Church life, off-script and up close.
Backstage With The Simple Church turns weekly church life into a candid after-the-service conversation. Banter about energy drinks, fuzzy cameras, concerts, and mustard sits beside practical talk about communion, Easter logistics, serving, foster care, and what belief looks like when it has to become action.
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Backstage With The Simple Church is a weekly look at church life that keeps the backstage part literal. The conversations start loose. Someone is late, a camera is fuzzy, a producer has pulled up a video, or the room is still recovering from Easter weekend. Then the show gradually finds its way into the deeper work of ministry. Communion, baptism, Sunday messages, volunteer needs, background checks, live streams, worship choices, and holiday services all become part of the same conversation. The tone is warm and scrappy. It is comfortable joking about Monster cans, mustard, snakes, attack giraffes, old bands, and road-trip technology before pivoting into foster care, child poverty, difficult circumstances, or what it means to actually do good. Music gives the show a recurring pulse. Hymns, country songs, Christian radio, Audio Adrenaline, For King & Country, Mumford & Sons, Ronnie Dunn, Trisha Yearwood, Kendrick Lamar, Shanana, and Donny Osmond all appear as ways to talk about memory, region, faith, and generational taste. The show also carries a strong local texture. Bossier City, Easter services, Do Good store shirts, Monday live comments, and church volunteers are not background details; they are the material of the show. Its best moments happen when ordinary errands and offhand jokes turn into a practical ministry point. Nothing feels overly polished. That is part of the appeal. The format leaves room for interruptions, listener comments, inside jokes, and sudden sincerity. It can sound silly for several minutes, then land hard on personal responsibility, service, and belief. The result is a conversational church-leadership show for people who want the real machinery of a congregation, not only the finished Sunday message.
Made for: For Simple Church listeners, ministry volunteers, church staff, and curious Christians who enjoy candid conversation about how Sunday messages, events, music, and service actually come together.
What sets it apart: Its strength is the mix: backstage logistics, local humor, live-audience energy, and practical faith talk all happen in the same breath. The show lets ordinary stories stay messy long enough to become useful.
A weekly Backstage look at what’s happening with the Simple Church in Bossier City, LA. Subscribe for interviews, fun surprises, and more.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Church leadership becomes practical organizational work through candid conversations about staffing, volunteers, community needs, personal responsibility, and culture.
Backstage With The Simple Church turns the working life of the Simple Church into an informal roundtable. Evan Semenko, co-host Josh Mitchell, lead pastor Justin Hagler, and producer Jordan move from belief and worship to staffing, volunteer coordination, community service, and…
An Easter debrief comes with attack giraffes; you can decide if that sounds like your people.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A relaxed church conversation finds its best material in civic service, inherited songs, and the daily work behind public ministry.
The episode is most interested in how a church's public life is built through ordinary service. With Josh away at a Youth Pastor Summit in Dallas, Jordan and Justin Hagler begin with a day spent helping hire a chaplain for the Bossier City Fire Department, then drift into music,…
A tired Easter staff meeting becomes a candid backstage look at church production, volunteer work, and community banter.
PlayNext frames Easter as a backstage operations story, following a long weekend through a staff meeting, a podcast taping, and the volunteers who helped make the church's Easter happen.
A practical church conversation about turning concern into time, money, and service.
The episode frames a church question as something more practical than abstract: where food, time, and money are actually going when the needs are hunger, foster care, and poverty.
A minister talks candidly about distractions, gratitude, and the quiet of his drive to work.
In this Backstage conversation, a minister admits he often sees himself in the nine who did not return to thank Jesus, rather than the one who did. Fantasy football, the news, and getting kids where they need to be can fill an ordinary day before gratitude gets a moment.
Spud Wilson discusses Simple Church's snack bags and the school visits that started the backpack food program.
A twice-yearly effort to pack snack bags at Simple Church's Boardwalk space anchors this conversation with Spud Wilson. He traces the backpack food program to visits with schools and talks with counselors and principals.
Two Bible translators unpack Scripture's hardest passages, from Revelation's 666 to the Witch of Endor.
Live sermons with Easter-shaped urgency.
Justin and Angie Haigler discuss the 12-year anniversary of the Do Good Store and their recent trip to New York City.
Josh and Justin Haigler discuss the challenge of maintaining gratitude in a busy, noisy world.
A live podcast episode recapping a sermon, with casual banter about Star Wars and church updates.
Evan and Josh discuss last week's episode about sermon prep and tragedies, and Josh's call to Jordan Wise.
Spud Wilson, known as Spud the Ice Cream Man, joins the Backstage podcast to discuss his role in Simple Church's community outreach.
No Josh today.
Everybody sounds a little worn out.
Backstage With The Simple Church opens with Evan Semenko and Josh Mitchell doing a blind taste test on White Monster cans with silver and white tops, then arguing over which one tastes better.
The hosts discuss issues with background checks at an Easter volunteer meeting and plans for a reunion show.
The hosts discuss behind-the-scenes aspects of their church podcast, including technical issues, live audience engagement, and music choices for their services.
Justin Haigler uses The Simple Church backstage conversation to connect Easter invitations, kingdom priority, and what he calls being "fuzzy".
Evan Semenko and Josh Mitchell press Justin Haigler on a research-heavy argument from Backstage With The Simple Church about knowledge versus action.
The hosts introduce a re-released interview with the Christian band Audio Adrenaline, sharing personal memories and setting up the episode.
Part 2 of a 2013 interview with the band For King and Country, discussing their album Crave and the theme of hope amidst trials.