The Hopcast

Laura Buffington, Benjamin Lee

71 episodes listed below

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Patient preaching for wounded hope.

The gist

The Hopcast carries the weekly teaching voice of Hopwood Christian Church, where Scripture is read through ordinary grief, hunger, humor, and hope. Its sermons move slowly and pastorally, returning again and again to Jesus as present in wounds, bread, wilderness, and resurrection.

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About The Hopcast

The Hopcast is a preaching-centered feed from Hopwood Christian Church in East Tennessee. It sounds rooted in a particular place. The repeated frame is a worshiping community in the mountains, near Buffalo Creek, beside a college and a seminary. From there, the preaching turns toward Scripture with patience and moral seriousness. These are not clipped devotional thoughts. They are extended reflections that let a biblical scene gather weight through memory, image, humor, and pastoral application. The road to Emmaus becomes a way to speak about doubt, broken hope, and the strange mercy of recognizing Jesus only in retrospect. Thomas and the risen Christ become a meditation on wounds, forgiveness, and a church formed less by bluster than by love. Easter morning is allowed to stay confusing. Mary’s grief at the tomb is treated as deeply human, not as a problem to be solved too quickly. Lent brings its own slow work. Samuel learning to see beyond appearance, the blind man receiving sight, Jesus in the wilderness, and the ache for a joyful life all become invitations to examine how people look, want, judge, and hope. The show has a gentle cadence, but it is not sentimental. It can talk about death, shame, temptation, scars, sin, and fear while still keeping its center in resurrection and repair. The language is accessible. The thinking is layered. Everyday references matter here: a painting by Caravaggio, a rom-com poster, a donut, a tambourine, a shovel, a watering can in a cemetery. Those images are not decorations. They are the bridges by which the sermons move between ancient texts and ordinary lives. Laura and Ben are named as co-pastors, and the feed also makes room for other community voices. The Hopcast will fit listeners who want Christian teaching that feels lived rather than packaged. It asks for attention. It rewards it with preaching that treats doubt, grief, worship, and hope as parts of the same journey toward Christ.

Made for: The Hopcast is for Christians and church-adjacent listeners who want lectionary preaching with room for doubt, grief, Scripture, humor, and slow reflection. It especially suits people drawn to pastoral teaching rather than fast commentary.

What sets it apart: Its strength is the way local church worship, biblical interpretation, and ordinary images keep touching the same spiritual question from different angles. The sermons feel place-based and communal, not generic, with East Tennessee, table fellowship, hymns, and shared life shaping the theology.

In their own words

Listen in to the preaching of Hopwood Christian Church in East Tennessee. We believe in the importance of words spoken and lived in community. Our hope is that these words will sound like grace and that they will start conversations rather than finish them. Learn more at hopwoodcc.org.

As heard by us

Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026

The Hopcast joins biblical interpretation to moral attention, asking how worship reshapes desire, memory, relationships and public life.

The Hopcast carries sermons from Laura, Ben and other voices within a worshipping community in East Tennessee. Biblical interpretation stays close to lived experience: temptation becomes a question of desire, Habakkuk prompts reflection on memory and moral imagination, and…

Read our full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Soggy zucchini meets prophetic imagination, and somehow you leave examining what moves you.

Press play if you want

biblical prophecy to challenge the political stories shaping what you see
a faith that examines resentment and ego before assigning all the trouble to somebody else

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

lectionary preachingLent and Easterresurrection and woundsdoubt and recognitiontable fellowshipseeing with God's eyestemptation and desiregrief and hope

Talks about

Religion & Spirituality Christianity

Best episodes of The Hopcast

Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.

Lent Week 1: Jesus in the WildernessFeb 24, 2026

A wilderness sermon that gives real spiritual weight to Auntie Ruth's Donuts.

The Hopcast frames Jesus' wilderness testing through desire, arguing that the temptations matter because Jesus truly wants what they seem to promise.

Hold to God's HandNov 19, 2025

Pilate, prison cells, and a hymn carry the episode toward one steady point.

The episode moves through the political world of Jesus' day with Pilate, poor widows denied justice, illegal executions, confiscated public funds, and arrest without habeas corpus.

Write the VisionNov 5, 2025

A sermon on memory, justice, and a community learning to live into what God is revealing.

The Hopcast folds a runner's memory into a sermon on Habakkuk, prophetic imagination, and the moral work of remembering. It treats memory as a discipline rather than a reflex, linking worship, the table, and a community learning to live into what God is revealing.

Hearts that are MovedOct 22, 2025

A measured sermon on what steers the heart, and what follows from it.

This episode stays close to the heart, treating resentment, ego, and self-protective righteousness as forces that quietly shape thought, speech, and action.

What do you see?Sep 23, 2025

A patient sermon on seeing other people and the world through God's eyes.

This Hopcast sermon asks how to see other people and the world from God’s point of view. It moves through the prophets and Revelation to show how Scripture can shape the present, while staying rooted in a community that prays, sings, eats, and worships together.

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Find your next episode

About The Hopcast

In their own words

As heard by us

Why you'd press play

Talks about

Best episodes of The Hopcast

Podcasts like The Hopcast

Episodes

Where two or more are gathered

Forgiveness

Seeking the good

Holding each other

When Things Get Stormy

Wrestling with God

Hidden Things

Let Them Both Grow Together

Generous Farming & Growing Anyway

An Easy Yoke?

One Cup of Water at a Time

The God Who Began a Good Work...

The God Who Makes Us Laugh in Disbelief

The God Who Sees

Trinity Sunday

Pentecost Sunday

Resurrection Community

Stephen's Sermon--The 5th Sunday of Easter

Descending and Ascending in Glory

Shepherding and Sheep Shearing

The Road to Emmaus

Resurrection Wounds

Palm Sunday

Easter Sunday

Lent Week 4: Looking Upon Others with God's Eyes

Lent Week 3: Thirst for a Joyful Life

Lent Week 2: Loving the World with God

Lent Week 1: Jesus in the Wilderness

Merry Transfiguration Sunday

The Wisdom of God

The Foolishness of God

Telling Our Story with Jesus

Baptism of Christ Sunday

Epiphany

Christmastide

Advent 4: Love

Advent 3: Bringing the Joy

Advent 2: Peace

Advent 1: Exercising Our Hope Muscles

Reign of Christ Sunday

Hold to God's Hand

God of the Living

Write the Vision

Time Travel with Joel

Hearts that are Moved

When the future is uncertain

What's this praise doing in all this lament?

Hope Loophole

What do you see?

These things are just mostly dead

Broken Cisterns or Vessels of Living Water

Primary Wonder

"I Know You"

Broken Vineyard

Bottom Up Justice

Alive Together With Christ

All in All

Image of the Invisible

Prayer Working?

Burden Bearing Love

Hungering for the Fruit

The Space Between

Justified, At Peace, and Loved

Being One through Disruption

Drawing Near to the "Other"

Stand Up

Belonging to God (Pentecost)

Prayer Like a River

Real, Not Final

Hands Out Forgiveness

The Nonsense of the Resurrection (Easter 2025)