with all of that said, to continue the tradition of ending our season on a hopeful note, here’s our marketing director Savannah’s version of What Child Is This?.