Netarts Friends Church Podcast

If you could receive a heartfelt apology, an expression of genuine remorse, and real efforts to repair the situation from anyone; who would you choose? What happens when you long for that apology, but there is no apology? How do you cope, and does it help? Credits and Sources: Brian Zahnd, Brennan Manning, Jean Anouih, R.B. Chisholm Jr., Joel Green, Craig Keener, John Delahouse, Alan Culpepper, Ti...

Nobody wants to think of themselves as gullible. But what if the most difficult temptation to face and often the most destructive, is the temptation that you don't recognize as a temptation at all? This episode explores the final temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, and how we encounter aspects of this same temptation in everyday life. Credits & Sources: Donald Kraybill, Tim Geddert, Alan Cu...

What if there was a magic button you could push and suddenly people saw things your way? Everyone has people they wish they could change. Their goals for change can be "oh so good" and they fail to even realize that their method of pursuing those good goals is "oh so diabolical." This is the temptation on the mountain that Jesus encountered and rejected. Credits & Sources: William R. Herzog II...

Life is full of difficult, bizarre, and dark experiences and we wonder, "Is God testing me? Is this a temptation or dark attack? Or is this just all happening because of natural causes?" This episode explores your experience, and Jesus' experience of all three of these. Credits & Sources: Ilene Strauss Cohen, Marva Dawn, William Stringfellow, N.T. Wright, Greg Boyd, Joel Green, Alan Culpepper,...

This episode asks how Jesus was able to endure the amount of rejection he endured while staying true to his sense of identity. It explores what happens to our sense of identity when we experience rejection. Underneath every identity question there is another question that every person is ultimately trying to find the answer to. Listen to explore further. Credits & Sources: Sanjana Gupta, Henri...

Nobody wants to admit that they might be entitled. But how good are we at recognizing when we are thinking or acting in entitled ways? This episode explores the ways we might not be aware of our own entitlement. It traces ancient paths of staying open to God and not giving entitlement a place to root in our hearts. Credits and Sources: Aine Doris, Stephane Stéphane Côté, Jennifer E. Stel...

What happens when you are doing your routine, doing the same old, same old but you come to a dawning realization: somehow you have lost touch with the sacred, with the Divine, with your Creator? You've lost Jesus. How do you regain connection, restart, rekindle? Credits & Sources: Eldon Fry, Scot McKnight, Brian Zahnd, Thomas Kelly, Elizabeth Barret Browning, Justo Gonzalez, Tim Geddert, David...

What do you do with your experiences that feel spiritually significant, but don't make sense? This episode looks at how you process those experiences that are deeply moving, disturbing, strange, odd, or just plain weird. When you don't know how to make sense of those experiences, what do you do with them? Credits & Sources: Scot McKnight, Kenneth E. Bailey, Austin Kleon, Tim Geddert, Justo Gon...

We all carry strong drives and urges to be in control. Sometimes our grasping for control only leaves us feeling more out of control. This episode uses Zechariah's experience of month of silence to explore the ways we all try to control things that are outside of our control. In what way does God want to bring healing to your relationship with control? Credits & Sources: Stephanie Pappas, Eddi...

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...