The Unorthodox Gatherings

In today's Gospel text we see Jesus reach out to people on all sides of the spectrum of his day; from the most despised to the most powerful, from the most profane to the most righteous, and he seems to be inclusive and compassionate to all. We discuss the meanings of these identities and what it looks like for us to be both inclusive, while also making sure we continue to stand up and speak f...

The vast majorities of Christians do not grow up with a contextual understanding of the Bible and how to interpret it and make decisions about it for our time today. One of the biggest obstacles that has prevented this has been Church Dogma. The vast majority of Christians have grown up having their church's dogma not only memorized, but ever ready to employ it both defense of life-decisions,...

The story of Pentecost, or the beginning of the Church, has had a dual affect in our society today. First, it has allowed the Church to say that it's decision making is ordained by God and others cannot question that decision making. And second, it has moved much of that decision making into activities that end up excluding people from being in. When we look at the story of Pentecost in contex...

TW: This can be a challenging episode for some listeners because it's going to challenge a lot of the concepts of the origin of God from the narratives a lot of us grew up with. I want to say that even though I know the information I'm presenting in this episode, I still consider myself a believer in the divine and a devout follower of Jesus. I share this information, not to harm anyone&#3...

Modern Christian thinking would have us believe that idolatry is constrained to not worshipping other gods or participating in rituals/practices that come from different spiritual backgrounds. However, when we look at idolatry through the context of the Hebrew Bible, the Gospels, and Paul's authentic letters, we get a different definition of idolatry; one that would even shine a light on how C...

You simply can't read the Bible in your native language and know what it means. There are so many layers to interpreting the Bible, yet so many pastors and churches treat it this way. Even more frightening, Christian groups try to create policy based on their interpretation. Today we talk about this one-way interpretation, how we can look at texts from multiple angles, and a rough methodology...

When we remove from ourselves the need to think about or experience Christianity as a system of beliefs to get to an afterlife destination, then Jesus' words and actions shine in a new light. We find that Jesus invites us to participate in a value system that is markedly different than the world's. One of the primary value systems of the Jesus movement is radical inclusivity. Today we look...

To be a parable, a story does not have to be untrue. The character of a parable is that the meaning of a story is more important than its factuality. When we treat stories in antiquity this way it helps us to understand their meaning in ways that their original audience naturally would have understood. In this conversation we look at the story of Jesus' resurrection as a parable, not to claim...

Our stories of The Last Supper and Good Friday are almost entirely theological. The gospel writer is departing from trying to simply convey the chain of events and rather are focusing on conveying either theological or geopolitical statements to readers. Unfortunately, later communities renegotiated the theology in favor of a more individualistic and salvific understanding. Today we look at the th...

Another common story around Lent is what many Bibles call "The Cleansing of the Temple". Understood as removing ritualistic impurities, this aggressive moment by Jesus has always been excused without looking (intentionally or unintentionally?) at the context of Jerusalem's geopolitical climate in this time. In this episode, we not only talk about what the historical Jesus was doing,...

The story of Jesus' last week of life is treated without context. It's understood as Jesus going to Jerusalem to die for this sins of humanity and resurrecting so believers go to heaven after death. No context needed. However, when context is added we see that there's a lot more to Jesus' presence in Jerusalem and perhaps even more to his death and resurrection.

The Gospel story of The Woman at the Well features two people (Jesus and the Samaritan Woman) who grew up hearing stories of why they should hate each other. Yet, both create a bridge of unity that becomes a story of love. How can this help us understand the stories we've been given that tell us to hate or fear others and turn them into stories of love?

Thought of as a time to reflect on our own individual brokenness, does Lent today compare to Lent among the first communities? Today we take a look at how Lent was understood in the 1st century and what implications on our theology this might have.

Dr. Brad Onishi joins us as our guest speaker to talk about his new book, Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism and What Comes Next. This was a riveting presentation highlighting statistics of Christian Nationalism in America and it both views and tries to shape our world a national standpoint all the way down to a municipal one. Dr Onishi captures the present ris...

Care for Creation has led us to primarily understanding ourselves as an interdependent part of God larger creation. Today we talk about that larger creation, the global climate. A relatively new, and complex science, it's been described as a system of systems, which then becomes difficult to explain to the larger population. However, measurable data is vast as well as the consensus by scientists t...

We know there's a climate crisis. We know human activity is contributing to massive changes in our climate affecting life all around us and our own sustainability. Most people don't know Christian Theological contributions that have justified these actions. We need to take seriously our mandate to be stewards of our earth and we need to repent of destructive and incorrect theologies that have led...

If there is anything the modern church does that is NOT a reflection of what's referenced in Scripture, Baptism might be at the top. In this episode we're going to look at how Baptism was understood in the Gospels, through John and Jesus, and by the authentic Paul, which are our earliest writings in the New Testament. Afterwards we'll wonder, "Have we gotten Baptism wrong, and is there a way to re...

It was banned in British-colonized India and in the dictator periods of Guatemala and Argentina, yet the image we have of Mary, the mother of Jesus, is a timid, dutiful virgin. Imagine instead a 15 year old, brown skinned, Palestinian girl with fist raised, singing this song at Herod the Great and Caesar Augustus - then you might understand Mary a little better. Today we talk about this powerful s...

People typically treat the Christmas Story like a news report, as though its simply reporting the events of Jesus' birth as it happened. However, when we look at other writings in the Greco-Roman world, we can see the Christmas story wasn't just an accounting of Jesus' birth, but was responding to Jesus' world. This episode looks at what this still celebrated story was responding to in it's origin...

Christ the King has become a ubiquitous title in many Christian circles today. The festival of Christ the King was created in 1925 as a response, not to the rise brutal dictators like Caesar Augustus, but to the rise of secularism by Pope Pius XI. Today, proclaiming Christ as King has become a way for people to insulate their own power, but when we look at the historical context, we find that Chri...

On All Saints Sunday, I gave a presentation on finding hope in the midst of going through grief or loss. I also discussed some of the ways modern Christian Theology has really screwed up the grieving process. 

Most of our Unorthodox folks didn't grow up celebrating Reformation Sunday, so in this episode we went over a snapshot of Luther's reformation, and then looked at some current statistics to wonder both, are we in a new reformation, and if so, how might we be a part of it. 

This is a bit of a convoluted episode as we had a handout to follow along with, but we were utilizing Spiral Dynamics as a way to help us understand the progression of culture throughout time. In such a polarized day, this can be a tool to help us see varying perspectives of people we might disagree with, as well as find hope that we are progressing into a sustainable place. Spiral Dynamics is not...

This series was a pivotal one to understanding the central idea of the historical Jesus movement as a "kingdom" movement. We didn't have a lot of time to think about the implications of trying to live this out so we took some time in this episode to summarize what we went over and to have a conversation about what the challenges are in living this way of life out. 

I've been doing this work for a while and I feel like I've come up with a good definition for what the Kingdom of Heaven is, especially as the Gospels uses the phrase. The Kingdom of Heaven is not about an after life destination, but it's about God's value system breaking into the value system of our world. When Jesus says "the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand", he's saying that God's value system is...