An eclectic mix of questions from our YOBBERS community gets answered in our first-ever mailbag episode! Join Tom, Ryan, and Matt for some deep dives on hell, Korean spas, bodily insecurities, and much more. We also look back at our previous episode and tie up some investigative loose ends regarding the Sexiest Man Alive committee and the categorization of gay sheep.

We conclude our two-part episode on the church with stories of healing from church hurt and growth in the church. Tom, Ryan, and Matt also discuss the notion of building church resiliency amid our frustrations and hang-ups with the church. How have we grown in such resiliency? Despite how the church may still fail us, how can we place our ultimate security in Jesus as we live out the truth that we are the church?

Where have we experienced hurt in the church, whether from our sexuality or otherwise? How do we continue in spiritual communities after experiencing church hurt? Join Tom, Ryan, and Matt for a raw discussion on our community’s church hurt stories. We’ll dive into the other side of hurt in a follow-up episode, but for now, we want to honor the pain, the loneliness, the frustration, the rejection, the abuse, the trauma, and the injustice of experiencing hurt in a place and with a people where we should have experienced life. If one of us hurts, may we all hurt together.

What draws us to the beauty of men? Do we engage it or run far from it? Join Tom, Ryan, and Matt for a discussion on masculine beauty! Learn why this topic has become something of Ryan’s “brand,” including a perspective shift that’s helped many members of our YOB community. We talk about navigating the tension between admiration and lust, gratitude and envy, and participation and insecurity in our interactions with the beautiful men around us. How do we direct our observations of masculine beauty back to the Creator?

After 2+ years, we’re back with a new YOBcast! OGs Tom and Ryan welcome new YOBcast regular Matt as we catch up on the last couple years of our nonprofit journey. Fittingly, with the formation of Your Other Sisters alongside YOB under our nonprofit ministry of Your Other Family, we discuss the topic of WOMEN. How well have we connected with women from childhood to today? Did we genuinely experience adolescent crushes on girls or even try dating women? How has our sexuality impacted our friendships with women in adulthood, and how have we honestly felt about the formation of this Your Other Sisters community?

We conclude our 7-values series by exploring our other "ship" of discipleship! How do we define this spiritual term? Is discipleship meant only for our own growth, or is our discipleship also for the people around us? How organized or structured must discipleship of believers look? And how have we felt disqualified from discipling others in their walks with Jesus because of our sexuality?

Once upon a time, Your Other Brothers held to the value of brotherhood! But we've since shifted this value to one of kinship. Why the change? What does kinship evoke, both for this life and the next, and how do we build or "practice" this value of kinship? When have we felt that sense of belonging outside our blood family, and when have we felt the opposite with our sexuality and masculinity, as strangers and aliens?

Joy and sorrow share a tenuous connection. We explore the presence of joy in our YOB community and why it wasn’t one of our original values. We bask in the joy of retreats past and explore the joy to be found in our lives and sexualities, looking to Jesus’ example as he took the cup from his Father, following the joy set before him. Join Tom, Ryan, and Will for their first joyful episode together!

We kick off a new year and a new era of YOB with an examination of YOB’s seven values! Starting with HOPE. Tom is joined by Ryan and Aaron to discuss the highs of hope and the lows of despair across the arenas of our masculinity, sexuality, and faith. Where has hoping in something or someone failed us? Where have we felt hope creep into entitlement? As sexual minorities where do we put our hope on this side of eternity?

After six years we finally arrive at our 100th YOBcast episode! Tom is joined alongside a super-sized cast of Ryan, Aaron, Ben, and Will to commemorate the occasion, recounting favorite jokes, guests, topics, and moments together from the last 100 episodes. We also hear from a slew of listeners (including our favorite guest) and respond to all the feedback! Here's to 100 more, fellow sparrows. Couldn't still be here without you all.

It’s an episode topic long requested and finally tackled as we discuss the world of Side B resources (or, those with a traditional sexual ethic). It's a world that has, thankfully, grown quite a bit in recent years. Join Tom, Ryan, and Aaron for a conversation on our first found Side B resources and then our favorite ones, from books to blogs to various ministries.

We open the scroll on our favorite Scripture stories once again, this time with Tom being joined by Ryan and Aaron! We discuss several Old Testament stories like Abraham and Isaac, Jonah, Hosea and Gomer, and Mephibosheth, as well as some New Testament stories like the man born blind, and Jesus and John at the Last Supper. How do these stories hit us in the crosshairs of our faith, sexuality, and masculinity?

We’ve referenced it again and again for dozens of episodes, and now we’re finally devoting an entire episode to the Enneagram! We open up the Enneagram box and share what we’ve found helpful for our personal growth in this trendy personality system. How does the Enneagram impact our self-awareness? And how does this self-awareness impact our view of others? Join Tom, Ryan, and Ben for an overview of the Enneagram! We dive into the stats of all the types in our community and share a little about our own types. And get ready for the YOB ConvoCast summer series to come, featuring discussions with each of the nine types in our community!

We have been blogging and podcasting a lot lately about gay characters or themes in various shows, films, and other media. Should we as Jesus-followers who may also identify as LGBT+ but also follow a traditional sexual ethic be consuming LGBT+ media? What are the potential benefits and costs, and where is the line between what is beneficial, acceptable, distracting, or harmful? How do we interact, if at all, with LGBT+ media? Join Tom, Ryan, and Aaron for this final (for now) discussion on the pros and cons and nuanced middle of LGBT+ media consumption!

Do you ever see some of yourself in a character from a book, movie, or TV show? Why is that important? And why is it particularly important to feel represented with our sexuality? When have we found relatable, satisfying LGBT+ characters, if ever, and when have certain characters left us with longing? Is there any hope for a compelling, mostly satisfying “Side B” gay representation in media? Join Tom, Aaron, and Ryan for a discussion Ryan’s been wanting to have for years!

What is home? Do we feel at home with our families this holiday season, or do we feel anything alien? Do we dare spend our Thanksgivings and Christmases with friends and chosen family rather than biological family certain years? Or is it okay even to spend a holiday alone, if only to avoid the stress of the season? Join Tom, Ryan, and Aaron for our final YOBcast of the year as we discuss where – and with whom – we spend the holidays. We hope yours are merry and bright!

Bridget Eileen Rivera (from Twitter!) joins us, along with her cat. She’s the author of the new book, Heavy Burdens: Seven Ways LGBTQ Christians Experience Harm in the Church (and just the second woman ever to appear on our show!). We discuss the burdens sexual minorities face regarding matters of so-called “clarity” in Scripture, stereotypical versions of masculinity/femininity, assumed pedophilia when working with children, and forced celibacy. Finally, we ask Bridget if her own choice to pursue celibacy stems from burdensome duty or life-giving joy?

Revoice exists to support and encourage Christians who are sexual minorities so they can flourish in historic Christian traditions. They recently held their first in-person conference since 2019, and we gathered to debrief our weekend together in Dallas! Which speakers resonated most with us? What moved us, and what challenged us? Join Tom, Ryan, and Aaron for our recap of Revoice 2021, including an inaugural gender minorities panel that will stick with us for a long time.

And we're back! After a summer retreat that reunited our supporters after two and a half years away, we return with a brand new YOBcast – with more episodes on the way! This episode we're talking about mountaintops and valleys: those proverbial "everything is bold and clear" and "everything is long and dark" seasons of life. Coming off a YOBBERS retreat is a mountaintop experience for many in our community. How do we come back from experiences like that? And what are some other mountaintop moments we've experienced beyond YOB?

Dr. Paul Eddy of Bethel University joins us for our "season finale" of sorts to discuss covenant – particularly the covenant of friendship. Paul lays out the components of covenant, including terms and signs and witnesses, and translates this particular covenant to the grander scheme of God's eternal covenant with His people. Afterward Tom, Ryan, and Aaron "debrief" the discussion: do we desire covenant friendships in our lives, or how likely do they seem? What are the draws and challenges of covenant friendship, and should we as gay/SSA believers be concerned about the perception of such friendships?