Netarts Friends Church Podcast

The songs we sing to our children reveal something about us. They function like a window into our inner world. They reveal our own fears, our hopes, and our dreams for the future. This episode will take you through some guided writing as you reflect on Mary's song (the Magnificat). Credits and Sources: Joel Green, Leonard Sweet, Tim Geddert, Hannah Reyes Morales, Dennie Palmer Wolf, Gerhard Lenski...

Have you ever needed someone in your corner and felt like nobody was there? This episode explores the way God brings people to be in our corner as we live for the sake of God and others. Credits and Sources: Craig Keener, Scot McKnight, Austin Fisher, Will Willamon, R. Alan Culpepper, Nicene Creed (9/17/23)

It is possible to live through highpoints in your life while simultaneously carrying a deep ache in your bones because your most vulnerable prayers remain unanswered. Those unanswered prayers can cause your heart to cloud over with cynicism and grow calloused with self-protection. This episode is a reflection on the collision of the highpoint of Zechariah's life as a priest and his inner emptiness...

How important is eyewitness testimony in the 21st century? How do we prioritize eyewitness testimony, or downplay it? And what's going on when we get caught up in a story? Do stories have the power to actually change us? And what might all this have to do with the ancient gospel writers? Credits & Sources: Richard Bauckham, Brian Ross, Lisa Cron, N.T. Wright, Justo Gonzalez, David Garland, Tim...

Everyone hungers for real, concrete, lived experiences with the life-giving Spirit of God. We wish we knew what God was going to do next because we want to know what's going to happen next in every area of life. We all want to experience life in predictable ways. We live our lives by predictions. Our brains are wired to make predictions. This creates tension with a spiritual experience with the Sp...

This is the story of Thomas Oden discovering that new doesn't always equal better. It is also an introduction to Historic Orthodoxy. It is an invitation to read someone ancient and discover a wisdom that is relevant for today. Credits & Sources: Thomas Oden, Chris Hall, Brian Ross, Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, Jesse Blasdel. For more information or to support this podcast visit www.netartsfrie...

Shame is the most primitive and universal emotional experience of disconnection from self, others, and God that exists. This episode explores how shame affects us, helps us identify voices in our lives that are speaking messages of shame, and helps us identify the voice of God. Credits & Sources: Mark Baker, Peter Scazzero, Curt Thompson, Tim Jennings, Brene Brown, James Bryan Smith, Lewis Sme...

When tragedies strike of evil happens people can be left asking extremely difficult questions. These five concepts certainly won't answer every question, but they can help. For a more in depth dive on these questions, check out our Perspectives on Suffering series at Perspectives on Suffering (2020) – Netarts Friends Church . Credits & Sources: Terrence Fretheim, Samuel Balentine, Jessica Kell...

These experiences can become a very real crisis of faith. This is where a lot of people walk away from God. God isn't showing up in the way that they expect and so they conclude that God isn't coming, or maybe there isn't any God to begin with? This episode explores the anatomy of this kind of crisis of faith. It wrestles with the experience of calling out to God and experiencing no response from...

This episode explores the way Christians relate to science when it comes to the origin of the universe and creation. It looks at the upsides and challenges of six of the different ways that Christians of deep and abiding faith understand the creation of the universe. Credits & Sources: Greg Boyd, Brian Zahnd, Rebekah Townsend, Brian Ross, Renee Durbin, Brian Moll, Eric Versluis, Paul Barber, E...

Faith & Dout Series Part 8. Everyone wants to ask about how the book of Genesis lines up with the theory of evolution? And did Noah load up a bunch of baby dinosaurs on the ark? Or if he didn't, why didn't he? Etc. These are questions that the ancient editors of Genesis couldn't have imagined. This episode looks at understanding the book of Genesis in light of the ancient Sumerian, Babylonian,...

One of the very real cracks in people's faith comes when they read a story in the Bible that is just too bizarre to believe, or they watch a documentary where archaeology and history don't line up with the Bible? This episode explores these very real questions. Credits & Sources: Tim Geddert, Peter Enns, Terry Brensinger, Greg Boyd, Terrence Fretheim, John Walton, G.A. Klingbeil, Austin Fische...

When the average person on the street in North America hears the word "repent", what does that word mean to them? How does this cultural understanding of the word "repent" affect their sense of faith and doubt? What did Jesus mean when he invited people to repent and how might this invitation be helpful to our sense of faith and doubt? Credits & Sources: Adam Grant, Robert Sapolsky, Jonathon H...

What are we supposed to do with the fact that behind nearly every story of the Bible being used to hurt and harm; behind nearly every story of a church split; behind every story of Christians excluding Christians lies a story about someone(s) with a desire to get the Bible right? Getting the Bible right sounds like such a good a noble desire, and yet there are so many stories of harm. Credit &...

Many people have experienced the Bible being used as a weapon. They have seen it used to hurt others. For some, that's enough to walk away from the Bible. For many, walking away from the Bible means walking away from their spiritual community they were journeying with as well. This episode explores these challenges. Credits and Sources: Austin Fischer, Nell Irvin Painter, Jonathan Greer, John Hilb...

The story of "Doubting Thomas" has been used to make a lot of people feel like doubting isn't a very "Christian" thing to do. After all, didn't Jesus basically tell Thomas to knock it off with all of the asking for proof stuff? Didn't Jesus give props to anyone who stops asking questions and just accepts what their friends say? There's just one problem with this reading of the "Doubting" Thomas st...

I wouldn't call this talk a sermon or a teaching. It's a discovery and it's based on data. It's based on answers that the Netarts Friends Church family provided to questions about their own faith and doubts. We all have ideas about the best way out of or through our doubts. But like a mountain climber trying to scramble up an impossible ravine at the wrong place, we can end up wasting a lot of ene...

This episode introduces the things that have rocked the faith of Netarts Friends Church family the most. We will spend the rest of this series exploring various aspects of these doubts. Credits: Tim Geddert, Brian Zahnd, Greg Boyd, Adam Grant, Austin Fischer, Peter Enns, Moises Silva, and Chris Thyberg. All doubts shared by Netarts Friends Church family appear as shared unless slightly edited to h...

What if your life is mysteriously somehow a participation in the suffering death and resurrection of Jesus? How do you find your place in the various parts of the story? Music Credits: Tyler Chester and Michael Gungor For more information or to support this podcast visit www.netartsfriends.org (4/09/23)

The question is not IF you put God into a box. It is simply HOW you put God into a box, and if you are aware of the ways you put God into a box. We aren't all rigid in the same ways, but we are all rigid in some way. We do not try to keep the same kind of order, but we all have a drive to keep order in some way. In some way, we all put God into a box. God is always somehow bigger/broader/different...

We live in a world that expects educators and professionals to demystify the world and explain everything. We want to understand everything. We want the one right answer to every question. This episode invites you to explore the ancient path of learning that Jesus invited his disciples on. It invites you to embrace both the ancient and the new. Credits & Sources: Tim Geddert, Bruce Malina, Ric...

The stats say that the vast majority of people have nobody who they regularly confess their sins to. They are left carrying whatever sense of guilt, shame, and unforgiveness they carry alone. They are left to their own sense of forgiveness. Might we be suffering from that? What does it look like to imagine it differently? Credits & Sources: Justo Gonzalez, Brian Ross, Steve Cuss, Brian Zahnd,...

People's faith gets shattered on this stuff. Lives hang in the balance....and lives are changed and enriched positively by healing prayers. There are beautiful stories and tragic stories. This episode is not so much a declaration of the one way to understand prayers for healing in the midst of suffering as it is an exploration of what Scripture says and how God might meet us together in our variou...

It isn't a conservative thing or a liberal thing. It's a human thing. We tend to give our loyalty to systems and authorities. We want a home team. There are upsides and downsides (even dark sides) to blindly following the advice, suggestions, and instructions of those in authority. What does ancient Christian spirituality have to say about blindly following those in authority? Credits & Source...

We live in a world full of injustice. It's systemic, historic, personal, and private. It touches the food we eat, clothes we wear, financial systems, land we live on, and on and on. Facing injustice can be exhausting. It can be overwhelming. Sometimes you are caught in the middle of it. Sometimes you are looking on from the bleachers, from a position of privilege as other people's lives are torn a...