Midtown Church Podcast

What do we do about our never-ending pressure to have more, to work more, and to be defined by our work? In the Christian tradition, our response is Sabbath, a practice that frees us. Practicing Resurrection: Our God defeated death. Easter changes everything. We practice resurrection. “The practice of resurrection is an intentional, deliberate decision to believe and participate in resurrection li...

The Resurrection of Jesus is the defeat of death and the beginning of a new creation. It stands as an invitation into a new story; a story that replaces our disenchantment with wonder.  “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and…. we are of all people most to be pitied.” –1 Corinthians 15:17, 19 To be culturally disenchanted In Taylor's work The Secular Age, Taylor suggests that...

  It is the best-selling book of all time and sits at the center of our cultural consciousness, yet the Bible remains a difficult element of our faith. The confusion around the Bible might simply be that we’ve lost sight of what it is; a library of ancient writings, of both divine and human origin, that tell a unified story that leads to Jesus. Three questions– Why should we trust the Bible?...

In the West, we have come to believe that stuff can satisfy our deepest longings–we would never admit that, but our closets, amazon purchases, and bank account betray us. The problem isn’t just stuff; it is the place that stuff occupies in our heart. Jesus’ alternative; “seek first the Kingdom.'“ “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of poss...

We have a world that does its best to drown out silence and medicate loneliness with noise. When we experience a moment of silence it feels disruptive, unsettling, and agitating. Silence does not come naturally to us. But there is something beautiful in silence and solitude; It is where we enter into the mystery, the unknown, and realize that God is already there and has always been there. As the...

The human condition is to experience a complex knot of desires. Many of those desires are God-given, good, and necessary for life on Earth. Many are disordered, nefarious, and destructive. For millennia, fasting, going without food and drink for a period of time, has been a core practice of the Church; this is in part because it brings our body and spirit into alignment clarifying our desires and...

Lent provides an opportunity for us to practice drawing closer to God in the midst of suffering and the wilderness. We look to the example of Jesus, who in the moments where suffering is most difficult turned to prayer. How do we pray in seasons of wilderness or suffering? First, we learn that Jesus suffered. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as o...

As the Church of the West, we are far more familiar with the God of the mountaintop than the God of the wilderness. When suffering crashes into our lives we often wonder where God is, and Lent is an annual practice that teaches us to find His presence in our wilderness. The Wilderness is a place of harsh clarity, an uncluttered discomfort, where our hearts are laid bare before God– and we discover...

The biblical narrative offers us a brief depiction of a malevolent being hellbent on our suffering; It suggests that chaos has been planned, disease sown, and violence cultivated. Our response to this darkness is not to cower or shrink back but to become people of prayer and action, injecting love into the darkness. “To lead us not into temptation and deliver us from the evil one”– is to request t...

In the Lord’s prayer, Jesus instructs us to pray, “forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us”,a prayer of confession. But contrary to popular belief, confession is not simply a reminder of our fallenness, but an assertion of our forgiveness. We confess not because God needs a verbal record of our wrongdoings, but because we need to cultivate brutal honesty about...

Jesus teaches us to pray; “Give us each day our daily bread”. This instruction to petition our needs reminds us that our natural longings for financial security, for a child, for healing, for bread are not written off as evil, selfish, embarrassing, or shameful. Rather, these desires are welcomed by God. And as we bring them to God, we trust him to order them, to open the eyes of our heart that we...

In the beginning, humanity was invited to be God’s co-laborers; intercessors called to freely and joyfully partner with him to cultivate our good world. As the story goes, humans have gotten into the habit of contributing to the chaos, rather than cultivating it. However, God’s invitation, to be His collaborator in pushing back the dark, is still open. The first move in accepting that invitation i...

In Luke 11, the disciples say, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Jesus’ response is both a pattern and a script for prayer, a guideline for prayer and a prayer we regularly recite. It is the place we go to when we ourselves wonder, “Jesus, how do we pray?” However, the starting place of prayer is not "how", but "who"? A study published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization in 2021, found th...

As the feast of Epiphany, we commemorate the Magi's visit to the baby Jesus and the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. It is this beautiful reminder that the gift of Christ is one that goes beyond the borders of the Jewish people and has become a gift to all people. The question remains how will we receive this gift? Troubled about status and position “He came to his own, and his own peopl...

Although love takes center stage in this season, we miss the gritty nature of God’s love because we’ve confused love with sentimentality. But the Love of God cannot be described with sanitized cliches or impersonal definitions; for the Love of God is told in dysfunctional family trees, gritty action, strange stories, and dirty glory. Advent consists of the four Sundays preceding Christmas Day in w...

The phrase “peace on earth and goodwill toward men” is common throughout the Holiday season. But this familiarity strips the idea of peace of its power reducing it to sentimentality or inner calm. The Story of Christmas tells of a Peace far better, far more robust, and far more powerful. May we not be distracted with anything else. Advent consists of the four Sundays preceding Christmas Day in whi...

In the Season of Advent, believers across the globe enter into the story of scripture by practicing hope. This Advent hope is not sentimentality, or optimistic expectations, but a willingness to cling to the faithfulness of God through everything in life. Advent consists of the four Sundays preceding Christmas Day in which the Church anticipates the future arrival of Christ by remembering His firs...

When we confess, ”I believe in the Resurrection of the Body, and the life everlasting” often we misunderstand it as “I believe I will go to heaven when I die.” But the Christian story is much better than that. The Christian story is that the Creator God has demonstrated in Jesus’ resurrection what he intends to do for the whole world. Summary of the Apostles’ Creed. The Apostle’s Creed is a summar...

Sin is a poison that mars, kills, and destroys the abundant life God desires for his people. But in a surprising turn of events we discover that God, in Christ, offers us the antidote – forgiveness. Summary of the Apostles’ Creed. The Apostle’s Creed is a summary of the Christian faith that depicts the full story of scripture. The Apostle’s Creed contains one of the most concise summaries of the C...

In a moment marked by extreme individualism commitment to community and one another is revolutionary. We believe in the global church and the communion of saints. We are the people who live in a community with God and each other. Summary of the Apostles’ Creed. The Apostle’s Creed is a summary of the Christian faith that depicts the full story of scripture. The Apostle’s Creed contains one of the...

Summary of the Apostles’ Creed. The Apostle’s Creed is a summary of the Christian faith that depicts the full story of scripture. The Apostle’s Creed contains one of the most concise summaries of the Christian faith in straightforward scriptural language. It follows the narrative arch of scripture from creation to incarnation, crucifixion to resurrection, and Pentecost to life everlasting. The Apo...

American Christians have a unique obsession with the end times. From doomsday predictions to rapture anxiety, the Return of Christ is a doctrine obscured by exaggeration, anxiety, and speculation. In Contrast, the New Testament authors spoke of Christ’s return as a triumphant and joyful conclusion to God’s conspiracy to take back His world. Summary of the Apostles’ Creed. The Apostle’s Creed is a...

In the West, Christianity has moved from a cultural majority to a cultural minority. Followers of Jesus feel a sense of cultural displacement or, in the language of the scripture, exile. Throughout the biblical narrative, the People of God have had many exilic experiences, but as the Prophet Jeremiah advises, our God can be found even when we are far from home. We have moved from a majority Christ...

As evident in the scriptures, Jesus believed in the church. We believe that church is family and so every year we want to revisit how we participate in this family or do this whole Jesus thing together. Participants in the Midtown Community are asked to commit to five things; (1) Reveal the Kingdom of Jesus, (2) Belong to a Microchurch, (3) Gather on Sundays, (4) Serve, and (5) Being Generous. A D...

The Gospel preached by Jesus of Nazareth was that the Kingdom of God was close at hand. This is to say, that God’s conspiracy to take back his world from Satan, sin, and death has begun in the person of Jesus. In response, we are invited to rethink what is possible and risk for what could be. Have you given up on trying to heal the world? Maybe we’ve given up because we’ve been let down or we’ve j...