It's convenient to have all the sixty-plus books of the Old and New Testaments in one set of faux-leather covers, but we can sometimes forget that the Bible is really a collection of books in different styles, genres, and settings, written by men and women from different cultures, languages, social situations, and nationalities. And just like we would know the difference between how to read a murder mystery and how to read a cookbook, it's wise to know the difference between laws for managing yo...
Oct 01, 2019•38 min
In this final episode of our series exploring the lives of interesting people from church history, pastors Sarah, Erica, and Steve take a look at the life and ideas of Henri Nouwen, the priest and spiritual writer who brought the perspectives of pastoral ministry, psychology, spirituality, and social justice together in his writing and teaching, and whose work with intellectually and developmentally disabilities at L'Arche Daybreak Community in Ontario gave him a sense of the holiness of loving ...
Sep 24, 2019•32 min
As they continue to explore stories from the "church family tree," pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve explore three women of the 19th and 20th centuries who were involved in translating and interpreting the Scriptures. For one, when her preacher's end-times prediction didn't come true, she decided to learn the original Biblical langauges so she could study the truth for herself. For another, it was important to see how the seemingly different accounts in different bibilcal books could be reconciled...
Sep 17, 2019•32 min
As the keep rummaging through the old church family photo album, so to speak, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve take a look at an early church teacher who is a complicated figure. Tertullian is celebrated for being a brilliant mind who was the first major Christian figure to write in Latin, rather than Greek, wrote several works presenting the Christian faith to a hostile empire, and was responsible for essential ideas to "orthodox" Christian teaching as "the Trinity." He was passionate about the ...
Sep 10, 2019•30 min
As they continue looking at "family stories" from the last twenty centuries of Christian history, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve explore the life stories, writings, and spiritual experiences of three women of the medieval era who had mystical visions or other experiences of God. As we tell the stories of Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, and Catherine of Siena, we'll be invited to consider the role of those voices who sincerely believed they had one on one conversations with Jesus, or transce...
Sep 03, 2019•38 min
The famous quip notes that while Astaire and Rogers were both known as great dancers, Ginger Rogers not only did everything that Fred Astaire did, but had to do it backwards and in high heels, too. It was true in church history, too. As the 16th century church underwent what is now known as the Protestant Reformation, there were not only the well-known figures like Martin Luther, John Calvin, and John Wesley who led movements for change within the church, but there were also several notable wome...
Aug 28, 2019•37 min
As they continue looking at different branches of the Christian family tree and the lives of older sisters and brothers in the faith, pastors Erica and Steve take a look at the example of Francis of Assisi. And even though they both come from Protestant traditions as a Methodist and a Lutheran, they discover we have a lot to learn from Francis, even though he is usually most strongly associated with Roman Catholic practice and piety. Espeically in a culture in which everything is treated as a pr...
Aug 20, 2019•36 min
Pastors Erica and Steve are gathered around the table again for conversations from different branches of our church family tree. And today we look a bit into the story and setting of Martin Luther, the 16th century reformer from whom the tradition called "Lutheranism" takes its name. In a time when the "official decrees" of the institutional church didn't seem to mesh with what a young Bible scholar named Martin was reading in the Scriptures themselves, a movement began that sought to peel back ...
Aug 13, 2019•40 min
In a new series, pastors Erica and Steve (holding the fort until their third voice around the table, Sarah, can rejoin them) start telling some family stories from different branches of the Christian family tree. If you've been to a family reunion before, you know what it's like to see some familiar faces, some folks you don't really know, and maybe even some total strangers, and then you get to discover how you are all connected to each other, and how each of you lives out your idenity in the f...
Aug 06, 2019•39 min
What does it feel like, when you are used to being on the "inside", to find the roles reverse and to be dependent on someone else accepting you? What is it like when you are the one who speaks the wrong language, didn't dress correctly, showed up without an invitation or a friend on the "inside", and doesn't fit in? In this series of conversations, pastors Sarah, Erica, and Steve have been sharing stories about "the time when..." something unexpected happened that connected to their faith lives....
Jul 30, 2019•33 min
As they continue sharing stories about unexpected moments in ministry, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve talk about an experience Sarah had in her ministry education, during a year of internship in the far northern reaches of British Columbia where there were honest-to-goodness real wolves as a part of daily life and ministry. Along the way, their conversation delves into the importance of a sense of "place" where we live and serve, our identity as congregations, and the awareness of living in a c...
Jul 23, 2019•35 min
In this new series, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve take turns telling real life stories where they found God in unexpected places. While the Bible is full of moments where the heavens part or angels show up to announce God's presence, and while many church folk assume God only shows up in "religious-looking" places or moments, the living God has a way of surprising us by using the moments and situations that don't seem very "religious" at all. In today's episode, Erica tells the story of how sh...
Jul 18, 2019•28 min
In this final episode of a series looking at pop culture and faith, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve take another look at an example from the "dark side"--where we can learn from negative examples to keep ourselves honest. And in this episode, Steve unpacks the premise of the novel-turned-TV-series, American Gods, in which ancient mythologies like Thor and Odin fight for survival along modern "gods" like Technology, Money, and the the World. And focusing in on one particular episode of the TV ser...
Jul 09, 2019•37 min
As they continue using pop culture as a mirror to check our own blind spots, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve look at the character of Claude Frollo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame (in particular, the Disney cartoon adaptation of the Victor Hugo original). The way Frollo deals with his own struggles by lashing out at the Romani people (or as they are called by Frollo in the movie, "gypsies") and making them into a dangerous "other" has powerful parallels for how we continue to look for scapegoat...
Jul 02, 2019•34 min
Pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve are back indulging their pop-culture sensibilities with a new question: Where do movies, books, or TV shows show us negative examples of faith that we can learn from? Sometimes our own blind spots keep us from seeing ways that we as church folk can be hypocritical, misguided, or un-Christ-like, and we need someone with a different perspective to help us see what we wouldn't have recognized about ourselves on our own. And much like Jesus often used stories and para...
Jun 25, 2019•37 min
Most of the time, we don't have the chance for live conversation with listeners during an episode, but in today's "Crazy Faith Talk," pastors Erica, Steve, and Sarah took their show on the road to the annual Synod Assembly for the Northwestern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, at Thiel College in Greenville, Pennsylvania. Recorded with additional friends in the room joining the conversation with topics they were interested in, pastors Sarah, Erica, and Steve share...
Jun 18, 2019•25 min
In a movie famous for great lines like, "This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship," and "Here's looking at you, kid," there's actually a powerful image of singing a hopeful song in exile. It's the classic movie Casablanca, and in our latest episode of "Crazy Faith Talk," pastors Sarah, Erica, and Steve again explore how pieces of pop culture become windows for our faith life. After pastors Erica and Sarah took turns talking about several novels in previous episodes, Steve now takes a look...
Jun 11, 2019•30 min
As they continue looking at how pop culture speaks to faith, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve continue taking turns sharing pieces of books, movies, and other pop culture that have connected with their faith. In today's episode, Erica shares her reflections on the 2003 novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and looks at the lasting ripple effects of guilt and shame, and how our actions have consequences that reach into the lives of others all around us, even far beyond our awareness. We will al...
Jun 04, 2019•26 min
In a new series, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve are taking a look at intersection points between our lived faith and pop culture. As we take a look at favorite books, movies, and more, we'll explore what we have learned about our life of faith from authors, moviemakers, and other creators who might not have intended their word as spiritual commentaries, but still have much to teach us. In this first episode of the new Pop Culture and Faith series, Pastor Sarah shares a character arc and learns ...
May 28, 2019•34 min
T.S. Eliot wrote, "The end of all our exploring/ Will be to arrive where we started/ And know the place for the first time." The Story of the Scriptures is like that. As they conclude their series on "New Creation," pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve have worked their way back to the first book of the Bible, to scenes of new creation after the flood to the different angles of creation we get in Genesis 1 and 2. See what it means to say that God "hangs up the bow," and how different the Hebrew story...
May 21, 2019•27 min
As they work backwards through the Bible--taking the end of the story first--pastors Sarah, Erica, and Steve look at the image of new creation as it keeps coming back in different biblical books and gets used in different ways by different authors. In this latest episode, they look at the way the book of Isaiah imagines this new creation with many different powerful images--a new heaven and earth, a feast for all nations, and a day where swords are beaten into plowshares. What does it mean to li...
May 14, 2019•36 min
The old Fleetwood Mac puts it honestly, "I've been afraid of changing, 'cause I built my life around you." We tend to hear talk about change and get scared--we are used to the familiar, and it is always tempting to picture "the good old days" in some hazy distant past as the times when things used to be "great." But the writers of the New Testament turn our attention, not backward to some imagined past, but forward to a promised future, and they insist it will mean change, but not change we are ...
May 07, 2019•28 min
In a brand new series for this Easter season, pastors Sarah, Erica, and Steve look at a theme that recurs throughout the Scriptures: the idea of God making a new creation. Starting at the end first, our conversation takes us to the end of the last book of the Bible to find, not a scary image of monsters or disasters, but a hopeful vision of a new creation where God is at home with a diverse gathering of peoples. So, for readers today, what does this image of a new heaven and a new earth mean for...
Apr 23, 2019•32 min
Sometimes, our talk about the cross can sound like the resurrection of Jesus is an afterthought, or almost unnecessary. When folks talk about the cross like it is Jesus paying a debt for our sins, it can sound like it doesn't make a difference whether Jesus rises from the dead or not. And when people talk about the cross as a moral example of what love looks like, you still don't need Easter for that to work. And yet, the New Testament writers really think that the resurrection of Jesus is vital...
Apr 16, 2019•29 min
Somewhere along the way in human history, our ancestors got the idea that whatever being or beings were beyond them (a single God, gods, or goddesses) must require sacrifices to be appeased--to feed hungry deities, to guarantee rains and good harvests, to promote fertility, or to avert their anger. Ancient Israel had a system of prescribed sacrifices in its ritual and worship life, as well as a complicated and layered history full of stories of sacrifice (and almost-sacrifice), and yet the write...
Apr 09, 2019•33 min
As they continue asking the Big Question, "Wait--what actually happened at the cross?" pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve look at a passage from the New Testament that many believe is a fragment of an even earlier Christian hymn or song, the so-called "Christ hymn" of Philippians 2. And instead of fitting neatly into later-developed boxes and categories that theologians call "atonement theories," the imagery of the God who self-empties and endures "even death on a cross" offers new pictures, and ne...
Apr 02, 2019•35 min
Jesus teaches his followers how to love in his own actions, words, and even his death--so that we, too, will be people known by our love. Fair enough--that seems like pretty solid, basic Christianity. But it also opens up a can of worms, too, when it comes to the cross of Jesus. Do we have to DIE to be really, fully following Jesus' example? And is all I need just a moral example to follow, like the old children's characters Goofus and Gallant, so I'll know I should be good? What if don't improv...
Mar 26, 2019•27 min
"Jesus died for us," says the New Testament. And once we ask, "What exactly did that DO?" we are doing the work of atonement theology. And the Scriptures are full of various ways of talking about it. In their ongoing series for this Lent, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve have been looking at some of those descriptions. Having already looked at the Bible's talk of Jesus' death and resurrection as a "victory" in a battle over sin, death, and evil, they now turn to another well-known picture, that f...
Mar 19, 2019•37 min
As they continue exploring the question, "What happened at the cross?" pastors Sarah, Erica, and Steve look at an ancient way of understanding the atonment--as a cosmic victory over the powers of evil, sin, and death. This model, often called "Christus Victor" ("Christ, the Victor," for non-Latin speakers), draws on biblical passages that depict the cross as God's great triumph in which Jesus defeats the powers that defy God, not by killing his enemies on a battlefield, but by dying at their han...
Mar 12, 2019•29 min
In a new series for the season of Lent, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve take a look at the question, "What happened at the cross?" From the earliest days of the New Testament community, Christians have made the claim that Jesus' death was somehow not just significant, but unique. Somehow something happened at the cross of Jesus of Nazareth that is different from all the countless others executed by the Roman Empire, or even every other death in human history. But... why? What's it all about? As ...
Mar 05, 2019•25 min
