The Unorthodox Gatherings

Our conversation in this episode is led by Trish Hecker, founder of Open Door Support. She has a Masters in Social Science with an emphasis on Human Development and is a certified Sexuality Educator. In our series we've been deconstructing the Bible as a source for creating sexual ethics today, but it's been Trish who has helped us understand what a healthy sexual ethics looks like utilizi...

In this episode we do a short recap of what we've covered in our "Deconstructing Sexual Ethics of the New Testament" series and spend time thinking through the renegotiations that have been made for heteronormative relationships that have not been given to the Queer Community.

The Bible does not talk about homosexuality. What it does reference, only a small handful of times is same-sex sex and a modern, puritanical society has conflated the two. In this episode we look at several references to same-sex sex from Leviticus to the letters of Paul, to help understand how same-sex sex was thought about in antiquity so that we might help undo the harm to the LGBTQ+ community...

The letters of Paul have probably been more instrumental in creating a modern sexual ethics of the church than any other biblical source. Here's the crazy part: Paul has been vastly misunderstood. This episode we talk about the 2 primary ways Paul has been misunderstood and why this should stop us from using Paul to create sexual ethics for today.

The foundation for understanding and deconstructing a sexual ethics from the New Testament starts with understanding sexual ethics from the perspective of 1st century Judaism. The laws that come from ancient Judaism are the jumping off point for the conservative, puritanical sexual ethics that come over to the New World. The problem? They're all renegotiated to fit the context of whoever is us...

Today marks the beginning of a new series that will deconstruct the sexual ethics from the Bible that are used to try and create a "Biblical" sexual ethics for a modern day. Today's conversation is more about creating a foundation for the rest of the series, but it's an important conversation as we'll be using this information throughout.

There are a lot of words that Christians use for granted, words they know because they've been raised with a cultural understanding of them, not a contextual one. However, words like gospel, salvation, saved, Son of God, Christ, are not words meant to be used by a powerful church, but by the powerless followers of the historical Jesus who believed they were taking a non-violent, compassionate...

In this conversation we go over a recap of our Slow Church series and try to think of a vision for both our Bethania and Unorthodox community that can incorporate a way of being a church centered in this slower method, a way that rejects the hold consumerism has on our community and lives, and a way of being more present with our neighborhood in general, and with the vulnerable among us in particu...

Everyone would like to be a hospitable person. The problem is we live in a consumeristic world where if we can't even afford more and more material possessions, our smart phones are still consuming our time, attention, and energy. Genuine hospitality cannot come unless we center ourselves in abundance and gratitude, values that are antithetical to consumerism.

Gratitude may seem like a value we try to instill in our kids and don't realize the radical effect it can have in our lives. Our conversation today is centered in the idea that people genuinely have enough, but we live in such a consumerist time that we are tricked into believing we don't have all we need. Gratitude is that value that helps us remember each day that we have enough so then...

God has created life and instilled a theology of Abundance. Think of the manna in the desert, the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, the feeding of the 5,000, the pooling of resources and distribution as there was need. Yet, we have a created a society, not just of scarcity, but one that benefits off of scarcity, and thus, will inherently oppose abundance. But if God calls us to somethi...

I have to apologize, we've had technical difficulties with our last two episodes and they weren't recorded. It's been an amazing series and we have our newest episode on Sabbath. One of the most radical notions in the Bible, and yet, because of our values as Americans, we've completely sanitized it. We discuss the radical nature of Sabbath in this episode and try to consider how Sa...

We continue our series on Slow Church, which is a response to the consumerist model of church that has developed in America over the last century. Today's conversation focuses on the ethical value of stability. To think of it better, stability is experienced when a person or a church establish roots and are able to experience the rhythms of the neighborhood in which they're in. To do this...

We're starting a new series on a concept called Slow Church. It is a response to the consumerist, individualistic life of America in general, and the replicable, consumerist, American Church in particular. Slow Church calls us to understand the unique characteristics of the neighborhood in which our church is a part of and try to respond in that neighborhood primarily through love, service, an...

Most of us grew up in the church being told to do what we're supposed to as Christians, without a second thought, almost as though the Church was banking on us not questioning who was telling us what the Bible said. Today we're going to ask the question, Why?, and ask it authentically.

Communal Intimacy is a phrase that is among the most oxymoronic with regard to the White American identity. As Americans we praise our individualism and encourage people to learn how to take care of themselves. However, research is pointing to the devastating affects this has on the human brain and psyche. Today's readings point at communal intimacy not only as a response to our rugged individ...

Christianity is not, and has never been, a religion centered in worship or a personal self-help guide. Today we hear a parable from Jesus directed at the Temple leaders for neglecting their responsibilities and the harsh consequences of that neglect. Ultimately, this points the finger at us and all Christianity today. Our conversation is centered in the implications of this parable both theologica...

As Americans, many of us have been raised with the frame of mind that Christianity has an inward focus. It's about becoming personally okay with God so that I can go to heaven after I die. This mirrors the values we were raised with as Americans. Our readings today will not only challenge this notion, but point us to a simple, yet difficult frame of mind that ultimately would be the best thing...

Forgiveness is one of the most associated concepts with Christianity. Yet, by looking at today's text, we can see how forgiveness not only has the potential to be used abusively, but we'll talk about how the Church has done that very thing, time and time again. We'll deconstruct some of this, and try to think about forgiveness in a more radical and liberating way.

We don't realize that Jesus was the primary deconstructionist of his time. He was consistently looking at the emphasis of his religious system and critiquing it, trying to point people to something more essential. Today we hear a conversation that does this very thing between Jesus, the Pharisees, his disciples, and the gathered crowd. It helps us wonder about the question: what's more imp...

We treat the "Feeding of the Multitude" miracles as just that. It's an amazing miracle that displays Jesus' power. However, in each Gospel's telling of the story there's a lot more going on. In Matthew's version, he's connecting Jesus to Moses and the multitude to the Exodus. Matthew is intentionally helping people see a story of liberation, while at the same time...

Matthew's Kingdom of Heaven of parables are explicitly not talking about an afterlife experience, but also give the aura of something bigger and more mysterious that can be experienced in this lifetime. Today we talk about these meanings and consider what they say about our life today.

Another parable in Matthew's Kingdom of Heaven discourse, the Parable of the weeds among the wheat has often been used to describe individuals and the status of their "souls". However, when looked in it's historical context, we see that this parable is one of tremendous hope for people wrestling with how to respond to Roman persecution, which for today's audience, could still...

A parable that has often been utilized to compartmentalize the quality of people or even the quality of ourselves, the Parable of the Sower can be a parable that beats us over the head (or allows us to beat others over the head). But what if this parable is meant to describe each of us at different moments in our lives, not in a linear progression, but in an ongoing cycle? Perhaps with this perspe...

We talk about two points in this episode, one explicit and one implicit. The explicit, which is still often missed by the Church today, is the missional identity of Jesus followers. Jesus explicitly commands his followers to do what he does, which is not centered in worship, or evangelism, but the work of compassion. But the implicit point for us in the progressive church is that we don't ofte...