For a long time, folks assumed that people who took their own lives were autoamatically condemned to hell and had lost their salvation. And that also meant that for a long time, those whose lives were left in the wake of a loved one's suicide were forced to keep silent or bear shame for what had happened. But as pastors Erica and Steve engage this question, they take a look at where this thinking came from in the first place, what assumptions from medieval church life produced it, and how the Sc...
Jul 31, 2018•30 min
The church does a decent job offering care and support for people with cancer, sickness, or injuries, and many churchgoers are comfortable sharing about their illnesses to ask for prayer from one another. But we aren't great at talking about, or even naming, our struggles with mental health. There's often still a stigma for people who live with depression, anxiety, bipolarity, or other diagnoses, even though we would hope that the community of Jesus should be the one place where it is safe to be...
Jul 24, 2018•33 min
In the final part of their series on engaging evil with open eyes, pastors Erica and Steve take a look at a case study in dealing with real-life evil even when it doesn't wear a red jumpsuit and hooved feet. As they have explored already, the powers of evil are often most effective when they are subtle and behind the scenes: not like in scenes out of "The Exorcist," but operating through systems and structures, and getting people to stay silent and grow complacent. Esther is a helpful, if less w...
Jul 17, 2018•35 min
In their ongoing series about engaging evil with open eyes, pastors Erica and Steve now take a look at what happens when evil operates behind the scenes in systems and structures--often ones that society accepts or goes along with. The powers of evil are often at their most cunning when they don't use pitchforks to force us to do terrible things, but rather when they allows us to feel comfortably doing nothing, or to go along with evil things because "the system" says it is OK. So whether it was...
Jul 10, 2018•34 min
As their series on spiritual struggle and the powers of evil continue, pastors Erica and Steve focus on the stories of how Jesus deals with the Tempter and of the demonic powers in the Gospels. These stories may seem so strange and foreign to our ears and context, so how do we hear them and make sense of them? And as Jesus has to wrestle with the question of HOW he will embody the messianic promise (will it be the easy path of glory, power, and spectacle, or will it be the path of suffering love...
Jul 03, 2018•34 min
Cartoons have given us the picture of a horned, pitchfork-toting, cloven-hooved, red-jumpsuited devil, who almost seems laughably obvious in his attempts to get us to steal cookies from the cookie jar or take money from the till at work. And plenty of other pop culture voices paint a picture of two equal and opposite forces (or, popularly, a "Light side" and a "Dark side" of the same "Force," nudge nudge) out there, contending to win the day in an uncertain final battle. But the Bible itself has...
Jun 26, 2018•34 min
In the third and final part of their conversation about the gift of Sabbath, pastors Erica and Steve explore the way Jesus picks up the biblical notion of jubilee--the "year of the Lord's favor" in which old debts were cancelled, the displaced were returned home, and society was allowed to hit the "reset button" to keep anyone's family trapped in poverty forever. While it seems doubtful that Old Testament Israel ever faithfully carried out the practice of jubilee (because it was always more temp...
Jun 19, 2018•35 min
As their exploration of the biblical concept of sabbath continues, pastors Erica and Steve continue to look at how the day of rest appears in the Scriptures and in our lives. Despite the fact that Jesus regularly got into trouble with the Respectable Religious Crowd for breaking the rules about sabbath, Jesus doesn't seem anti-sabbath, so much as he is convinced that sabbath was always about giving life and saving life. How do twenty-first century people think about sabbath in a world that keeps...
Jun 12, 2018•36 min
Pastors Erica and Steve take a look at the Scriptural roots of the practice of "Sabbath," tracing the rhythm of work and rest, labor and play, through the Scriptures, from creation through the exodus from Pharaoh's Egypt to the intended practice of Sabbath in the time of Old Testament Israel. Why do we need periods of rest, and who is this rest for? Are we supposed to do something "religious" with our Sabbath rest? And how might sabbath be a gift, not just for "me," but for all the people around...
Jun 05, 2018•32 min
Gandhi supposedly once said with terrible clarity, "I don't reject Christ. I love your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." After all the conversation we have had so far about the beauty of a God who is Three-in-One, an ever-moving, interweaving communion of love between Father, Son, and Spirit, it can be disappointing to experience life in the actual church that claims to be the God-sent message-bearers to the world. We fight, we argue, we disagree....
May 29, 2018•32 min
God isn't just "up"--above and beyond and distant, the way you might think the way religious people sometimes talk about God. And God didn't just come "among us" historically in the human life of Jesus once upon a time. But God, Christians dare to say, even chooses to dwell "within us." There's a start for how we talk about God the Holy Spirit, this One who is like the wind that swept over the chaos as creation, the breath of life that fills our lungs and brings this human dust to life, and who ...
May 22, 2018•42 min
In their ongoing series looking at the idea of God as Trinity (Three Persons in One God), pastors Erica and Steve explore what the church has classically meant--and not meant--about Jesus being divine and human. Is Jesus God's Vice-President of Human Affairs? An empty human body like an avatar for God to control at a distance? A half-human, half-divine hybrid like the mythic Greek heroes? Something else? Over the centuries, Christians have struggled to find good words to say that God goes "all t...
May 15, 2018•31 min
In their ongoing series exploring the Christian idea of God as Trinity (Three Persons in One), pastors Erica and Steve start to look at what it has meant classically to speak about God as "Father," and what it doesn't? mean. Using Jesus' intimate language of calling God "Abba," which has the feeling of a young child speaking with a caring parent, Christians are drawn into a particular image of how we relate to God--not of employee to boss, not of simply students to teachers, and not of groveling...
May 08, 2018•34 min
For all the complicated credal formulations, fierce debates over heresies, and bad object lessons to try an explain the mystery of a God who is One and Three, the Christian doctrine of "the Trinity," is really a way of saying that there is only one God... and that we have come to meet this God, not as some lonely bearded immortal who stands off at a distance, makes a Son and a world to feel loved, and then sends a Heavenly Vice-President of Human Affairs to save us... but that we know God as a b...
May 01, 2018•34 min
Oscar Wilde once wrote, "?How else but through a broken heart can Lord Christ enter in?" Even though Christians are unapologetically "Easter People" who are charged with sharing the Good News of resurrection with the world, we are also called not just to rejoice with those who rejoice, but to "weep with those who weep," and to be honest in our prayer and worship lives... which means being able to grieve, to lament, and even to bring angry prayers to God when we feel godforsaken. In this concludi...
Apr 24, 2018•37 min
As pastors Erica and Steve continue their exploration of what we think is happening in Christian worship, they explore what it means to pray "together" and how prayer can be authentic, even when we are borrowing someone else's words--whether a leader offering prayer in the same room, or the sometimes centuries-old words of older sisters and brothers in the faith, or even the pattern we call "The Lord's Prayer." If Jesus warns against just reciting empty religious-sounding phrases in our prayers ...
Apr 17, 2018•33 min
In their ongoing series about what Christian worship looks like, and what followers of Jesus think they are doing when they gather week by week, pastors Erica and Steve keep unpacking the ancient patterns of Christian worship. Like a symphony in four movements, we begin with Gathering, and then the Word, and then some response to the Word--often involving the Meal of Christ's followers called Holy Communion, the Lord's Supper, or the Eucharist--and then a Sending back into the world. Coming from...
Apr 10, 2018•31 min
Of all the things you could do on Sunday mornings, why do Christians gather around ancient texts that have been told for thousands of years, and why do they set aside time and space to hear stories they have heard, sometimes for all their lives? What do we think is happening in Sunday worship? Pastors Erica and Steve continue looking at the ancient patterns of worship that shape our Sunday gatherings to this day, from gathering to the Word, our responses to the Word and the gifts at the Table, t...
Apr 03, 2018•32 min
We don't "go to church" because God's ego needs stroking, and we don't show up in worship to be entertained like an audience watching a football game or a musical. But in this set-apart space and time, we meet the living God along with a whole mess of God's people... in order to be re-storied?. We gather in praise of the God who went to a cross for us and who walks through the valley of the shadow of death with us. We gather to be re-made in the likeness of the same Christ who rose from the dead...
Mar 27, 2018•30 min
In this second episode of their new series on Worship Whys, pastors Erica and Steve look at the way the God the Old and New Testament resists being permanently put in a box, whether a temple or tabernacle, a ritual or a rigid style. That means that God's people will always have the freedom to borrow the patterns of the world around us in our worship life, but also always have the calling to run counter to the culture around us, too. While Christians have often gotten heated and fussy about what ...
Mar 20, 2018•31 min
For more than two thousand years, Christians have gathered together on Sundays for some variation of the same event--gathering in corporate worship of Jesus of Nazareth. But... worship really isn't a consumer product or a performance for me to watch passively as an audience member. And the God we meet in Jesus doesn't seem to be so emotionally needy as to require contast reminder of God's own greatness. So if worship isn't "for me" as if I am a movie critic watching a new blockbuster... and if w...
Mar 13, 2018•34 min
In this final episode of their Big Questions series, pastors Erica and Steve take a look at the story of Jesus' resurrection, the history of how the Empty Tomb got entangled with bunnies and flowers and spring time, and why Christians believe that the message of Jesus' coming back to life is good news for everybody, not just Jesus. How is the story of Jesus' death and resurrection different from the other pagan myths and legends about heroes and gods who die and come back to life? And how does t...
Mar 06, 2018•31 min
If praying is not the same as making wishes to a genie, and if God already knows what I need before I ask it out loud.... why do Christians say we pray? What's the point of prayer, if God reserves the right to answer as we ask... ?or? to answer differently? What do we think we are doing when we pray if it's not informing the Divine about new factual information? And after getting tired of hearing public officials just vaguely offer "thoughts and prayers" after tragedies like school shootings, or...
Feb 27, 2018•38 min
Choices with family life, decisions about work, dilemmas about how to deal with tough situations among friends or neighbors. It's hard to know how to decide, and what voices to listen to in life. Christians often talk about listening for God's voice, and we tell stories and sing songs about hearing God's call in our lives, but how do we tell if the gut impulse we feel is really God, or just our own personal wishlists that we have baptized? On the days we don't get a voice from a burning bush or ...
Feb 20, 2018•36 min
Okay, so the Bible--this ancient library of stories, poems, prayers, biographies, letters, and more--is important for getting to know who God is... where do I even begin to wade into it? How do we know if we are anywhere in the ballpark of what a given passage, verse, or author is getting at? Pastors Erica and Steve continue their series of "Big Questions" by raising issues like understanding the difference between translations, figuring out what kind, or "genre," of literatue you are reading in...
Feb 13, 2018•40 min
In their ongoing series looking at Big Questions, especially "Big Questions" of life for people drawn to following Jesus, pastors Erica and Steve look at the question, "Why Scripture?" What do Christians think the Bible is? How does the Bible have authority, and what does that authority mean? What does it mean for something that is basically a story? to have authority for people, removed from those stories and writers by millennia and miles? And what does the Bible have to do with God... or with...
Feb 06, 2018•34 min
One of the fastest-growing categories of religious identity in our culture is "none"--that is, people who say they have no? religious identity. And yet, at the same time, we are bombarded with countless choices, voices, and groups to pick from of religion, spirituality, faith, philosophy, and self-help. And in an age in which people can pick and choose, buffet-style, from what they like around them, an age in which it is more and more possible not to be an official "member" of ?any religious tra...
Jan 30, 2018•37 min
As we talk about God and suffering, it becomes clear that Christians don't just believe in a generic "Supremem Being" called "God" and then tack on Jesus as a footnote, but rather Jesus is key to understanding what "God" means. And that means that the vulnerability, suffering love, death and resurrection we meet in Jesus is part of God's answer to the question of why bad things happen. Jesus shows us that the buck stops with God, but Jesus also shows us that God meets us in? suffering, rather th...
Jan 23, 2018•34 min
It's been said that making sense of evil in the world while believing in the God of the Bible is like trying to hold three oranges in your hand at the same time. Christians have classically tried to say three things about God and the nature of suffering at the same time, and sometimes it seems impossible to hold all three at any one time. For one, Christians have classically said that God is all-powerful, and at the same time, they have said that God is all-good. And at the very same time, we ca...
Jan 16, 2018•33 min
Whether Christian or not, religious or not, "spiritual" or not, at some point everybody wrestles with the problem of evil, and why bad things happen in life. Is there something called "justice," is it all random? Is there any guarantee that good wins in the end, and does some force, govern everything that happens in the world? Followers of Jesus ask the same questions, of course, but have the challenge of making sense of evil in the world while also believing that there is a God who is both all-...
Jan 09, 2018•32 min
