Crazy Faith Talk

Okay, so there's not really a talking donkey with comically long ears in the Bible, but maybe the fictional story of Nestor (a sort of biblical cousin to the story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer) has something truly important to tell us about the table-turning ways of God.  So this week in our Advent series looking at bits of pop culture that come to mind in the Christmas season, pastors Erica,...

Good news for people who like big round numbers--it's the 200th episode of "Crazy Faith Talk"!  And today around the microphone, our trio of conversation partners looks at the various versions of the story we know as Dr. Seuss' "How the Grinch Stole Christmas", both for its lessons about what we do (and don't) need for Christmas to happen, and as a way of thinking about how the gospels in our Bibl...

Like the little doors you open to count down the days until Christmas on your home Advent calendar, this season we've got a countdown of seasonal pop culture tidbits that help us to think about our faith in new ways.  So instead of little bits of chocolate or tiny toys to get each day, we're inviting you to join us this Advent for a series that will introduce you (or re-introduce you) to some pop...

After a wide survey of scenes and stories from the Bible, from the damp days after the Flood in Genesis to the tail-end of the last book of the New Testament, we've looked at a lot of the ways violence shows up in the pages of sacred scripture.  But what does it mean for any of us and how we live our lives?  How do we make the difficult decisions about what to do when we feel like violence as the...

In the early life of the church, followers of Jesus needed a word of hope to assure them that the destructive and arrogant ways of the Empire wouldn't last forever.  They needed to know that God's victory over evil was assured, and that there was reason to keep on in their faith, showing love and humility in the face of Rome's cruelty and pride.  Against that backdrop, the book of Revelation makes...

The wise and faithful Fred Rogers said, "Anything human is mentionable, and anything mentionable is manageable."  It was both a touchstone of his approach to children's television in his Neighborhood of Make-Believe, and also a key to his approach to ministry and life.  Rogers also taught generations of children to ask the difficult but vital question, "What do you do with the MAD that you feel?"...

Something has gone wrong when we lose our ability to be shocked by terrible things.  And sometimes we need to come face to face with the terrible things to which the Bible bears witness--even if they aren't stories we teach our children in Sunday School or don't hear much about in sermons.  That can be especially true when the culture or historical setting of a story makes it easier to hide or shr...

Lots of people know the story of when "Joshua fought the battle of Jericho... and the walls came a-tumblin' down." And from one perspective, the story of the Israelites taking the land of Canaan sounds like a triumphant victory and a happy ending.  The freed Israelites at last have a homeland, as God had promised their ancestor Abraham.  But what about the people who lived there already, and what...

Lots of people know the story of the Exodus--from the miraculous parting of the sea to the dramatic rise of deliverer Moses to the powerful signs of judgment against Pharaoh's Egypt known as the ten plagues.  It's a saga many know, not only from Sunday School lessons in childhood, but also multiple movies that have colored our imaginations.  But the story of the plagues sent on Egypt is more compl...

Human history is inescapably bloody--and so is the Bible.  We aren't great at facing up to those violent episodes in our history, or owning up to the costs of our actions and choices in human lives.  And if that weren't hard enough, the biblical writers themselves often seem to permit, allow, encourage, or even endorse violence against other people.  And yet, those same biblical voices also insist...

After the storytelling is finished, there are still lots of BIG questions to wrestle with from Esther's story, and they are all pressing for our lives today.  For starters, while we may feel relieved that Esther, Mordecai, and their people get a happy ending by the end of the book, what do we do with the times in subsequent history when tragedy was not averted?  The Jewish people were saved from H...

All the plot twists and tension has been building to this point in the story: Esther finally exposes the wicked Haman's plan, and her people are saved.  And as the ancient poets and storytellers of Israel so often spoke of, the schemes of the wicked become their own undoing.  It is as close to a storybook ending as you'll find in the Bible, with the villains defeated, the innocent saved, and the h...

In their ongoing series exploring the book of Esther, pastors Sarah, Erica, and Steve take a look at chapters five and six as Esther goes to the king to save her people and to defeat the crooked scheming of the villain Haman.  In a story already full of big characters and outlandish plot twists, here's a set of almost Shakespearean turns that raise the lowly and start the downfall of the crooked o...

How do we respond when something truly terrible is about to happen?  Do we ignore it and hope it doesn't affect us?  Do we make provisions for ourselves alone and hope to weather the storm?  Do we risk our comfort, our privilege, and our way of life to speak up?  These are the kinds of questions that come to the surface in the fourth chapter of Esther.  With the villainous Haman's plan to kill and...

"To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunitsts who control the fool.... to be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies."  So warns famous novelist Octavia Butler, but it just as easily could have been a commentary on the book of Esther, as well.  As pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve continue exploring this lesser-known bo...

As they move ahead in the book of Esther, pastors Sarah, Erica, and Steve move onto the second chapter of this story, where we meet Esther and hear how she is chosen to be queen basically by winning a beauty pageant.  Along the way, we meet her cousin Mordecai, who will be a wise mentor, confidant, and voice of conscience for her as the story unfolds, and who helps to foil a plot against the Persi...

In a new series, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve do something they've never tried before in this podcast--to work through an entire book of the Bible, looking at what's going on in the story and how it connects to our lives, too.  We'll be exploring the biblical book of Esther, which is not only an epic thriller with life-and-death stakes for a whole nation of people ruled by a foreign empire, but...

As the close out this short series at the intersection of pop culture and faith, pastors Sarah, Erica, and Steve talk about the early 2000s series, "Avatar: The Last Airbender," and how there can be a lot for grown-ups to learn about life from a show that is ostensibly aimed at kids.  As they look at the fantasy world of this TV show, the three friends around the table look at how we discern the r...

The best science fiction often takes the real world in which we live and then heightens, or stretches, some element of it as a way of looking at our actual world.  And while it can be entertaining, engrossing, or frightening, those kind of imaginary worlds can also be places for thought experiments that can stretch our faithful imagination, too.  So as our three conversation partners, Sarah, Erica...

What would it look like for church to be known first of all as a place of radical acceptance--and also one where members of the community brought out the best in each other?  And what could help us imagine what that could look like?  In a new round of conversations, pastors and colleagues in ministry Erica, Sarah, and Steve take a dive into the waters of pop culture they've been interacting with,...

Almost everything in our lives has been affected in some way or another by the COVID-19 pandemic, including major changes to what church life and ministry looks like.  As our regularly gathering conversation partners, Sarah, Erica, and Steve, explore their own reflections on ministry during the time of coronavirus, they are joined by a fourth voice around the table--Russ, who is also a pastor and...

As messy, conflicted, and complicated as families can somtimes be (as we've seen for sure over the course of this series!), the thing about family is that your belonging in it is entirely by grace.  You can't earn your family, merit your place in it, or decide to keep someone else out because of their bad behavior--in a sense, in a family, we are all blessedly "stuck" with each other.  And it turn...

We live in an age of click-bait one-dimensional internet quizzes (like, "Answer three questions to find out what personality type you have," or "Click on a picture to find out which Disney princess you are,"), and it can be easy to do the same to biblical characters, too.  For a long time, the sisterhood between Mary and Martha in the Gospels has been one of those places church folk have done some...

When a loving father gracious welcomed home his troubled son and extavagantly threw a party to celebrate his return, the older brother crosses his arms indignantly and asks his dad, "Don't ALL your sons matter?"  And of course, they do.  The father loves both of his sons, and both of his sons' needs are taken care of--but at the moment, it is the lost-but-now-found son who needs the focus.  That's...

On Crazy Faith Talk, we have always tried to be honest and real in our conversations, whether it's about our own struggles, quirks, and stories, or with the stories and issues we explore.  So as we continue our series looking at biblical brothers and sisters and how their family stories are often difficult and messy, we need to have some honest conversation about the man remembered as Israel's gre...