Bible teaching with a church-family pulse.
Ethos Church | Marathon records sermons and pastoral conversations shaped by Scripture, worship, confession, and church-family life. The tone is earnest and conversational, moving from biblical texts into ordinary decisions about mercy, love, fasting, and attention to neighbors.
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Ethos Church | Marathon documents the teaching life of a church campus through sermons, pastoral reflection, and occasional conversation. The center of gravity is Sunday Scripture. Matthew, 1 John, 2 Corinthians, Exodus, and teachings on the Holy Spirit are handled with a practical concern for how belief becomes action. The tone is warm but not vague. Speakers tell stories about marriage, hiking, parenting, hidden sin, cultural flashpoints, church transitions, and the awkward resistance people feel around spiritual practices. Then they keep returning to the same core question: what would faithfulness look like this week? Community matters here. One episode pauses to honor house church leaders, worship contributors, and years of gathering at Marathon Music Works before looking toward a new chapter. Other episodes end with communion, prayer, worship, or an invitation to respond with people nearby. The feed often sounds like a congregation being formed in public. It is not only explaining Christian ideas; it is asking a local church to practice mercy, confession, love, fasting, and attentiveness together. The prayer-and-fasting episodes widen the format. Joshua frames Awaken as a fast and speaks in a candid, ordinary register about expectations, resistance, and long-term spiritual fruit. Conversations with people from Ethos make fasting feel less like a dramatic performance and more like a shared practice with physical, mental, spiritual, and communal dimensions. The preaching is sometimes loose and immediate, with speakers naming their own limits in the moment. That gives the show a lived-in quality. It works best for listeners who appreciate church teaching that connects biblical exposition to daily habits, congregational memory, and the small decisions through which faith becomes visible.
Made for: For Christians, churchgoers, and spiritually curious listeners who want Scripture-centered teaching tied to ordinary practices. It especially suits people drawn to sermons about prayer, fasting, mercy, love, repentance, and life in a local congregation.
What sets it apart: The show’s strength is its sense of place: Marathon’s worship gatherings, house churches, communion, prayer, and major transitions all shape the teaching. It feels less like detached religious commentary and more like a church family thinking aloud before God.
Weekly teachings from the Marathon campus of Ethos Church in Nashville.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Scripture, prayer, and congregational practice meet in teaching that presses Christian belief toward mercy, love, confession, and daily response.
Ethos Church | Marathon turns biblical teaching toward the habits and relationships of congregational life. Sermons move from passages in Matthew, 2 Corinthians, and 1 John into questions of mercy, anxiety, confession, love, and attentiveness to the Holy Spirit.
Fasting gets the Roth IRA treatment here, for anyone whose resolve fades before two o'clock.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Ethos Church thanks its people and prays for newcomers at its final Sunday in this chapter at Marathon.
Ethos Church spends its last Sunday in this chapter at Marathon Music Works looking back on ten years of gathering there. Campus pastor Andrew Smith recalls the church family's shared life, then makes room to thank the people who helped sustain it.
A sermon on hidden sin, spiritual sight and conversation over communion.
This sermon on 2 Corinthians 4 begins with a memory of hiding a sin in high school and fearing that others would find out. The preacher uses that fear to explain why confession can feel so hard, and why bringing a secret into the light can bring relief and new life.
A Matthew 12 sermon asks listeners to learn someone's story before judging them.
Starting in Matthew 12, this sermon asks listeners to consider what they might learn before deciding what to think of someone. The preacher begins with Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars, then turns to the people listeners meet in daily life.
A candid sermon asks how followers of Jesus respond to the Holy Spirit's guidance.
The preacher frames grieving the Holy Spirit through an ordinary question: what happens when someone receives a gift and then ignores it? He asks followers of Jesus to consider whether they listen to the Spirit each day, seek that guidance only now and then, or resist it.
A sermon on 1 John asks what love looks like in the life of a church.
The preacher begins with George Whitfield's answer to a question about the success of an outreach: they would find out in six months. It gives this sermon on 1 John a useful test. If love has taken hold, what will people do for one another?
Joshua considers fasting, delayed spiritual rewards and the expectations that can make starting hard.
Dinner plans have a way of making fasting feel less simple than it sounds. Joshua, a pastor at Ethos Church, speaks to that resistance as the church prepares for Awaken, its annual month of prayer and fasting. He also addresses the hope for a quick spiritual breakthrough.
Two Bible translators unpack Scripture's hardest passages, from Revelation's 666 to the Witch of Endor.
Scripture, surrender and faith put into practice.
Ethos Church | Marathon centers on "our last Sunday" at Marathon Music Works, with Andrew Smith and Brandon Steele marking 10 years of ministry, baptisms, grief, and shared meals.
Brandon traces 2 Corinthians 4 from Paul’s ministry "through God's mercy" to the repeated command, "we do not lose heart." He uses a Smokies hiking trip, Paul’s missionary journeys, and the phrase "jars of clay" to show why weakness does not cancel purpose.
Matthew 12 is framed through Jesus' words, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice," after the Sabbath grain dispute and the healing of the man with the shriveled hand.
Ethos Church | Marathon's "Grieving the Spirit" sermon uses Christmas gifts, a table saw, and college clippers to explain how people receive the Holy Spirit.
Ethos Church | Marathon centers on 1 John 3:16, 1 John 4:19-21, and John 15:9-13 to define love as the measure of Christian maturity.
A pastor prepares the congregation for a season of prayer and fasting, discussing the heart and practical plan for the spiritual practice.
A pastor discusses the spiritual practice of fasting with church members, sharing personal experiences and encouraging listeners to view fasting as a gift.
A pastor leads a prayer and introduces a season of prayer and fasting called Awaken at Ethos Church.
A pastor shares a personal story of feeling overwhelmed and uses a cave metaphor to illustrate spiritual disorientation.