Philip Amerson [00:00:01]:

Greetings, everyone. This is Phil Amerson with a To Be and Do podcast. You know, a lot of people may not know that there's someone behind the microphone and behind the screen that helps us do these podcasts, and it's the Reverend Dr. Brad Miller. Brad's a retired United Methodist clergy person, but he's far from retired. He's involved in many, many minutes. And Brad, welcome. It's good to talk with you today.

Reverend Dr. Brad Miller [00:00:33]:

Awesome to be with you, Phil. It's been an incredible joy to work with you here on the To Be and Do podcast and what a privilege to have this conversation today.

Philip Amerson [00:00:43]:

Well, why don't you tell people a little bit about the multiple podcast work you're already doing. I know you have something on, on cancer and recovery and laughter and you have something on devote daily devotionals. Share what you're already doing.

Reverend Dr. Brad Miller [00:01:00]:

Well, I'll, I'll just kind of set the scene for it, to set context for it just a little bit. I've. Okay, I'm a re, as you mentioned, retired United Methodist clergy. But throughout my, throughout my ministry, 43 years of ministry, I've been retired for about five years now, I was also involved with radio media. A lot of. I was involved with radio and local communities where I was at. And I actually did that all the way back, all the way back to high school, actually. And in college at University of Evansville, I was on the campus radio there, enjoyed, they always enjoyed that.

Reverend Dr. Brad Miller [00:01:32]:

And wherever I kind of landed at, in small towns, what have you, I would often go talk to the local radio station and do some sort of programming, sometimes cut a commercial and sometimes do some sort of a devotional show of some sort. And fast forward quite a few years later. And then I the opportunity of podcasting came along and I saw it as a kind of a hobby, kind of a thing to do over the last. I started in 2012 and I actually started it with my, my son when it back in 2012 was this captain of his local high school lacrosse team. And so I did a kind of a coaches show thing for interview players and so on. I had a lot of fun with that and decided to lean into it. So I just decided to create some other podcasts having to do with our, our denominator United Methodist churches in Indiana and some of my other thoughts about helping people overcome adversity. And so, but eventually it led me, when I retired, I leaned into it a little bit more five years ago and two or three areas I just decided this is something I really wanted to do in retirement.

Reverend Dr. Brad Miller [00:02:40]:

You know, some people go play a lot of golf and some people go, you know, get a part time job or whatever or become a substitute teacher. So on, this is what I wanted to do. And so at about that time, kind of a new opportunity came in my life in a odd sort of a way. I was diagnosed with cancer a month after I had retired. And, and so that got me in my mind, okay, this is something for me to do a podcast about. And so I, in, in kind of my preparation for that or my recovery time, I came across a scripture in my kind of personal devotional life and tried to sort out what that was all about for me. And actually it was, it was from Proverbs. It was from Proverbs 17:22.

Reverend Dr. Brad Miller [00:03:33]:

It says, A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a downcast spirit dries up the bones. And my spirit was pretty downcast. It was, you know, get diagnosed with cancer. My wife and I had plans for travel and all kinds of stuff, and my spirit was kind of downcast, but I saw that scripture. But a cheerful heart is good medicine. And so I met a, met a person at a podcast at a podcasting conference who I was. Prostate cancer is what I dealt with. And I met a woman who was dealing with breast cancer.

Reverend Dr. Brad Miller [00:04:03]:

And she and I had a similar attitude about taking a positive approach. And we teamed together to create a podcast that we launched about three years ago called Cancer and Comedy, which is trying to take this whole concept of putting a little lighter, look, what's called therapeutic humor onto the topic of cancer. And so we've leaned into that ever since. We've done about 120, I think we published our 130th episode, will go out tomorrow of that. We. And we've had a lot of fun with that. We've talked with doctors and comedians and mental health professionals and a lot of conversations with ourselves. And we've put out a little good content on a weekly basis called Cancer and comedy@cancer comedy.com and then we better be able to help people, basically, people who like us, like my co host Deb and I, who have had this transition, I guess it were, of seeing things, you know, try to see the positive side of things, try to see a way that a cheerful heart can be a positive thing.

Reverend Dr. Brad Miller [00:05:08]:

So when we say cancer and comedy, it's not always about, you know, just giggles and laughs. It's not about that. It's about, you know, having an attitude of being positive. And certainly this, the spiritual element is a big, huge part of that. So every episode of cancer and comedy. I have not only the conversation we have or the interview, we also have a devotional moment. I call it faith. It'll break it as a part of that.

Reverend Dr. Brad Miller [00:05:32]:

So I'm able to get my kind of my preaching jones on a little bit there, a little bit with that. And so we basically serve people who

Philip Amerson [00:05:39]:

wanted to, to tune in, they could find it how?

Reverend Dr. Brad Miller [00:05:45]:

Just go to our website, cancer and comedy.com and that's pretty much it. Just go to that website and you'll find it. It's also on Apple and Spotify and you just type in those phrases cancer and comedy.com and you'll find it. It's on the website. It's on YouTube and Apple Spotify the place, same places that that are that your podcast is on as well. And so anyhow, we've leaned into that and we also. A part of that then is we've done some other things. We've done.

Reverend Dr. Brad Miller [00:06:16]:

We did a live comedy event to raise money, cancer charitable comedy event, which we did to raise money for cancer. We raised a fair amount of money for that. And we've leaned into this world a little bit of cancer. Basically the approach we have is a lot of people, when they get the word about cancer or other adversities, they're in a confused state. We call it the insane state, where your mind is just a cloud and you're just a mess. Any adversity can do that. And we sometimes use the metaphor of cancer to anything that eats you alive, you know, mentally, relationship wise. But we kind of focus on the physical cancer and we help people then to get a perspective on it, to help them to, you know, live the rest of their life to the fullest.

Reverend Dr. Brad Miller [00:07:03]:

And so it goes along with one of my other life verses, which is John 10:10, you know, the thief comes and steal your life and I've come to give you life to the fullest. And so I leaned into that. And then, so that's one podcast that I do personally. And then also around the time I retired in 2022, around that time in 2022 is when I retired as well. I was also thinking about, okay, I. I'm no longer to be preaching on a regular basis, but I do, I do have an interest in kind of scratching my preaching itch and my ex, my. My biblical studies itch. And I also needed to.

Reverend Dr. Brad Miller [00:07:43]:

Knew I had, I needed to do some personal discipline just on my own Bible reading and so on. And so I decided to do a daily Bible reading devotional podcast which is called The Daily Bible Refresh. I started that in January of 2022 and for the most part it's been a daily podcast where I call it, where we have a Read the Bible which, where it is understandable, we use the message version of the Bible. We like to call it relatable because I give at least two points to ponder my own interpretation from a progressive perspective on the scriptures. And then for also to be applicable, we give an action step for people to take. And we also provide a downloadable daily Bible study guide which we call the ABC 1, 2, 3 Bible Study Guide, which gives people a daily way to read the scriptures. And we also saw that as a way to give a little bit of a. And I, I give my own take on scriptures.

Reverend Dr. Brad Miller [00:08:47]:

So it's a daily, you know, hey, you're a seminary president. And I remember from one of my seminary classes at Gary Evangelical where they would say exegete the text, right? So, so I try to do that on a kind of a daily basis. And that's my daily itch from my. It's really for myself, my own spiritual development. But I put it out there and we've done. I think today was episode number 1206 went up. Oh my today. So every.

Reverend Dr. Brad Miller [00:09:16]:

So every day at 6am that goes up and so so people can tune into that if they like. The website for that is voiceofgod daily.com and then it's also. They could also find it a daily Bible refresh. So that's the personal discipline. But I certainly have got a lot of feedback on that as well. And so that's the second one that I do. Those are two primary ones I do. And then I do just for fun, fail the Christmas time.

Reverend Dr. Brad Miller [00:09:42]:

I do a Santa Claus one from November from Thanks from because I kind of look like Santa Claus. My granddaughter said I look like Santa Claus a few years ago. And so I do a. From Thanksgiving Day to Christmas Day. And the theme of that one is to be good. So I just put it out there and I give people from all over the world to tune into that podcast, believe it or not. And I get probably more, more actual downloads and such on that one. I do anything else and you know, just read a little Christmas story and have a, have a message, you know, kind of a value driven message to be good for goodness sake.

Reverend Dr. Brad Miller [00:10:16]:

So that's the three that I do. And I also kind of teach podcasting and I do, I produce podcasts for you and some other folks to help them get what I call meaningful. I call it my call My little group I work with, I'll call it Meaningful Media because that's what I personally want to be involved with, is people are putting out a positive message. I have. Don't see anything really wrong with. People just want to have fun and kind of, you know, shoot the breeze with their friends or whatever. Doing a podcast. But the podcast I want to do are ones biblical studies for one.

Reverend Dr. Brad Miller [00:10:47]:

Cancer coping. It's all about coping is our basic cancer one. And the Santa Claus one is just be good for goodness sakes. And then of course, folks like yourself, you know, who just have the message to be and to do and to, you know, deal with all kinds of issues that I advocate because that's what I want to do because I'm retired and I really want to lean into what I really want to do that adds value, meaning not only to my life, but to others. And I'm sorry I talked too long there, my friend, but I just wanted to share.

Philip Amerson [00:11:17]:

That's okay. Well, you know, one of the things I admire, Brad, is, is your ministry was full of inventive, creative, really at the edge, often in terms of things you were doing. But your vocation has continued to emerge. And it didn't stop when you moved to a new church. It would start over again or when you retired. So what do you think is behind that ability to. To continue to create?

Reverend Dr. Brad Miller [00:11:49]:

What drives me, Phil, is life transformation. And I actually got my DMin in Transformational Leadership from. From Ashland Seminary several years after I got my M. Div. And because I really have jazzed in the local. Both the local church setting interpersonally, by people who've been transformed from whatever their prior situation was. They could be, you know, really down and out and messed up, either lifestyle or, you know, spiritual, whatever. And if they've had a transformation, I see some good things happening there.

Reverend Dr. Brad Miller [00:12:25]:

And oftentimes I saw that happening on the. On when people were taking a bit of a risk, when people were reaching out to people unlike them in some sort of a way. And I was really touched by people and by situations that were the innovation type of things, touch certain people. By innovation, I mean I was among the first churches that had a Christian rock band in the late 80s. And in the churches I served and used, I had church in a movie theater for a while. We had to put this. This is 35 years ago, and put the. Put visuals up on the big screen of the movie theater, all those things just to try to relate to where people were really at, you know, with whether it's music or visuals or things of that nature.

Reverend Dr. Brad Miller [00:13:16]:

And certainly then make the Gospels relevant by, you know, preaching and teaching the parables and other things in such a way that it was relevant to people in order to reach some, you know, like Paul said, to be, you know, to be all thanks to all people to reach some. So that kind of took that seriously. I saw, I saw that in my church planting days and trying to do innovative things in every church I was at in terms of creating something. Also I use, I kind of have the philosophy that new people are attracted to new things. So they established worship experiences. They do great and what they do. But many times their main purpose was to nurture the already, you know, they're already churched people. And if it's doing that, well, yeah, God, more power to it.

Reverend Dr. Brad Miller [00:14:02]:

But, but I saw it so as an add on that we could do add on something to do something else. So many of the churches I was at, we would add a contemporary service or some sort of innovative Bible study or some sort of a group that did something of an innovative nature to try to reach some. And some were more successful than others. You take a risk. Some things work and sometimes they don't. But I'm just stubborn enough and I guess dumb enough to keep trying stuff.

Philip Amerson [00:14:32]:

Well, I think we're in. We're members of the same party, the same team. This has been Brad Miller, who is retired United Methodist clergy, but he's not retired really. He's doing so much among those things, he, he helps produce our little podcast. Brad, thank you so much for your ministry and thank you for the ways you take even challenges like cancer and turn them in to gifts for other people. So God bless. This is Phil Amerson with the Belonging Exchange to be and do podcast with Dr. Brad Miller.