A Lenten reflection on recognizing grace at the cross and living it in ordinary conduct.
This Lenten reflection frames the cross as a place where grace has to be recognized at its most costly, beginning with Jesus and the two criminals beside him.

500 episodes listed below
Plainspoken sermons with Easter at the center.
All Things New with Jeff Ackenback is a conversational biblical teaching show built from patient sermons, small jokes, and direct spiritual application. Recent messages move through Easter scenes, Good Friday, John, Mary, and Jesus’ words while keeping the room warm and human.
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All Things New with Jeff Ackenback is a sermon-driven Christian show with a warm, conversational shape. It sounds close to the room. Recent messages come from church settings in places such as Centerville and Richmond First, where biblical teaching is allowed to breathe through jokes, repetition, pauses, and everyday examples. The episodes often begin in a familiar scene. A child wanders during church. The speaker jokes about keeping everyone past lunch. Someone mentions fantasy football, a Sonic toy, or the strange ceremonial power of an Easter suit. Then the lesson turns. Scripture becomes the center again, and the ordinary moment is carried into a larger question about grace, witness, calling, forgiveness, and how a person lives after Easter. The Lenten and Easter episodes spend time with Mary at the tomb, John at the cross and later in exile, the criminals beside Jesus, and followers who walk along grieving because they cannot yet see the resurrection clearly. The show is gentle, but not thin. Good Friday brings beatings, mockery, betrayal, crucifixion, and the hard prayer of forgiveness into plain view. Easter brings hope, but not as decoration. It becomes a daily responsibility. The speaker keeps returning to the idea that people may understand Jesus through the examples they see in ordinary believers. That gives the show its pressure. Sermons and worship matter, but conduct matters too. Love, speech, sacrifice, patience, and mercy are treated as visible evidence of faith. The pacing is measured and cumulative. A point may circle back several times before it lands, and that circling is part of the texture rather than a flaw. The humor softens the room without making the subject small. The doctrine is accessible. The emotional center is pastoral: people are hurting, distracted, afraid, hopeful, forgiven, and called anyway. Listeners looking for polished studio religion may find it too loose. Listeners who want biblical teaching that still sounds like somebody standing before a congregation, thinking aloud, laughing at himself, and then pressing toward conviction will know where they are.
Made for: Best for Christians and church-curious listeners who want accessible biblical teaching with warmth, humor, and direct life application. It especially suits people who like sermons that keep the small human details in view.
What sets it apart: The show’s strength is its lived-in pulpit feel: scripture, local church texture, gentle jokes, and serious calls to everyday faith all stay in the same frame. It turns ordinary scenes into moral pressure without losing warmth.
All Things New is a podcast about...all things...in a new way. I won't necessarily be reinventing the wheel, but I will be presenting each episode in a real way. There will be messages about faith, love, hope, depression...episodes about pop culture and literature, even sports...and more, as it comes up. Subscribe and leave 5 stars!
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Biblical supporting figures become guides to courage, compassion, forgiveness, and everyday Christian witness in Jeff Ackenback's conversational sermons.
Jeff Ackenback turns biblical figures near the edges of familiar stories into direct lessons about Christian life. These sermons move from Joseph of Arimathea, Mary, John, and the criminals at the crucifixion toward questions of courage, compassion, forgiveness, and living…
Jeff Ackenback turns Joseph's tomb into a question about the small courage you've been putting off.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A Lenten reflection on recognizing grace at the cross and living it in ordinary conduct.
This Lenten reflection frames the cross as a place where grace has to be recognized at its most costly, beginning with Jesus and the two criminals beside him.
John's witness at the cross carries through exile, prayer, and a voice after 60 years.
The message stays anchored in John at the cross, first holding Mary's grief and then widening to John's long life of witness. It keeps returning to the detail that he was the one disciple there, and it traces that calling onward through exile, prison labor, worship on the Lord's…
A patient sermon on witness, calling, and changed living centers John as a model for the whole life.
The piece traces John from the cross into Revelation and keeps its attention on steadfast witness, calling, and a life formed by seeing and speaking for Christ.
A pastoral sermon on Mary at the cross that turns Jesus' suffering into a call to meet others' pain with love.
Mary's place at the cross gives this sermon its emotional center, as Jesus' suffering becomes a way to consider what she may have carried in that moment.
A quiet burial becomes a sermon on courage, risk, and the spiritual weight of small choices.
Joseph of Arimathea becomes the episode's quiet center of gravity: a study in courage that does not announce itself, but still carries real risk.
A plainspoken Christmas sermon finds its warmth in shepherds, strips of cloth, and the daily work of grace.
This PlayNext single-episode review frames a familiar Christmas message as something more grounded than seasonal nostalgia. It follows the host as he moves from Luke's plain account of Jesus' birth to the wider scene of Augustus, Herod, and a child laid in a manger.
A pastoral Advent sermon weighs Christmas expectation against hope, grief, taxes, and faith.
Christmas comes in by way of Advent rather than nostalgia, with the sermon placing 12-year-old Jesus and prophecy beside ordinary seasonal expectations.

Two Bible translators unpack Scripture's hardest passages, from Revelation's 666 to the Witch of Endor.
Live sermons with Easter-shaped urgency.




Jeff Ackenback delivers a Christmas Eve sermon at Richmond First, re-examining the familiar nativity story through a fresh lens.
This episode explores the character of Pontius Pilate during Jesus' trials, examining his ruthless pursuit of power and indifference to morality in the context of the Easter story.
This episode reflects on the Easter resurrection story from the Gospel of John, emphasizing Jesus' appearance to Mary Magdalene and the profound love and salvation he offered.
A preacher reflects on accidentally recording parts of a church service and transitions into discussing the biblical story of Peter's struggles during Lent and Easter.
This sermon reflects on Peter's experiences during Lent, including his denial of Jesus and the emotional aftermath, as part of a wrap-up to the Lent series.
This episode introduces a new series on revival, focusing on the biblical figure Saul (later Paul), a Pharisee who persecuted Christians before his transformation.
Pastor Jeff Ackenback delivers a sermon titled 'Centerville: Anticipation (Gifted, Week 2)' on December 7, 2025.
Ackenback finishes his Revelation series with Chapter 10, the interlude between the sixth and seventh trumpets, which he reads as a pause giving people 'one more chance.' He argues the mighty angel is probably not Jesus because John, who knew Jesus' voice, never calls him that elsewhere.
A pastor shares personal anecdotes about children in church to illustrate the importance of childlike faith and announces an upcoming sermon series on this theme.
This episode transitions from discussing fantasy football plans to a sermon about Jesus' final teachings to his disciples after the resurrection, emphasizing the importance of the Holy Spirit and the church.
This Easter sermon explores Jesus' post-resurrection teaching through the story of two followers on the road to Mass, focusing on his actions and expectations for believers.
This episode explores Mary's emotional experience at Jesus' empty tomb, focusing on her feelings of loss and confusion contrasted with the disciples' hopeful realization.
This Easter episode explores Jesus' story through scripture, focusing on his post-resurrection teachings and interactions with followers who were struggling with doubt and hurt.
All Things New with Jeff Ackenback centers Good Friday 2026 on the criminal beside Jesus and calls that man the Bible’s only recorded deathbed conversion.
The host starts with a Sonic the Hedgehog toy and moves straight to John at the cross.
The sermon opens with John as the disciple who stayed at the cross.
Mary is at the cross.
The sermon opens with Joseph of Arimathea and asks what his risk shows about faith when staying quiet is no longer enough.