Parenting has its challenges in every generation. But some would argue that the onslaught of things pushing on families today is unrivaled in history. From the pace of life, dual incomes, cell phones and the media culture it is a challenge to stay focused on the job at hand. To give us some thoughts based on years of walking with kids and families, Seth Fitzsimmons, principal of a large Lutheran elementary grade school (St. Paul’s), joins us to talk about some of the challenges and some of the o...
Jun 04, 2025•56 min
We continue our conversation from last week with Dr. Brandon Steenbock especially looking at the topic of Marriage Skills that would be really helpful for us to have, but that oftentimes… we never learned. Building on our conversation from the week before, we will continue to talk about three more skills that are very helpful as couples learn to better navigate the challenges that come in our marriages. It is a great listen for all of those who are dating and engaged or hoping to one day be marr...
May 28, 2025•41 min
If you’re not married yet, you’ve likely got some ideas of how things will go. If you’ve been married, you know that many of those ideas and plans you had didn’t go exactly to plan. We’re joined by Dr. Brandon Steenbock, Staff Minister at St. Mark Ministries and an advisor to married couples and young people getting married for over a decade. In this episode we will talk about some of the challenges that married people are facing today that might be a bit different from a few decades ago. We wil...
May 21, 2025•53 min
“Say thank you for the ideas that you don’t have time for today, because a time may come…” Author and retired teacher Carol Kolosovsky joins us on the podcast to talk about become an author and the journey that has led her to continue to write into her 70s. Not only will you hear about her story of how she got here, but Carol shares wisdom from a life that has loved her Savior well. If you’ve ever been tempted to give up on your dreams, or if you’ve thought you’re too old to pursue them, you’ll ...
May 14, 2025•56 min
“If you want to change the culture, entertain it!” Story takes us someplace and all effective communication ultimately comes down to story. Our guest this week is author and professor Dr. Mark Paustian who will be talking about the power of a 2 minute story around a single truth and how we can use communication theory to share our faith and help people connect more deeply to Jesus. As the discussion winds down we hope you might consider a few questions: What is your favorite Bible story? Why tha...
May 07, 2025•47 min
Have you considered how your life, family or place of employment is built? This week, we are joined by President and Principal of Kingdom Prep Lutheran High School Mr. Kevin Festerling to talk about a high school experience that is building up young men to transform their communities and families. You will hear Kevin talk about the Pillars and Goals of the KP experience along with the challenges and opportunities of teen boys in a larger urban context. What does it look like to build a brotherho...
Apr 30, 2025•47 min
For the past 20 years or so, our culture has been waking up to the impact and power of meditation and the Bible actually has a lot to tell us about that. This week we are joined by Staff Minister Jonathon Favorite of 922 ministries and we'll spend some time talking about his ministry resource called "Favorite Meditations". It is a guided meditation through portions of the psalms that anyone can participate in. In addition we will talk about the potential for Online community and online church an...
Apr 23, 2025•46 min
As we kick off the new season of Great Questions, Great Conversations, Mike Westendorf sits down to talk with Pastor Pete Panitzke about the sequence of events between Palm Sunday and Jesus Resurrection Easter morning. Along the way in this conversation we will talk about some translation challenges that show up in the timeline, the topography of the area and the question of how many days. We hope this can be a helpful listen as you prepare to walk through Holy Week in your worship and personal ...
Apr 09, 2025•1 hr
Episode 40 covered the ins and outs of what Followership is and in this week's episode we will take a look at how it can be applied. Our guest is Prof. Don Kudek of Wisconsin Lutheran College who has spent a large part of his career studying the role of followers and the importance and benefit of training people to be better followers. As we'll see, a better follower requires leaders to lead with greater emotional intelligence that looks remarkably like the Bible's description of servant leaders...
Sep 18, 2024•34 min
Millions of dollars are spent every year in our country to developing develop better leaders. And yet, even if you are a leader, you spend much of your time following. In some estimates, 80% of the successful outcome is dependent on the work of the followers. So the question becomes, what is being done to develop better followers? Especially when many people in organizations aren't trying to be a leader, but enjoy supporting the purpose of the organization and satisfaction that comes when doing ...
Sep 11, 2024•36 min
Our guest on the podcast is Pastor Joel Gaertner, the Director for Special Ministries of the WELS (Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod). The reality is that ALL of us have special needs, but many of us tend to wear them more on the inside than the outside. How can Christians and Churches be a more welcoming place for with special needs, especially those who have to navigate the challenges of bodies and minds that don't work the way that many others do. We will spend some time talking about what...
Jun 26, 2024•42 min
Reflections on Memorial Day and Ending Well Memorial Day is thought of many different ways. A national holiday. The start of summer vacation. Family gatherings and cookouts. A day that honors those in the armed forces (That's actually Veterans Day in November). And then there is the actual intention - honoring those who have given their lives in military service to this country. On the podcast this week, host Mike Westendorf and Pastor Pete Panitzke reflect on the value and importance for Americ...
May 22, 2024•44 min
Our Guest this week is Jim Buske of Lighthouse Youth Ministry and he relayed a story he asked a man in the predominantly African American Garden Homes neighborhood of Milwaukee about the challenges the city and the neighborhood faces. His friends answer was informative, not just for minority communities, but speaks to an increasingly important need for all people groups. The response? The neighborhood lacks "Uncles". The man or woman working in their yard or garage that the neighborhood young pe...
May 15, 2024•44 min
Voting is a significant topic in American culture, especially in an election year. But what does the "right to vote" really mean? While it seems straightforward, the reality of that vote changes in different contexts and today we want to talk about what voting is and means in the church specifically. The podcast today gives important context to the why of voting and how voices without a vote are heard and acknowledged and how important it is for men to handle this responsibility Biblically, so t...
May 01, 2024•50 min
Have you ever wondered if God seems to care more about how we behave than who we are? It's honestly not fair of us to see the God of the Bible, the God of the cross and empty tomb this way, but in our world we tend to feel the constant judgements all around us. Whether it's at work, at home, in relationships, at church... we have opinions of others and we feel the opinions others have of us. So what does God think of me? Does God love me? Or does God love my behavior? The answer... yes. In this ...
Apr 24, 2024•32 min
Why Lutherans Use Creeds in Church Creeds are a statement of belief that help Christians express the basic truths that they believe, as both an individual or as a corporate church. Perhaps you already know this, but there is not a uniform agreement in the larger Christian church about the importance of validity of the Creeds. So why, in the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, do our churches frequently use one of the three Ecumenical creeds in worship on an almost weekly basis? In this Episode...
Apr 17, 2024•42 min
Understanding Jesus Descent into Hell The Apostles Creed is a simple summary of the Biblical, Christian faith through the use of several statements that have rich theological depth to them. The second article, (or second paragraph of the creed) has to do with Jesus, who he is, what happened to him and what he does. As part of this creed, there is a line that says "He descended into hell" and this has left people asking questions. In today's podcast we talk about the origin passage for that in 1 ...
Apr 10, 2024•30 min
Three Thoughts on what God Has Already Given You In a sermon from a few weeks earlier, Pastor Pete shared an illustration that involved $80 as he helped the congregation wrestle with our guild driven anxiety that fuels the "TRY HARDER" voice we all wrestle with from time to time. With the illustration comes a great conversation on what it means to have access to all the blessings of my heavenly Father. I don't have it, but my Father does. We'll talk about the struggle to believe we believe and w...
Apr 03, 2024•35 min
Biblical Observations from the Passion Story. One of the benefits of reading the Bible over and over is that we all mature through experiences. Wisdom comes from the combination of knowledge and experience and as we read the scriptures and become more familiar with the word of God in the Bible, we see more and more of God's truth and the application to our lives. This week, we wanted to share several of those "Aha's" from Pastor Pete and host Mike Westendorf as they talk about some of the things...
Mar 27, 2024•40 min
How different does this sound? "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me." and “If anyone wants to follow me, let a person deny themself, take up their cross, and follow me. Did you see it? "Must" vs. "Let a person" One is more direct and to the point, but has an edge that may go beyond the original language, the other is a bit more literal, but a little less readable. When it comes to Bible Translations, what issues arise? Why do we have so many...
Mar 13, 2024•38 min
In Luke 9:23 Jesus makes this comment "23 Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. " For many of us we consider suffering to be the crosses that we bear. It makes a lot of sense, Jesus suffered on the cross, so he must be talking about learning how to deal with bad things and suffering well. But that is not what he means. In this episode of Great Questions, Great Conversations, Pastor Pete Panitzke helps explain ...
Mar 06, 2024•40 min
The impact of Godly men can be profound on children, families and society. A force for good as they live out their roles as Christian men of God. When men and dads don't do life well, the destruction can be profound. Guilt tugs at all people, but in the culture of 2024 America, men find a lot of walls that exist between who men are told to be and who God calls them to be. In this episode, Brandon Steenbock joins us for a dive into examining the walls that men need help breaking through and how t...
Nov 01, 2023•46 min
In Today's episode we are joined by Pastor Brad Snyder who is also the chairman of "Conquerors Through Christ" a ministry dedicated to helping Christians Resist-Reject-Recover from explicit imagery use or addiction. It is no secret that talking about sex in the church is an uncomfortable topic and for many Christians we have lost the higher ground in the conversation, a topic that the Bible has much positive things to say. So, what does it mean for us to be part of redeeming the conversation as ...
Oct 18, 2023•57 min
We want our kids to grow up in community. To be challenged, share in responsibility, grow friendships and relationships and sports is a great way to connect our kids to others and have a more positive outlet for all of that energy. But what happens as kids grow older and the demands of those communities begin to change, especially when it challenges relationships and experiences with the local church. In this weeks podcast, Mike and his cousin Tanya will have an honest conversation about the ten...
Sep 21, 2023•46 min
Every years the staff at St. Paul's/The Bridge takes in the Global Leadership Summit, a conference that gives those leading families, organizations, and churches training and awareness of ways to consider to improve in their various leadership and organizational roles. Arica Drezdzon and Mike Westendorf open up their notebooks to talk about some of the biggest takeaways from their time at this year's conference. If you're looking for a spark in your own personal growth, this podcast will give yo...
Sep 06, 2023•48 min
The big C church, the one on the corner that people go to worship God and be part of a congregation, really finds it's foundation in the home. When a Christian man and woman become husband and wife with Jesus as the foundation, their joined lives represent the smallest functioning example of the "Body of Christ". When children come into that family, a child's first experience of what it means to be part of the "body of Christ"... the church... is modeled in the home. That likely sounds scary or ...
Aug 23, 2023•50 min
Loneliness is an epidemic in our society today. Recent studies show that 58% of the general population struggle with a deeper level of aloneness while up to 78% of our young people in Gen Z claim a deep sense of longing for connection and yet fail to find it. In this podcast we discuss one of the features of God's church that, at least at St. Paul's/The Bridge we call the Family Church. While we all have a biological family of origin that we come from, we often grow apart and grow closer to othe...
Aug 09, 2023•45 min
Mike Westendorf, Arica Drezdzon and Paul Schuessler continue the conversation on simple leadership lessons. If leadership is influence, then we all have influence so we start with a look at the serious view God takes on leading well. The team talks on some of the leadership pieces of advice in Carey's blog on 25 leadership insights for young leaders. Here is the link to Carey's blog post that is the subject for this podcast: https://careynieuwhof.com/25-random-pieces-of-advice-for-leaders-in-the...
Jul 26, 2023•54 min
"Everybody Wins when the leader gets better" “Leadership is influence and everyone has influence.” “A humble leader can learn from anyone.” How do you respond to these leadership quotes? If leadership is really influence then all of us lead in some capacities and all of us have moments where we follow and support leaders. In this episode, we share some thoughts on a blog post by another developer of leaders named Carey Nieuwhof who starts off the post with this quote: "I was recently talking to ...
Jul 19, 2023•50 min
Disappointment shows up in a very real, tangible, physical and emotional way when the gap between our expectation and the result is wide. We've all experienced it and for many of us, recovering from it is a real journey. In some cases disappointment is an eye opening experience when we realize just how much assumption goes into our expectations giving us pause for some needed personal reflection and confession. And yet over time we see that our disappointments have been used by God in extraordin...
Jul 12, 2023•28 min
