[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to the Root Cellar podcast. We believe that God is at work restoring broken lives, families and neighborhoods around the corner in Lewiston and Portland, Maine, across New England and the world. On this podcast, we'll discuss what God is doing on our team at the Root Cellar through our partners in Maine, and invite guests from away to share how God is at work among them.
I'm your host, Joel Furrow. Thanks for join.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: Bad man thrives in Jesus Christ cuz he loves them both. We're all cast away in need of rope Hanging on by the last thread.
[00:00:51] Speaker A: Hey, friends. I'm Joel Furrow, the executive director of the Root Cellar, and welcome to the first episode of the Root Cellar podcast. This is exciting. I've wanted to do this for a long time, and finally this year we decided, hey, let's go for it. So why podcast? Why in the world would we do this? What, what's, what's the sense in one more talking head coming at you, especially one as big as mine? And so that's a, that's a phenomenal question. And if you're asking it, I'm right there with you. This is going to be about simply telling the stories of how we have seen God at work in and through the Root Cellar, across Maine, New England, and then nationally, other organizations or individuals that inspire us to do the work that we do. I've had the great honor and privilege of working with the Root Cellar for the past 13 years and have seen him do incredible things in and through our team, our staff, and have started to see even more work going on across our communities and across the state lately as well. And there's just stories that need to be told and encouraged. A lot of people see New England as this place where faith isn't really alive or vibrant and, and that's how it's talked about. And if you don't know that, you know, maybe you're not in the conversation, that's okay. But, you know, outside of New England, Maine's talked about in this way of, you know, it's this far away place and it's unchurched. You know, it doesn't have a lot of Christians there. And what we see is here at least, is that our God is constantly at work. He's constantly doing things to renew and restore broken communities, families and individuals. And this podcast is going to be about telling those stories and discovering where he's at work here and how we can join with him in that work. We're going to be talking to our staff here at the Root Cellar. So they're just doing incredible work with our kids, our teens, our food groups and our English language learning programming. There's some really unique, kind of novel ideas and things we've been able start doing in recent years that, that we're excited to tell you about. We're also going to go back a little bit and think about, you know, how do we get to where we are today? And we're going to invite other guests with us, local, some local leaders, some state leaders, and hopefully some national leaders as well, to join in this conversation and share how they are seeing God at work in their neck of the woods. Right.
So as we share these things, we want you to be encouraged. We want you to be aware of how God is using. Many of you are going to be our donors. You're giving generously to what God is doing here, and we want you to be aware of it. We want you to see it, hear the stories and be just as excited as we are. And you could hear it directly from the person who's experiencing it. We're going to be blessed to hear from, directly from our neighbors, some of the individuals that are directly being impacted by your donations, by your giving, by your volunteering. And I'm just excited to share those stories with you. We've got a number of things that we're going to be going over the next few weeks. We've got a bunch of stuff lined up and it's going to be great. I'm excited about it.
The Root Cellar engages neighbors and volunteers to cultivate social, economic and spiritual wholeness as part of God's gift kingdom.
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[email protected] the the theme for this first season of a podcast, if you will, is just is restoration. You know, I've been, I'm always asked, you know, what is the root cellar? It's a weird name. What's the root cell all about? What do you guys even do? I hear about the root cellar, but I don't know what you do, and that's a fair question, right? So I could talk a lot about the programs and we're going to get into that. I could talk a lot about who our neighbors are. We're gonna and hear their stories and their perspectives. What's brought them here to the United States? What's brought them to the root seller itself? What, what, what's going on in their lives? We'll get into all of that stuff. But If I could boil down exactly what we do, you know, I could give you a mission statement. Cultivating social, economic and spiritual wholeness is part of God's kingdom. But if I boiled that down a little bit more, I think where we'd land is this idea of restoration. The biblical idea of restoration is that God is restoring things to their intended form, restoring things to how they should be.
And I really believe, and I've seen this over the years, that that's what God is doing in our ministry. That's what he's doing. I've seen him. That's what he's doing in our team, even with one another, with our families. I've seen him seen. That's what God's doing in our neighborhoods, even, and with other ministries. And you start to look around, you're like, oh, that's what's happening. God's at work restoring that broken life. God's at work restoring that street, that place, that. That place, that area of town where no one wants to go, like the tree streets in Lewiston. God's restoring that to its intended form of a safe and amazing place for kids to grow up. That seems like a long shot. Some of you can even laugh at that idea.
But God is desperately in love with that community.
He loves the people that live there. And we see that demonstrated every day. And it comes in ways that you wouldn't expect. It comes in ways that surprise us, but it shouldn't. Oh, and just. Just really briefly, I'm not going to. This is not going to be a preachy podcast. This is not going to be Joel's preaching hour or anything like that. But, you know, this idea of restoration just kind of runs all through scripture. And this is just a few spots, you know, in the New Testament, Mark, the gospel writer, gives us this picture of God, Jesus restoring the man with the weathered hand, the messed up hand. He restores the sight to the blind man. And then ultimately, Mark reminds us that Jesus is going to restore all things, to restore all things back to their intended form. What does that exactly mean? It's this right relationship with God, the right relationship with each other. Each other. It's this place that, you know, where there is safety and a radical welcomeness among. Among God's people, with each other and those that are that. That they are connected to their neighbors and this open invitation to join in and participate in that relationship with God and each other. There's this beautiful passage in 1st Peter 5:10, and he says this, after you, after you have suffered a little while The God of all grace who has called you to this eternal glory in Christ will himself restore, confirm, strengthen and establish you. Like that's. Imagine that God, him, that Christ himself will restore, confirm, strengthen and establish you first, like man, if we could just receive that for ourself as truth, that we would be somehow restored to just this close relationship with God like Garden of Eden and with one another. We're walking with God in peace, walking with each other in peace. Or that, you know, man, if we could. That's just. If we could just take hold of that for ourselves. And then secondly, like, if we could take hold of that, if our neighbors could take hold of it, if that was their experience, that they would be restored to their. To the intended form, that the relationship with God and the relationship with each other, with us, with one another, all of us, would somehow restore to its intended form of peace and love, of. Of being of. Of. Of being welcomed, of. Of truly seeing one another and loving each other as we are and not as we should be. Because none of us are as we should be. But it's God who puts us back to where we should be. It's God who gives us that opportunity to be back to where we should we should be through Jesus, through His Word. And so that's what this is really going to be all about. How is God actively restoring lives, restoring communities?
First, you know, at the root cellar in our communities and then our surrounding areas, our ministry partners, our partners in the work in each, in each city, in Portland and Lewiston, and then regionally across New England, hopefully across the country. And who knows, who knows where else these conversations will take us. But we want to bring those stories to you. We want to share them with you. We want you to be encouraged. We want you to know how to pray for us. And we want you to consider joining in this work, whether it's volunteering or becoming one of our monthly partners, becoming one of our donors, you know, making a financial donation, joining in the work that God is doing. I had a professor in college who was talking a lot about, you know, doing ministry work in places where, you know, you're not the. You're not part of the majority culture. And his, he said used to talk about, you know, you go into. Go into a community, don't start something new and expect everybody to come and come to you or whatever. Find where God's already at work and join him in that effort.
And that's what this is going to be about.
I'm going to share how God is already at work. And my hope, my prayer is that you will receive that and join in the effort. Because you're not just joining me, you're not joining our team, you're not joining the Root Cellar. We are all joining together in the work that God is doing in restoring all things to Himself. I hope you'll join us. This next episode is going to be diving into some of our programming and how we got to got there, how we're going to learn, hear from directly from our staff. We're going to hear from neighbors, people that we're serving and people that are serving us in some, in some cases. It's going to be fun. Hope it's encouragement to you.
Looking forward to spending this time with you. Take care.
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Root Cellar Podcast. This ministry depends on the faithful giving of individuals just like you.
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[00:11:29] Speaker B: Understand why?
So cheer up my brothers.
Live in the song.
