Hello fellow Bible Nerds! As you may have noticed, I’ve made a few changes to my Substack. The layout is a bit different, but the major change is the name. Re:Imagine Faith is now The Bible Nerd! What won’t change is the kind of content I am sharing here—it will continue to lean heavily into reimagining, reframing, and reclaiming our understanding of Scripture and faith.
Since this is the first post under this new branding, I wanted to offer something special, and my goodness do I have something special to share! A couple weeks ago I recorded a conversation with my friend Trey Ferguson about his new book Love is Good Religion: A 30-Day Journey to Compassion, Contemplation, and Connection. You can listen to our conversation below!
Giveaway: If you’d like a chance to win a copy of one of Trey’s books, I will be giving away a copy of Love is Good Religion, and his first book, Theologizin’ Bigger.
Here’s how to enter:
Be a subscriber to The Bible Nerd substack.
Leave a comment below telling me: What’s a passage or story from the Bible that you’d like for me to write about here?
For an extra chance to win, share this post and tag me on social media.
Two winners will be selected at random and announced on November 9th.
Here’s a bit more about the book and Trey:
In Love Is Good Religion: A 30-Day Journey to Compassion, Contemplation, and Connection, pastor and public theologian Trey Ferguson invites us beyond familiar readings of scripture to encounter its persistent call to liberation, community, and our shared humanity.
Across thirty readings of his New Living Treyslation and personal commentary, Trey invites us to slow down, sit with familiar scriptures, and encounter them anew. He argues that the first thing God calls “not good” is for humans to be alone. He explores John 3:16 not as a message about saving the unworthy but as a declaration of our inherent value. He reads Hagar from the underside of power, finding hope in an enslaved woman who first names “the God who sees me.”
What emerges is a bigger way of understanding love itself. Love is more than sentiment or personal virtue: it is a commitment to wholeness—our own, our neighbors’, and all of creation. And it’s not a zero-sum game where we must give up our wholeness for others to be whole. In a culture often shaped by hierarchy, dominance, and fragmentation, Trey offers a vision of compassion, contemplation, and connection.
Personal, affecting, and grounded, Love Is Good Religion is an invitation to discover a faith that draws us more deeply toward God, each other, and a more whole world.
Trey Ferguson is a pastor, podcaster, and public theologian who likes playing with words. Whether it be with tweets, videos, essays, sermonic presentations, Bible studies, podcasts, or speaking engagements, he’s always trying to provoke an image in a seeker with some combination of words.
When he’s not playing with words, he’s usually apologizing to his wife Jessica for playing too much, teaching his children to play too much, or letting some sports team disappoint him again.
His hope is to help our diverse world learn how to think bigger about God.