Crazy Faith Talk

In our current series, "Divine Fingerprints," colleagues in ministry Natalie, Sarah, and Steve are looking at signs of God's character traits in creation, from elements of nature to plants growing in the garden to, in this week's episode, the little brown birds in the parking lot. This week we'll learn about killdeer birds, and how a surprising trick that mother killdeers pla...

In a new series this summer, colleagues in ministry Sarah, Natalie, and Steve are looking for signs of God's goodness in the world around us--divine fingerprints. From the garden to the wild things in nature to moments or creatures in the world that have taught us something about God, we're learning to recognize the presence of God in creation. In this first episode, we look at a theology...

After all the rabbit holes and deep dives of this series on "last things" and apocalyptic literature, what does it all mean--and is there any good news? YES! The bottom line is this: the Christian story doesn't imagine God saying, "Good luck for now with all the trouble, because you're on your own until I pluck the lucky few up from earth and meet you in heaven," but ra...

You don't need to be a Bible scholar to have heard of "the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" or to be nervous about the number 666. Many people have heard of those concepts without knowing where they came from, much less what they mean. So in this week's episode of Crazy Faith Talk, colleagues in ministry Sarah, Natalie, and Steve do a deep dive into some of these well-known but p...

One of the most difficult books to understand in the New Testament is the one we call "Revelation." It's full of strange creatures, jarring imagery, musical numbers (seriously!) that feel like a Broadway show, and a handful of letters from Jesus, too. Trying to make sense of this book on our own can feel like navigating a wilderness without a guide. So this week on Crazy Faith Talk,...

Many of the biblical books that seem to focus on the "end times" use strange symbols, outlandish images, and repeated patterns. It turns out they are written in a genre of literature that was deliberately figurative, highly coded, and like a lot of 20th century sci-fi or dystopia, written with a view toward what was going on in the writers' current times. Understanding how "apoc...

In our new series, "Back to the Future: A Hopeful Look at Last Things," colleagues in ministry Sarah, Natalie, and Steve are taking a closer look at a theology of the end times. Last week, we introduced the claim that the teaching of a secret "rapture" wasn't biblical, but actually only goes back about 200 years in Christian history. So what about those passages that sound...

For many people, both inside and outside the church, their picture of "the end times" comes from pop culture books and movies rather than a careful reading of Scripture. Meanwhile, many Christians don't know much at all about "last things" because nobody has ever talked or preached about it as a subject, so they assume that what they've heard on TV must be their belief,...

In this concluding episode of our series on kid-friendly media that either connects explicitly with our faith or fits compatibly with it, colleagues in ministry Sarah, Natalie, and Steve look at movies that offer "the gospel in disguise"--that is, movies that might not retell Bible stories, but which give us modern parables of self-giving love, sacrificial compassion, forgiveness and res...

As we look at media aimed intended for kids that connects with our faith--or is at least compatible with our faith--colleagues in ministry Sarah, Natalie, and Steve look at long-form media like movies. We'll explore how the movies we watch (or show to our kids) impact the way we picture Bible stories and last in our memories for even decades to come, and how movies can spark deeper conversatio...

Beyond children's Bibles or retellings of the stories of Jesus, there are lots of good children's resources that are compatible with our faith without being explicitly about Christian themes. This time on Crazy Faith Talk, Natalie, Sarah, and Steve explore some of their favorites from children's picture books to good reads for coming of age stories to graphic-novel format books that ex...

There are a LOT of children's books out there that are intended to teach the Christian faith or Bible stories to kids--so where would we even begin? This time on Crazy Faith Talk, colleagues in ministry Sarah, Natalie, and Steve share some favorites among recent children's books that help kids to learn, ask questions, and get a grounding in the God who loves them. Listen in here for a disc...

While we may well want to offer good programming to our children that directly speaks of our faith or essential Bible stories, we also want our children to learn how to live well in the world among neighbors, nature, and issues of the day. So in this episode, colleagues in ministry Sarah, Natalie, and Steve take a look at children's TV programs that aren't explicitly "Christian"...

In a new series for Eastertide, colleagues in ministry Sarah, Natalie, and Steve are looking at media that explore theme of faith or are compatible with faith for children--from TV and movies to books and other resources. We start taking a look at some classic faithful TV and video resources, exploring how faith formation includes not only Bible stories but also discipleship and how we teach our c...

Surprises, reversals, and plot twists aren't just the random exception to the flow of Scripture: it's at the heart of the central event of the Christian faith! In the events of Holy Week, and most centrally, in the death and resurrection of Jesus, we have God's upside-down victory over the powers of death by dying , and the revealing of how "the stone that was rejected has become...

It's one of the most dramatic reversals in the whole Bible: the zealous persecutor of the church who is called by the risen Jesus to bring the Good News to the whole world as "apostle to the Gentiles." Saul's story is full of drama and twists, not only for his own change of perspective, but for the early church that had to decide if it would welcome someone who had so clearly bee...

As Luke's Gospel tells it, Jesus begins his public ministry going back to his hometown to give a sermon in the synagogue, and at first is welcomed home warmly by the congregation. But the moment he starts talking about God's grace being shown to outsiders and even-- gasp! --enemies, the friendly crowd turns hostile. What's going on in this story from the Bible, and what does it mean fo...

Many kids in Sunday School remember the character of Jonah as simply "the guy who got swallowed by a whale." But the point of the whole story of Jonah isn't reducible to merely, "Don't disobey God or you'll be eaten by a fish." In fact, when the enemy people to whom Jonah was sent actually listened to his message and turned away from their violence, injustice, and rottenness, Jonah got mad because...

Conventional wisdom has it that God is on the "side" of the powerful, the mightiest, and the ones with the biggest numbers, but the Bible gives us a recurring theme of God's choice to lift up the lowly and come to the aid of the weak. That's part of the unexpected reversal in the story of scrawny young David against the towering professional enemy soldier Goliath. And at the same...

The favored son ends up enslaved and then imprisoned, only to end up using his God-given ability to rise to prominence in Pharaoh's Egypt and save his family when famine strikes. It's the story of Joseph, and it's another story from the Bible that is not only full of dramatic reversals, but also that forces us to rethink what it means to have God at work in our lives. In this episode o...

This Lent, join colleagues in ministry Sarah, Natalie, and Steve as they look at God's habit of reversing expectations and turning tables in a new series we're calling "When the Bible Flips the Script"! In this first episode, we'll explore the biblical figure of Jacob, the sneaky schemer who burns bridges with his family members and then comes face to face with God and finds...

All through this series we have looked at more-or-less well known figures as examples of people who lived out their faith. From former presidents to pioneers of children's television to theologians of earlier centuries, we have looked at numerous ways people have taken their Christian discipleship into their lives, work, and witness. In this concluding episode we'll tell some personal stor...

Although the names of reformers like Martin Luther, John Calvin, and John Wesley are pretty well known, the witness, theology, and work for unity done by Katharina Schutz Zell is lesser known. In this episode as we continue our series looking at people who lived out their faith in different ways, colleagues in ministry Sarah, Natalie, and Steve look at the life and work of this figure from Reforma...

As our series highlighting the stories of people who lived out their faith continues, colleagues in ministry Sarah, Natalie, and Steve explore the life of a medieval polymath, Hildegard of Bingen, who was a composer, philosopher, mystic, healer, theologian, and advocate of creation care! We'll explore how Hildegard communicated theology through her music, how her perspective held together natu...

She was a 20th century American Catholic radical, working for the well-being of the poor, offering hospitality to the homeless, advocating for peace, and calling fellow Christians to live out their faith in concrete ways. Dorothy Day is one of those complex figures who challenges us, provokes us, and inspires us. And in this episode of Crazy Faith Talk, colleagues in ministry Sarah, Natalie, and S...