The Unorthodox Gatherings

Jesus often speaks in parables to both convey a truth he believes in and challenge the current system in which he's working. His parables about the Kingdom of Heaven not only disrupt this idea that the Kingdom of Heaven is not about an afterlife destination, but are a direct challenge to the religious system of his day, as well as our own. 

The Kingdom of Heaven is mostly assumed to be referring to an afterlife destination...however, that's not what's meant when it's used in the Gospels. The best way I've found to define the Kingdom of Heaven is it is a representation of the value system of God, and when Jesus says the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand he's saying God's Value System is breaking into the value systems that dominate our wor...

If you had to ask a random person on the street what they thought the kingdom of heaven meant, they would likely say it has to do with this place that exists after death. We've been so engrained to understand this phrase in this way. But here's the thing: this is absolutely NOT how Jesus or the gospels mean this phrase. Today is part 1 of a new series in which we'll deconstruct the kingdom of heav...

The concept of demons is largely utilized by Evangelical Christianity, but without a contextual understanding of demons and evil in the New Testament. Today we look at the story of the Gerasene Demoniac in Luke 8 as a tool to discuss how demons were understood in antiquity. We touch on the difficulty we have today with our emphasis on literalism to arrest such a human desire on knowing whether or...

Koinonia has become an esoteric word a lot of churches like to use for various types of ministry. It's translated as community, however, most churches today are near perfect reflections of the individualism that has come to dominate American identity. As one of the 3 primary tasks of a faith-centered community, koinonia is essential. Today, we look at koinonia as it's informed by a collective of p...

Continuing our 3 part series on the 3 Primary Functions of a Jesus-Centered Faith Community, today we talk about the Greek word, kerygma, which is translated as proclamation. For many, if not most, churches, this has become the primary function of church. It is proclaiming what Jesus has done for the world and us, and what Jesus promises to do. However, what we say Jesus has done and promises to d...

We're starting a 3-week series on the 3 primary tasks. This might seem mundane, but considering most churches don't engage in this paradigm, it's quite radical, especially because it's centered in radical service to the other. So we go over "service" for our first week. 

It seems almost offensive to simply suggest disconnection to a secure future causes increases in depression and anxiety, yet our society is structured to keep people in these liminal spaces, and solutions are touted as fantastical. This episode not only explores the commonality of this disconnection among so many people, but also the plausibility of some responses that we've been raised to think a...

Today's episode focuses on the human need to have a connection to the natural world. We explore not only this evolutionary need, but how becoming more and more detached from the world has led to the complicit attitude in the destruction of our planet. Renewing connection to the natural world not only helps us individually feel better, it can also have larger ecological benefits. 

In today's episode we talk about the human need to be connected to meaningful values, more specifically to intrinsic values versus extrinsic values.  We also discuss how society is specifically geared toward extrinsic values and how this is having harmful affects on people. 

We're starting a new series on connection, utilizing Johann Hari's bestselling book, "Lost Connections". The book explores systemic causes of depression and anxiety. The Unorthodox Gatherings is using the book to understand how our Western Society facilitates these disconnections and how we as humans and faith communities can facilitate more meaningful connection. Today's episode looks at the valu...

In this conversation, we wrap up our series on Empire with a discussion on the modern day Christian's response to Empire in our society. We start with a comparison to the empire of Rome as a comparative lens for seeing similar attributes today and then discuss what it looks like to incorporate the responses we see in the New Testament from Jesus, Paul, and apocalyptic literature. 

We were blessed to have the presence of Professor Kelly Dagley, Associate Professor of Biblical Studies, who presented an excerpt of her dissertation on Women's experience of migration with an amazing comparison to the Book of Ruth. This gave an incredibly humane look at the experience of migration and the dangers women face. Media, and especially our politics, negate these experiences and Profess...

While being perhaps the most influential writer within the library of the Bible, Paul is probably also the most misunderstood. This is because Paul is the author of only 7 of the 13 letters attributed to him. Also, for centuries Paul has been read through this Augustinian-Lutheran lens, rather than a Jewish lens. Today's conversation centers on the 7 authentic letters of Paul and the egalitarian c...

Western Christianity has framed Jesus' purpose as one of getting individuals to an afterlife paradise. However, when read in context, we see the gospels are these radical anti-imperialist commentaries against Rome and Roman values. The Empire of God was meant to be a stark contrast to worldly empires and the task of the Christian is to bring God's Empire to earth. 

Plainly put, one cannot understand Christianity, nor the Jesus movement without understanding Rome. The Jesus movement was centered into responding to this massive empire in a transcendent way that is a commentary against all empires. Yet, Western Christians weren't raised with this background. This episode begins a 4 part series on empire, with the focus of this one on the Roman Empire that compl...

Hermeneutics is a fancy way of saying how we interpret ancient texts. For pastors who go to seminary, hermeneutics involves learning the languages the texts were originally written in, the history of that time, the support of anthropologists, etc. Most of the people who attend churches don't have that educational background, so in this episode we discussed the various hermeneutical models with whi...

Idolatry is one of those concepts that is rarely talked about in mainline churches, but regularly addressed in Evangelical ones. Today we go through its meaning in the Bible and look at how it's been misused in our own modern times to help understand how not only that some of the biggest perpetrators of idolatry are the Church and Christians, but some of the biggest idols are Christianity, the Bib...

In this episode we discuss the biggest mistranslation in the Bible, and here's the crazy part: it's only a preposition. Entire theologies and doctrines have been based on this mistranslation, some of the worst abuses committed by the Church were based on this mistranslation, and entire political blocs are based on this mistranslation. We go through not only what the mistranslation is and how it oc...

Today's conversation focuses on Cornel West's essay, The Crisis of Christian Identity in America. He presents two perspectives of Christianity that he calls Constantinian Christianity and Prophetic Christianity. We talk about the differences between the two and their implications in our lives. 

This is Part 1 of our 3-week series on Liberation and we're working with Dorothee Sölle's 3 Frameworks of Christianity. There's a handout for this conversation that would be really helpful if you're listening to this.  Click here to look at the handout. 

As a prime for our 3 week series on Liberation coming up, the conversation today was centered on what the purpose of faith is. We talked about personal experiences, how purpose of faith has been viewed in the mainstream, and ultimately tried to create a contextual purpose of faith. The conversation might be a bit muffled because we're abiding by the county's mask mandate, but next week I'll have a...

Belief has been framed as the foundational condition of Christianity. Few, if any, other religions have this condition, and frankly, neither does Christianity - at least not the way it's understood today. This conversation was a deconstruction of belief. We looked at the Greek text of the New Testament and talked about both belief misuse and hopefully positive attributes. 

It's interesting to look at a timeline of Christian development. In this gathering we looked at some of the hallmark moments in this timeline to understand better what informed Christian dogmas and doctrines that were created and see how little was developed from the first 3 centuries of Christianity when it was a religion of the persecuted. We used a graphic in this conversation, which I forgot t...

We had a really powerful reaction to our conversation on Historical Criticism; so much so that it was hard to realize how much church doctrine was created outside of the context in which the Bible was written. In this gathering we look at the positives of Historical Criticism and why it's so needed for faith communities today and in the future.