The Loft LA - Progressive Christianity in Podcast Form

Compassion was fundamental to Jesus' ministry and the primary lens through which he engaged his community. At The Loft, we strive to follow Jesus' spiritual path of radical compassion and view compassion as one of our guiding values. We invite you to join us this Sunday as we explore why compassion is fundamental to our spiritual practices and essential for both inspiring and guiding our actions....

In a world that rewards individualism, how valuable is community? At The Loft, we believe there is significant value in creating a culture of belongingness. This value is born out of our reading of the bible, where the importance of belonging is evident in the lives of the Israelites and the early Christian communities, who had communities that they belonged to, a homeplace where they were loved j...

While the dismantling of the old order began with Moses, and the prophets guided his people through their deconstruction and disorder, Jesus energized his community by teaching and practicing a new way to follow God. Jesus ushers in a new expression of the Mosaic tradition he inherited. Similarly, we are called to practice prophetic imagination, and by putting into practice what we hope for, we em...

Jesus inherited and practiced his prophetic ministry from Moses, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, among others. Similar to his forerunners, he used prophetic criticism to critique a dominant religious and political culture that had become numb to suffering. However, Jesus' use of compassionate acts as a form of prophetic criticism was a notable shift in approach and one the church ought to mirror. www. TheLo...

Order - Disorder - Reorder. As our community navigates a time of disorder, the task of prophetic imagination and ministry is to cut through despair and to identify the dissatisfied coping mechanisms that seem endless and unresolved. The prophet Isaiah and those who wrote in his style demonstrate how prophetic communities use the language of amazement to energize their people and help them shift fr...

Jonah is one of the minor prophets, famous for living in the belly of a big fish for three days and being angry at God. But what else does his story have to teach us? Come this Sunday to find out! We're excited to welcome Everest Harvey, our Director of Youth and Social Justice Ministries to the Loft this Sunday while Rev. Dr. Carter is away.   www. TheLoftLA.org

Jeremiah is rightly considered one of the major prophets. He is prominent in both the Hebrew Bible and quoted extensively by Jesus and the authors of the New Testament. While he is often misunderstood as a doomsday prophet, Jeremiah should be seen as someone who embodies the alternative consciousness of Moses in the face of a denying king. Jeremiah helps his community move from order to disorder t...

The radical break of Moses and Israel from the Egyptian Imperial system is the foundation upon which Christianity was built. The radical actions of Moses and the Israelites can hardly be overstated. In liberating his people, he guides his community through a Spiritual maturation process of order, disorder, and reordering. These three steps are guideposts for the prophetic decolonization that we se...

The task of the prophetic community is to nurture, nourish, and evoke an alternative orthodoxy — a consciousness that sees the world differently from the dominant cultures around them. However, the challenge we face is that the structures of the dominant culture are designed to numb you from feeling your own or others' suffering and from developing the ability to recognize that suffering. How do w...

We invite you to join us as we welcome Rev. Kevin Wright who will be preaching in The Loft this Sunday while Dr. Carter is away. In his sermon Rev. Wright will explore what it looks like for marginalized communities, particularly queer communities, to have hope during a time like this.  Rev. Kevin Kim Wright is an ordained elder in the Baltimore Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church...

The biblical witness is a book of hope. From Abraham and Sarah through the Apostles, people of faith placed their hope in the promises of God and God's covenant with them. However, when Jesus' spiritual path of radical compassion became overshadowed by the Roman Empire, God's work of redemption was increasingly pushed aside. Too many Christians have embraced a secular version of hope that depends...

Injustice is making itself visible in the streets of our city. Are we prepared to act with compassion and wisdom? Have we rehearsed our responses in a way that is faithful to the ways of Jesus? Join Rev. Blair for a conversation on "How Not to Be a Bystander", based on James 1:19-27. Rev. Blair Trygstad Stowe serves as our Public Theologian in Residence, which makes her a regular on our The Progre...

In our final Sunday during Pride month, we look into Paul's letter to the Galatians, ready to liberate it from theologies and assumptions that have been used to devalue our bodies and lives, and find freedom in a gospel of embodiment and connection. Dr. Carter will be away until July 9, while teaching a seminary cross-cultural immersion class in South Africa. www. TheLoftLA.org

Small groups were essential in the creation and maintenance of The Methodist Church. They remain the bedrock of how we sustain connectedness in our increasingly post-religious society. For the members of the Westwood UMC Queer Group, it has been a balm for the soul. Please join Rev. Dr. Carter as he is joined in conversation with members of our Queer Group to discuss their faith journeys, the role...

Trans identity is more than just what pronouns you use. For Christians, trans identity pushes us to wrestle with what it means to be created in the image of God and the transformation that takes place every time we celebrate Holy Communion. Join Rev. Dr. Carter and Everest Harvey as they explore what it is about being trans that isn't clicking for people. www. TheLoftLA.org

We sometimes forget that no Gentiles (i.e., non-Jewish folks) were present to receive the pouring out of the Holy Spirit during the first Pentecost. To be sure, eventually there would be Gentile followers of the Way of Jesus, and those Gentiles would be baptized with the fire of the Holy Spirit. The story of the Gentile Pentecost teaches us that, despite our perceptions of ourselves, we are not qu...

That human beings are created in the image and likeness of God has been a fundamental theological pillar in the history of Christianity. However, who images God and to what degree do they reflect God's image has been a consistent point of contention. In our current social and political moment, queer persons are now facing the same scrutiny over whether they image God in ways that mirror what Black...

We are living through such a period of stark political polarization that the idea of a multi-racial, pluralistic democracy feels more like an idea than a tangible reality. Indeed, these are difficult, but not new times. Both the early Christian communities and those living with HIV/AIDS knew what it felt like to be cast as outsiders rather than members of their community. Is it possible to find he...

Life isn't fair; this is a simple lesson that we learn in childhood. However, knowing that life isn't fair doesn't necessarily make responding to life's unfairness any easier. How we respond to life's unfairness shapes us in more ways than we often realize. We invite you to join us this Sunday as we explore how the biblical story of Joseph and the story of Jean Valjean from the musical Les Misérab...

At its best, being mothering a child is likely one of the most rewarding things someone can do. And yet, the systems of society, both old and new, can make being the kind of mother you may want to be feel impossible. On this Mother's Day, Rev. Dr. Carter will be joined by Rev. Blair Triggstad-Stowe to discuss what we can learn about motherhood from the musical Into The Woods and the biblical story...

Celie is a young black woman growing up in rural Georgia in the early 20th century. Esther is a young queen and Jewish woman living under Persian colonialism around 450 BCE. Though they lived over two thousand years apart, their stories have unfortunate similarities that have stood the test of time. Patriarchy and sexism are not new, and yet what we see in their stories is that if you are faithful...

This Sunday, we're celebrating Earth Day by reflecting on and reimagining our relationship with the land. After their escape from slavery and bondage, the Israelites are given the opportunity to build new economies that run counter to the Imperial Domination System they had seen within the Egyptian Kingdom. Against this social background, the wilderness narrative reveals the struggle of a people c...

Throughout his entire earthly ministry, Jesus taught his followers that the kingdom of God had arrived that and now was the time for them to choose which kingdom they would serve, God or humanity. That Jesus was crucified tells us that he was executed by the rulers of the Kingdom of Rome, and that he was resurrected tells us that he was vindicated by God. . We invite you to join our Loft community...

The Bible is both personal and political, and thus, the way of Jesus is both personal and political. The Way is a path towards personal transformation and political resistance to religious and secular domination systems. The spiritual path of Jesus is an invitation to advocate for the kingdom of God and criticize those complicit in upholding the domination systems that harm the most vulnerable. ww...

Like other wisdom teachers, Jesus spoke of two ways. There is a common way, the one followed by most people, and an alternative way, a path of transformation leading from how we ordinarily live our lives to a different way of being in the world. By following the narrow way, Jesus suggests that we move closer to discovering our true and authentic selves in God. www. TheLoftLA.org