Crazy Faith Talk

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...

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...

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 prom...

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," nud...

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...

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 givi...

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" wi...

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 actu...

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 c...

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?  Some...

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 ho...

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,...

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...

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 L...

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 Hol...

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 gathe...

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 shad...

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 c...

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 gr...

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...

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 heari...

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...

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...

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 t...

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 t...