Netarts Friends Church Podcast

There's a way to look at trials and endurance that is very American, and a way that is true to the author of the book of James. They are two very different approaches and the difference between the approaches can greatly impact whether or not local gatherings of Jesus-followers become who God intended for them to become. Credits & Sources: Luke Timothy Johnson, Nijay Gupta, Craig Keener, Herb...

We all have patterns of behavior we get into. We get focused on what the issue is. We miss the emotional processes happening underneath. This is where God asks us deeper questions. Credits & Sources: Steve Cuss, Murray Bowen, Erica Brown, Eugene Peterson, Phyllis Trible, Terrence E. Fretheim. For more information or to support this podcast visit www.netartsfriends.org (8/13/22)

As friends, parents, and loving humans, we change our minds many times every day. We are adaptive, responsive, and flexible. Unchanging love for others requires us to change. What about God? Does God's mind ever change? Credits & Sources: Thomas Oden, Greg Boyd, Terrence Fretheim, Phyllis Trible, Marvin R. Wilson, TWOT, Erica Brown, Scot McKnight. For more information or to support this podcas...

Does God have your entire life mapped out down to the tiniest detail? Does God have one right decision for you to make every time? One right way? One person for you to marry? One college? One job? One toothbrush to use? Is God like a controlling parent who plans your life out for you? What happens if you deviate from God's plan for your life? What other alternatives to this view are there? Credits...

We all need do-overs. We mess our life up. We mess other people's lives up. We struggle to recognize what parts we are responsible for and what parts other people are responsible for. We want God's help, but we aren't ready to face ourselves. We blame God. We blame others. We try to deflect. How can we even get clear on where we went wrong? We need the gift of a do-over, even before we have our li...

Have you ever found yourself weathering a storm of someone else's making? Suddenly the impact of their choices is affecting your time, finances, home, relationships, workplace, safety, or life? Sometimes the way they involve you in their situation leaves you with lose/lose decisions. They put you into a double bind. You are left making excruciating and complex decisions. After it all goes down you...

Your cover story includes some of the basic facts of your experience, but rarely does it tell the complete truth about your experiences and how they affected you. Words sometimes fail when the world no longer makes sense, when meaning collapses, when it feels like God might be on the side of your oppressors. This is why we need more than to "know" that God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger,...

Have you ever felt that feeling down deep in your gut? A palpable truth. Reality. A feeling. A thought. An image. You know God is telling you something. It is comforting and full of empathy; and it is challenging, eye-opening, and scary. You want to run away, argue it away, sleep it away. But still, it is there, coming after you. Possibly swallowing you up. How do you determine what to do next? Ho...

The story of Jonah and the whale is fraught with questions of history, biology, archeology, and botany, etc. Some people avoid the questions, some people do mental gymnastics with the questions, and some people deconstruct their faith with the questions. All of these questions center around one big question: "DID THAT HAPPEN?" Is this the question that matters the most when it comes to the book of...

Life is full of situations where we get mixed up with people who may seem irritating, gross, lonely, or dirty. It's easy to think that "they" are the people who need to get their life together, and to think that "we" are the ones offering the help (if we can stomach it). Alternatively, we may simply try to get as far away as possible from these types of people ASAP. But what if underneath these ty...

History is full of hundreds of millions of people who were born into cultures and religions who never heard the name of Jesus. They were left to patch together their way of life from their parents, their village, their culture, the religion and politics of their people, and the technology of their day. These days many who have heard the name of Jesus associate that name with something ugly rather...

Life is hard in different ways than we anticipate. The things that actually trip us up often come out of left field. They are things we were looking right past or didn't see coming. Rarely it is one thing, it's a deadly cocktail of events that come together and somehow, we end up saying or doing things that we never planned on. We look back on it all and say, "Well, I certainly didn't see that com...

Have you ever felt like you had so much going on, or so many limitations that you couldn't even bear your own burdens, much less help someone else out? Does that make you useless in the kingdom of God, or is there another way of looking at it? For more information or to support this podcast visit www.netartsfriends.org (3/13/22)

Most people I know aren't very good at personal evangelism. In addition, they've seen evangelism done in some really ugly ways. Put it all together and there are lots of Christians who steer clear of evangelism and even more non-Christians who steer clear of evangelists. But what if there are other ways to think about evangelism? Credits, Sources, Bits, & Pieces: Rodney Stark, Max Weber, Brian...

J.R. Briggs tells the story of canoeing around a lake and noticing that none of the docks even reached the water's edge. The water levels had changed. Sometimes the body of Christ is far too much like those old docks, rigid and not meeting anyone where they are. What does it mean to be the body of Christ in the changing water levels of today's culture? Sources: J.R. Briggs and Bob Hyatt For more i...

We live in a world that is NOT organized around sharing resources. Our world is organized around ownership, consumerism, and individualism. Asking one another for help creates all kinds of feelings of insecurity. In this episode you'll hear about how we are going about becoming a community that actually shares our resources with one another regularly.

Bad habits, addictions, cravings, impulses, and urges. We've all been told to just "STOP IT" a million times. We've probably told ourselves the same thing. But self-control turns out to be much more complex than just "STOP IT!" Credits, Sources, Bits, and Pieces: Moises Silva, Gordon Fee, Philip Kenneson, Peter Robinson, Bessel Van Der Kolk, Richard Schwartz, Thomas Meron, Judith Wright, Bianca Ba...

Is gentleness a personality trait? What is the relationship between what we believe about power, and our gentleness? We live in a world that is increasingly aggressive online. How does this affect us? What does creating space in our life have to do with gentleness? Credits, Sources, Bits, & Pieces: Andy Mort, D.S. Dockery, Moises Silva, Philip Kenneson, Scot McKnight, Frederick Dale Bruner, Ri...

Have you ever just wanted out? You're there, going through the motions, but you just want out. What happens inside of you? You begin to disengage, turn off, shut down. You begin to imagine a life somewhere else, with anyone else. Credits, Sources, Bits, & Pieces: Philip D. Kenneson, Nijay Gupta, Moises Silva, Leon Morris, Matthew Bates, N.T. Wright, Steve Cuss, Justo Gonzalez, Edwin H. Friedma...

God became flesh and took up residence among us. Do we fully grasp what it means that God became human, and will always be human? Sources, Credits, Bits & Pieces: Brad Jersak Kenneth Tanner Thomas Oden Bruxy Cavey Justo Gozalez C. Norman Kraus Tim Geddert Brian Zahnd For more information or to support this podcast visit www.netartsfriends.org (1/9/22)

We all imagine a good world, a better world. But is the world getting any better? Or is it simply getting better in some ways, and worse in other ways? Everyone is imagining a different version of what a good world looks like, and we all go in a million different directions. This is Part 7 in our "Fruit of the Spirit" series. Galatians 5:13-25 Credits, Sources, Bits, & Pieces: Philip Kenneson...

Imagine that someone with deep faith, an atheist, and a secular friend all answer this question. How are their answers similar? How are their answers different? Credits, Sources, Bits, & Pieces: Rodney Stark Leonard Sweet Moises Silva Philip Kenneson Gordon Fee Christopher Wright Bruxy Cavey Josiah Haken Brian McLaren Barna Group Justo Gonzalez For more information or to support this podcast v...

Your triggers are rarely all that's going on. Underneath anger, there are always more vulnerable emotions. We feel powerless, disregarded, unimportant, devalued, rejected, afraid, accused, unlovable, disconnected, or abandoned. Credits, Sources, Bits, & Pieces: David Rose Howard Kassinove Adam Pearson The American Psychological Association. Steve Carter Moises Silva James G. Dunn Gordon Fee Jo...

According to Jesus, there are two different versions of peace. There’s a peace that Jesus gives us, and a peace the world offers us. We all want peace…and we live a world ripe with unrest, anxiety, conflict, estranged families, broken relationships, bloodshed, and war. So, which peace is which? How do we sort out the difference between the peace the world offers us, and the peace that we receive f...

Everyone wants to live a life of joy, but not nearly as many people are living a life of deep joy. Joy is elusive. It’s slippery. It’s hard to hold on to. Credits, Sources, Bits, & Pieces: Kira M. Newman Alexandra Sifferlin Edwin Friedman Thomas Oden Philip D. Kenneson Steve Cuss Greg Boyd Steve Sussman Vern Hyndman Scott Peck C.S. Lewis David Rose James D.G. Dunn Parker Palmer Statista.com A....