As we continue our series for Lent 2023, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve continue to look at new ways to consider traditional spiritual practices and disicplines people may take up in these forty days. While many people are familiar with the idea of fasting from food--at least as a concept--the idea of other kinds of fasts can be helpful, too, as we take an inventory of what really matters in our life and our time. One way of reframing the notion of fasting is to consider a fast of our time--to ...
Mar 14, 2023•32 min
In the second episode of our series for Lent 2023, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve look at an ancient spiritual practice with roots not only in the past two thousand years of Christian history, but also going even further back to the spiritual life of ancient Israel: fasting from food. Whether it was Daniel and friends' fasting from meat as an act of defiance against the Babylonian Empire, the prophets' reminder not to separate fasting from social justice, or Jesus' teaching to fast without call...
Mar 07, 2023•31 min
Let's be honest: Lent is a strange critter. Some devoutly observe this seaon of forty days with dedication by giving something up, or adding a spiritual practice to their lives for this season every year. Others are worried that it comes off as too showy or self-righteous to fast or change their habits for a season. And for some, this season just looks like a second chance to start New Year's Resolutions, dressed up in religious garb. What are we to make of this season and the practices that are...
Feb 28, 2023•26 min
In this final episode of our series on finding honesty and hope in situations of death and dying, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve spend time looking at two extremes: situations where medical choices may hasten death in the name of relieving suffering, and situations where life ends in infancy or during a pregnancy. These situations are especially difficult but for almost opposite reasons. In situations of palliative care, we can be uncomfortable at the idea of having too much control over ending...
Feb 21, 2023•41 min
In this episode of Crazy Faith Talk, pastors Sarah, Erica, and Steve talk through some of what makes the subject of suicide and self-harm so especially difficult to deal with. Because of the content of this episode, you might want to choose the right time and place to listen. And if you or someone you love is dealing with thoughts of self-harm or suicide, please reach out to the new national hotline for suicide prevention, 988. In addition to al of that, this conversation tries to unpack some of...
Feb 14, 2023•35 min
At some point, experience teaches us and readies us to say to goodbye to the generations that have come before us; as painful as it is to lose grandparents, parents, or even older mentors, in some way life teaches us to prepare for those losses, as hard as they are. But something feels more jarring--and often unfair or unjust--when people die in unexpected ways and times. When lives seem "cut short" or people die "before their time" we feel greater anger and look for someone or something to blam...
Feb 07, 2023•35 min
When it comes to making important--and often difficult--choices about care needs at the end of life, sometimes we aren't in a position to speak our wishes out loud or make decisions in real-time. We do, however, live in a time and a place where it is possible to write down wishes in advance, or to designate other people to make medical decisions for us in times when we are not able to communicate or are not conscious. Collectively, those kinds of documents are called "advanced directives," and t...
Jan 31, 2023•37 min
We are more than the set of molecules that make up our bodies at any given moment, right? After all, our bodies are constantly trading out old dead cells and creating new ones, and yet we believe that there is a continuity to the "you-ness" of you and the "me-ness" of me. Christians also classically believe that God created the universe out of chaotic nothingness in the beginning, and so resurrecting us from whatever corners of creation our bodies have been are scattered to should be no problem ...
Jan 24, 2023•39 min
Nobody likes to talk about death, but it's one of only a handful experiences that touch everyone [you know the old saying about death and taxes]. The trouble is, there are so many ways to avoid really dealing with matters of our own mortality. We can ignore and deny it. We can delay and procrastinate. We can fill the uncomfortable silences with bad theology about God "needing another angel." Or... we can be brave and talk about things that may seem scary, only to find our courage rising the more...
Jan 17, 2023•43 min
In one light, it makes total sense that Jesus was baptized--after all, Christians today usually mark their own baptism as the formal beginning of their lives of faith, much like Jesus' baptism marks the beginning of his public ministry. And the New Testament connects our baptism with Jesus' death and resurrection, so there seems to be a close connection between Christ and the followers of Christ through baptism. But on the other hand, when Jesus was baptized, it was at the hands of John [the Bap...
Jan 10, 2023•34 min
In 21st century American culture, almost everyone has heard the name "Jesus." And most probably have some clue about the person being referenced by that name--even though it would more likely have been pronounced something more like "Yeshua" and been more closely associated with the biblical figure we remember as "Joshua" from the Hebrew Scriptures. But what does the name of Jesus mean, and why is it important enough that apparently angels directed Mary and Joseph to give it to their baby? What ...
Jan 03, 2023•35 min
All this Advent, pastors Sarah, Erica, and Steve have been tracing the themes associated with each of the candles on the traditional Advent wreath--things like "hope," "peace," "joy," and "love." But the celebration of Christmas isn't merely a listing of abstract concepts or spiritual virtues--it's centered on Christ. And appropriately, many Advent candles have a fifth candle, waiting to be lit on Christmas Eve or Day, representing the light of Christ for whom we have been waiting. But what does...
Dec 27, 2022•22 min
One of the most well-known Bible verses asserts that "God so loved the world" that God gave us Jesus and sent him into the world. Love is at the heart of what the Christmas story is about, and yet so often we settle for a shallow, limited, or conditional understanding of what love looks like, especially when it comes to God's love. As pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve take a look at this theme for the fourth candle of the Advent wreath, they'll explore the difference between a "love" that depends ...
Dec 20, 2022•31 min
Halfway through Advent, after weeks of being reminded, "We're not there yet--keep hoping, keep waiting, be ready, and repent," the church's surprising way of keeping time calls us to rejoice. Joy is a tricky concept, as it turns out, because it's more than mere happiness, and yet it feels very much like an emotion. At the same time, joy seems like something we can practice as a virtue or a discipline, which means it has to be something more than [or at least different from] a mere feeling that f...
Dec 13, 2022•25 min
Anyone born this century has only ever really known a world with one major power or another at war, and our communities and country often feel uncivil and conflicted. We have more technology than ever to keep track of our many responsibilities, but it doesn't give us relief from the anxiety of it all. We are aching for peace, but as something deeper than just a quiet, comfortable feeling. There has to be a difference, in other words, between being at peace... and being numb. In this year's Adven...
Dec 06, 2022•50 min
It is terribly easy for the themes that recur in Advent--things like "hope," "peace," "joy," and "love"--to become empty slogans or buzzwords, or the vague wishes of a greeting card. But there is rich and deep substance in the Christian practice of hope, and all the others, if we are willing to recover it. This Advent, join pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve as we explore more closely the themes often tied to the candles of the Advent wreath: where they come from, what they mean, and how we practic...
Nov 29, 2022•30 min
It's easy to miss in between helpings of turkey and mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving, or with the neighbors already setting up their Christmas lights and Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You" playing on a loop on the radio, but at the very end of the church's year is a powerful and surprising celebration called "Christ the King" Sunday, or "The Reign of Christ" Sunday. And even though it has only been officially observed for less than a century [a short time in the sweep of two thousan...
Nov 22, 2022•38 min
As familiar as it is to many, Thanksgiving really is a strange sort of a holiday, if you think about it. As an American celebration, it points backward in theory to Puritan colonists being grateful for surviving in a harsh new setting, but it wasn't until Abraham Lincoln, in the midst of the Civil War still raging, that we had a declaration of a national holiday observing Thanksgiving. On the other hand, societies have been giving thanks in celebration of harvests throughout human history, acros...
Nov 15, 2022•35 min
It's the 300th episode of Crazy Faith Talk--can you believe it? On this special occasion, we've got a brand-new conversation of classic Crazy Faith Talk church-nerdery--a deep dive into the history and meaning of All Saints Day, as well as a look at the related holidays of All Souls' Day, Halloween, Reformation Day, and Dia De Los Muertos. Join pastors Sarah, Erica, and Steve as they explore traditions and celebrations, as well as how we ended up with such a cluster of related days on the church...
Nov 08, 2022•41 min
Is the "end" of our stories something to be afraid of, or hopeful about? Whether we are talking about what happens to us individually when we die or what happens at the end of the world's story, we naturally wonder about where our stories are headed and what we do with our lives in the mean time in light of it. And to be sure, both the Scriptures and centuries of Christian thinking and theology have things to say about those questions--although sometimes we've spoken with too much certainty abou...
Nov 01, 2022•37 min
One of the more complicated tensions in Christian theology is how we make sense of human responsibility and God's will. Is everything that happens part of God's plan and design? Are we responsible for our own actions, or just puppets playing out a predetermined script? Is God guaranteed to "win" in the end, or could human beings keep on refusing God's goodness forever? And is my hope of salvation dependent on me taking the first step to accept Jesus, or is it something that God accomplishes whet...
Oct 25, 2022•45 min
You'd hope it's obvious that we should do good in the world rather than evil. Christians should pretty much be on board with that premise--we are supposed to do good in the world. And yet--we find all sorts of ways to complicate that pretty simple directive. Sometimes we slide into thinking that we need to impress other people with our good deeds, or even worse, that we need to impress God with them. Sometimes we are so worried about looking like we are trying to get gold-stars or special recogn...
Oct 18, 2022•30 min
Not too many years ago, it was all the rage for businesses, organizations, non-profits, and even churches to write "mission statements" to define what they understood to be their purpose. But asking about the church's "mission" conjures up all sorts of different pictures. Is it primarily about getting non-Christians to convert to Christianity--or even getting people from "other" sects to join your particular brand of Christian faith? Is it about social service and humanitarian relief? Is it abou...
Oct 11, 2022•37 min
One of the challenges with reading the Bible honestly is that it doesn't work like a reference manual or a cookbook, but rather like a library of many voices from different times and places. And that means it can be tempting for us to come to the Bible when we have questions about ethics, practice or contemporary issues, and only to read as far as the first answer that confirms our assumptions and reinforces our own agendas, rather than looking more deeply at what God is saying to us in our pres...
Oct 04, 2022•28 min
Okay, so maybe you know the basics of the Christian faith: we believe in God, who is both the Creator of all things, and who has come to be revealed in Jesus of Nazareth and dwells among us by the Spirit. We have a book of Scripture. And so on. But maybe we can go a little further. This fall, we invite you to a closer look and a deeper dive beyond those basics in a series we're calling, "Christianity 202," to do just that. In this first episode, pastors Sarah, Erica, and Steve offer some guard-r...
Sep 27, 2022•39 min
In this final conversation in their series, "Why Denominations?" pastors Sarah, Erica, and Steve share their own reflections on "Why am I still here?" In other words, for all the troubles we can have in denomational hierarchies, all the fighting we do between congregations and traditions, and all the ways that big denominatal structures can be frustratingly slow and bureaucratic, why do we still stay a part of them? How do we see the brokenness of the church and the rough edges in our church bod...
Sep 20, 2022•26 min
As many pastors and families know already, sometimes in a broken marriage, divorce is the least-worst option. It may always be heartbreaking and painful, but sometimes separation is less harmful all around than continuing in a toxic, dysfunctional, or irreconcilable relationship. And sometimes it's that separation that allows each former spouse to move on, to grow, and to become healthy again. And to be honest, sometimes church life can be the same: sometimes further division is the least-worst ...
Sep 13, 2022•56 min
It's certainly true that belonging in larger church bodies can help individual Christians or congregations to do more than they could alone--those denominational partnerships can be ways of making us more effective in our mission. And yet at the very same time, those denominational affiliations--Catholic, Protestant, Pentecostal, Orthodox, and so on--can end up becoming barriers to our work with each other in our own communities, too. As they continue to look at how we've ended up with a divided...
Sep 06, 2022•21 min
A hurricane sweeps across the country, and churches hundreds of miles away want to offer support. A war halfway around the world is creating huge numbers of refugees, and we want to be of meaningful help but don't know where to begin. Countless people near and far don't have enough food, medicine, or access to clean drinking water, but you don't personally have the contacts, the know-how, the equipment, or the language and cultural skills to bring relief. But... someone else who is in connection...
Aug 30, 2022•35 min
They say that "tradition is the living faith of the dead," while "traditionalism is the dead faith of the living." That tension is important as we think about the different expressions of Christianity that we experience across different denominations. Denominations--and the traditions they represent--can be stifling, starchy, and dead when all they do is require successive generations to rigidly copy what an earlier generation told them to do. But they can be vibrant and helpful whey they create...
Aug 23, 2022•33 min
