theeffect Podcasts

Dave Brisbin | 1.28.18 The Father’s love is so big, so pervasive that we still have more to talk about. How do we start to grasp something that by definition is ungraspable—as is anything that is infinite. In trying to understand anything, our minds immediately begin defining and categorizing, creating edges to distinguish that from this and give us something to hold on to. But this is not possibl...

Dave Brisbin | 1.21.18 Our co-founder, friend, and benefactor, Bob “Bubba” Beauchamp died January 16. It was a Tuesday morning when my phone rang at 7AM, and I saw Bubba’s son’s name and just knew things were going to be very different. Bubba was a larger than life character who filled rooms with presence and laughter--someone who never left you unchanged, always left you better than he found you....

Dave Brisbin | 1.14.18 As we ease into our new space, seems a good time to revisit the foundational principles that define theeffect…go back to basics. This is never an irrelevant thing to do: the most fundamental principles in life are those that run so deep that we can only grasp them in stages. We need to revisit them over and over. And so it is with the most foundational of all the principles...

On our first Sunday in our new space, we revisit the idea of consecrating our new space just as our old space was consecrated over nearly a decade of service. And not just in terms of a formal prayer or ritual or even of the formal worship on a Sunday morning, but through every authentic vulnerability between each of us and another in this place. To consecrate, to set aside this space for use in G...

On New Year’s Eve, on our last day in the space and facility that has been our home for over nine years, it is a day of endings. But then tomorrow is a day of beginnings… How do we process all that? People have often told us that just stepping into our room gives them a sense of spirit or presence or just connection and peace. Is that something we’re leaving behind? If this has been God’s house fo...

We know so little of Jesus’ birth and childhood. Only two gospels give us any information at all. Luke gives us most of what we traditionally know of Jesus’ birth and childhood, and Matthew gives us the story of the Magi. Who were these Magi, these wise men from the east? What was the star they followed and what do their gifts signify? Why did Matthew feel this story, above all and any other stori...

As we prepare to move to a new facility at the end of the month, we take a moment to look back on our time at our facility of nine years and consider how we as humans attach such meaning and emotion to places and things. It’s a beautiful thing we do—makes us real. Taking time to grieve the loss of everything we’ve known, even as we prepare for the adventure of what is coming soon. And as we are al...

Dave Brisbin | 11.26.17 With Thanksgiving just passed, it may be good to stop for a minute and consider what this holiday may have to teach us at root. The older I get, the simpler things begin to look, and I’m beginning to realize that the things that remain complicated are of much less importance than the simple ones. As a master of simplicity, Jesus is always breaking things down to their simpl...

Dave Brisbin | 11.19.17 The world and culture that produced our Scriptures is so different from ours that the very basis through which we understand the words we read in our translated texts—our worldview—has to be translated first in order to really understand the truth being conveyed. Try to imagine a world in which the workings of nature—from thunder and lightning to earthquakes and solar eclip...

Dave Brisbin | 11.12.17 It often helps to hear deep spiritual truths as expressed in faith traditions other than our own. We can become so familiar with our own traditional expressions that we don’t hear them anymore…they become enveloped in colloquial meaning and lose the ability to shock us into deeper awareness. And we do need to be shocked. Native Americans did not put their energy into buildi...

Dave Brisbin | 11.5.17 Maria Montessori said that play is the work of the child. She recognized that the playful activities of childhood influence the pattern of the connection between nerve cells in the brain, the development of motor skills, language, socialization, personal awareness, creativity, emotional wellness, problem solving. And if play is the work of the child, then toys are the tools....

Dave Brisbin | 11.2.17 Speaking to a divorce recovery workshop on the topic of new directions in life, how to make sense of the pain and loss? How to deal with the completely changed landscape of life and relationships? A new world in which to navigate and chart new directions? If we can understand the shape of the emotional/spiritual journey we’re on, like looking at the overall shape of the rout...

Dave Brisbin | 10.29.17 A nationally-known pastor writes of a sea change earlier in his life when he realized that he was no longer on a path he recognized or thought would lead where he really wanted to go. He wrote that he believed that we have a far too narrow view of repentance, that it meant “to think,” and he had much to rethink and repent. But if we really look at the etymology of the word...

Dave Brisbin | 10.22.17 Looking at the record of increasing human awareness of the intimacy of God’s spirit recorded in scripture: from a wild, fearful presence on a mountaintop, to the shepherd-like pillars of cloud and fire leading the people of Israel, to the cloud standing outside the tent speaking to Moses, to that presence settling on and filling the tent and eventually the temple, to fillin...

Dave Brisbin | 10.15.17 At the end of John’s Last Supper account, Peter asks Jesus in the Latin version, “Quo vadis, domine?” Where are you going, Lord? Isn’t that the question we’ve all been asking since the very beginning and are still asking now? We’re still asking because a question this large, that encompasses all of life and all it means to be human, is not answered in a conversation. It’s n...

Dave Brisbin | 10.8.17 Ever notice how it seems to take longer to get somewhere you’ve never been than to get back again? Why is that? Watching every turn, wondering if you missed one, if there’ll be a street sign, how much longer…? I always like to look at a map of the whole route before letting the GPS lady lead me around by the nose. There is a certain amount of anxiety involved in going somewh...

Dave Brisbin | 10.1.17 Meister Eckhart said that the spiritual life is much more about subtraction than addition, but what does that mean? Many spiritual teachers have spoken about the fact that life is divided into halves, but what is the distinction? Putting the two together, the first half of life is about building the physical platform for survival, happiness, meaning, purpose, identity—it’s a...

Dave Brisbin | 9.17.17 If you’re waiting for anything, you’re not herenow—you’re projected somewhere into an imagined future. And if you’re not herenow, then you’re not in Kingdom, not on Jesus’ Way. Life is like music and dance: you’re either making it or you’re not…if you’re waiting for it, you’re not making it. And yet, as long as we’re breathing here, time appears to us as a sequence of events...

Dave Brisbin | 9.10.17 Anyone who’s played football had to learn the playbook and how to run the plays in the book, but the real play of football begins where the playbook ends. What do you do when the playbook has delivered you the ball, put it in your hands, and now it’s just you, a field full of linebackers, and a goal line? A great chef begins where the recipe ends and jazz players are defined...

Dave Brisbin | 9.3.17 A pastor once told me that the pulpit is the last bastion of uninterrupted speech in America. That may be true, and monologues have their place and power, but from time to time we like to have “Conversations” on Sunday mornings, times when we can interact as a group—ask questions and make comments, tell personal stories—sometimes open ended and sometimes directed. Today, dire...

Dave Brisbin | 8.27.17 In saying that Jesus’ hidden years show us a life of willingness to let go of anything that is not truth, to descend first, with no guarantee of ascension, just a promise…what does that look like? What does it mean in real life? Our lives? Piecing together the clues in the few stories we have in the Gospels, it looks like leaving home. Leaving everything that is familiar, co...

Dave Brisbin | 8.20.17 Francis of Assisi is credited with saying that we should preach the Gospel continuously and use words where necessary. Taking his cue from Jesus, Francis understood that the Gospel was first a way of living life and only secondarily and of necessity a concept put into words. That words were only as good as the experience that gave them life. Jesus himself and his life itself...

Dave Brisbin | 8.13.17 The hardest thing for us to understand about Kingdom is its immediacy. The understanding of Jesus’ Kingdom as the heaven of afterlife is so deeply embedded in us, that intellectually understanding otherwise doesn’t really move the needle much. We can say we understand and yet for years still operate as if this Kingdom is still off waiting to happen in some undertermined futu...

Dave Brisbin | 8.6.17 When Jesus says that he is the Way, truth, and life, if we’re to take him at his word, what he is saying is that he is both a person and a process. The implications of this statement are radical, but we typically don’t even consider them as the church has come to focus almost exclusively on Jesus as a person and has lost the promise of process: finding the person/truth that m...

Dave Brisbin | 7.30.17 How could an abundance of emphasis on the absolute love of God be a problem? What could go wrong? It is one of the ironies of my life and chosen profession that my absolute focus on the absolute nature of God’s love has placed me at odds with many of my Christian contemporaries, and though this over simplifies the nature of any controversy, it at least accurately expresses m...