First-Plymouth Church's Podcast

It is easy to feel isolated these days, to long for connection, to wonder if there is more in life than this (whatever "this" is to us). Faith calls us to the recognition of a deeper reality but also it calls us to the recognition of our need for one another, the sense of transcendence pushes us not just vertically but horizontally, to a sacredness before us. This week, join Pastor Juan Carlos for worship.

This weekend, Pastor Jim will hone in on BEAUTY as a key aspect of the faith. All beauty in our world harkens to the transcendent beauty of the divine. And to strive for a more just world is at the same time to strive for a more beautiful world. As a great theologian said “we must move people toward truth, goodness, and liberation through beauty. Frenetic and harried and labored activism won't shift people. We need to appeal to their dreams and hopes and sense of beauty.”

Gospel means good news but what happens when said good news sounds more like bad news? This week we hear one of the most difficult teachings of Jesus. At first it seems impossible but as we engage it in the day to day of life, it opens up a pathway to freedom, belonging, and community.

At a few moments in his life Elijah was overcome with negative thinking. To be sure, it was mostly an appropriate response to brutal hardship. However, many of us are prone to a more chronic, low-grade type of negativity. This weekend Dr. Jim Keck will speak about different personality types and the essential role our faith plays in creating a more joyful approach to life.

In life we often wonder why we are where we are, at times with joy, and at others with regret. This week we hear from an ancient social critic and thorn in the flesh to those in power, he is tired and wondering why, in spite of his faithfulness, he finds himself in a very difficult situation. Where is God? Where are we? And Why? The questions of our lives.

God and Jesus are bigger than religion. That is, human hearts can be in love with God and Jesus even though they might not attend church. Religion is a human construct and is always evolving. On this Pentecost Sunday, Dr. Keck will speak of a new pentecost that is underway that is changing the very concept of religion itself.

It is Pentecost, the day when the Christian tradition remembers the coming of the Spirit and the birth of the church. Long ago our ancestor in faith tried to explain human divisions (and maybe human strife), this week Pastor JC invites us into that ancient story and reminds us why Pentecost is seen as a story of reversal, restoration, and re-start for all of creation. What was once scattered is now gathered again and again towards flourishing.

These days so many of us feel powerless, so much happening, so much suffering, hatred, and struggle. We want to do something, but we know it will probably not make a difference. This week, disciples are left behind, what are they going to do now that Jesus has left them? What are we to do now, in the midst of life, in light of our encounter with Jesus?

There is so much fear these days, so much fear mongering, and so much to be fearful of. This week Pastor JC invites us to pay attention to our fear but not to let it take over our lives. Instead there is an invitation, to embrace community, to lean into uncertainty, and to trust in the love that is all around us. Do not be afraid becoming an invitation to not allow fear to control us, an invitation to be free.

Near the very end of the Bible is a beautiful description of heaven and how we will live in the full light of God. But Heaven is not only something that we experience after we die. There are many chances to experience a slice of heaven in this life and Dr. Keck sees in Revelation 21 some clues to hearing the angles sing in your life right now.

Humans mark time in a variety of ways, holidays originally were days of observance, of remembering something that was important. Now it often turns into time off, or a time to celebrate with friends, disconnected from the Holy or is it? This week Pastor JC invites us into remembering, time keeping, and how the holy is present in our day to day of life.

We often think of God's home as otherworldly, above, heaven, ethereal, maybe even sublime. This week the scriptures gives us a much more common and accessible picture, God's home is among us. Yes, right here, where we live, work, and play. This says something about God, but it also says much about us.

With so much noise and so many things vying for our attention, it's what we truly value that holds our focus—even amid the distractions.This week Pastor Juan Carlos Huertas invites us to consider what we are listening to, why that matters, and how an adjustment might help us live a more flourishing life.

Dr. Jim Keck will share how Dr. Martin Luther King played such a large role in his childhood. He will also explain that they share the same theological perspective that was developed at Boston University in the mid-twentieth century. Pastor Jim believes this theology is most true to scripture and could change our world.

Jesus calls us into a vision, to make the kin-dom of God known. This is a kin-dom of wholeness, healing, community, connection, and new life. It would be easier to talk about it, and yet the call is to follow the Spirit's leading into rehearsing it, making it known a bit, however imperfect. This week Pastor Juan Carlos takes us into the story of our next neighborhood initiative, the Hope House, its story, its vision, and its potential to make the good news of Jesus evident in our neighborhood, our congregations, and our lives.

This Sunday, Pastor Jim Keck brings a powerful message on Spirit and Truth—come be inspired and uplifted!

Palm Sunday celebrates Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem. According to the synoptic gospels, Jesus then goes to the temple and throws over the tables. What an incredible juxtaposition of gentleness and strong protest. What is Jesus up to? Dr. Jim Keck will explore how our times demand a simple humility mixed with a strong sense of right and wrong.

In one of the great stories in scripture, Jesus enters the city of Jerusalem on a donkey where he is received as a hero by the crowds. This celebration is called Palm Sunday and it initiates the holiest of weeks in the Christian calendar. It turns out that before Jesus can enter the city he needs a little help from those around him. It turns out that 2,000 years later God still needs our help, our coming alongside, in making the kin-dom known in the world? What does that say about God? What does that say about us?

It's amazing what we remember and how we remember it, it is also amazing how much we forget. Memory is a complex function of our being human that allows us to make sense of our current situation. This week the truth-teller and social critic tells us to leave behind nostalgia and make room for the new thing that God is doing. It turns out that the new thing is nothing short of what God is always up to in the world!

It's amazing what we remember and how we remember it, it is also amazing how much we forget. Memory is a complex function of our being human that allows us to make sense of our current situation. This week the truth-teller and social critic tells us to leave behind nostalgia and make room for the new thing that God is doing. It turns out that the new thing is nothing short of what God is always up to in the world!

Saint Augustine taught that human beings are driving by their desires, so we must strive to have the right desires. Using C.S. Lewis, Augustine and a great poem by Coleridge, Dr. Jim Keck will call for us to desire the most noble things in life.

Evil is manifested around us in so many ways. It is the antithesis of love, freedom, and God-self. In the ritual for baptism people are often called to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever form in may present itself. Resistance is a call for all of us who are seeking to follow Jesus. This week Pastor Juan Carlos Huertas invites us to think about resistance, its importance in every season, its importance today, and how we might become the kind of holy resisters that witness to the good news of Jesus Christ for all creation.

Hell Revised with Dr. Jim Keck

Family traits are always interesting. Often we see traits in us that remind us of a parent, grandparent, at other times we see our ways in our children, grandchildren, a niece or a nephew. Sometimes the way one looks goes back to a previous generation. It is in us! This week Pastor Juan Carlos invites us to consider what it would look like to claim the way of Jesus as in us. All of us sealed by the Spirit with the image of God, all of us able to move, act, be like the one who is love made flesh. When we do so it changes everything!

It is easy to find an other, someone that is different than us, who does not represent who we claim to be, who does not behave like we believe a human being should, and whose mere presence around us makes us cringe, fearful, or disgusted. Jesus too encountered these othered ones and taught us a way of love that seeks to break down the barriers of our tendency to othering so that we could be agents of belonging, that is good news to us, and good news to a disaffected world. This weekend join Pastor Juan Carlos Huertas for worship at FP South or online!

So many of us have experienced church as judgmental, shaming, and as a place that curses rather than bless. This week we encounter a difficult passage where Jesus himself speaks words of warning to all who are listening. Why? Pastor Juan Carlos Huertas invites us into a conversation about love, Jesus, and what we should we be paying attention to as an expression of God's kin-dom on earth as it is in heaven.

Willam Butler Yeats wrote a poem about how living by a lake, and the water lapping with low sounds on the shore, brought a deep peace to his heart. In Luke chapter 5 Jesus teaches by the lakeside. Let's gather with him by the water this weekend and as Yeats put it we “shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow.”

It will be the first time ever in a sermon that the great love poem by Paul in 1st Corinthians, Plato's notion of the Ladder of Love in the Symposium and the 1980's British/American Rock band Foreigner are merged together. All in the hope that we will ascend together to a greater understanding of love.

For most of us expectations set our reality. This is no different in our spiritual lives. This week Pastor JC invites us into what happens when Jesus preaches a difficult sermon and the reaction of the crowd turns violent -- their expectations were obviously not met. Though we might not turn violent, we might turn apathetic, disengaged, disconnected, we might go back to our cocoon. Maybe it would be better if we examined our expectations instead, that examination might change everything!

Worship attendance is important, it shapes us in ways that are not obvious at first. In a season where many of us are wondering if church matters at all, Pastor Juan Carlos Huertas shares an ancient story about Jesus attending worship and what it might tell us about the church as place and as people. What is our call? Why do we exist? What does our future look like?

The Gospel takes us into an amazing scene where Jesus gives his first sermon. And at a climactic moment, Jesus sums up his mission and purpose. Join Dr. Jim Keck this weekend for a sermon about a sermon about a mission!

One of our most basic limitations is how we tend to be self-centered and overly trust our own opinions. It seems the human being is just naturally self-involved and a bit egocentric. And maybe this is not ALL bad - the world needs you to look out for yourself, or someone else would have to. Still, few realize that religion is specifically designed to help you transcend egotism. This week Dr. Jim Keck will explore the Christian virtue of humility.

We are all gifted in so many ways. Our way of being in the world in itself a gift. This week Pastor Juan Carlos Huertas invites us into considering our giftedness and its purpose in the world. So many of us are searching for meaning and purpose, it is right within us if we pay attention. Each of us, our gifts, graces, abilities, personalities, bringing our full selves together for the life of the world!

A bright star, a group of strangers, a long pilgrimage, an evil king, and a little child. This week Pastor Jim & Pastor JC share some reflections on what the ancient story of the “Three Kings” might mean for our faith this new year.

Advent Sermon Series The Divinity of Jesus Although many people like to think primarily of Jesus as a great teacher and a prophet for social justice and compassion, our tradition teaches us that the core fact about him is his divinity. While recognizing that many Christians may consider Jesus' divinity to be a mystery beyond our grasp, or too unscientific to insist upon, Dr. Jim Keck will describe why it is so important to him to see the fullness of God in our friend Jesus.

Holiday season is a season of going home. The prophets of old often reminded the community of that home, what it looked like, what it should be, and how to get there. This week, Pastor Juan Carlos Huertas, invites us to consider how we might come home to God, to community, to love. What does that look like? How do we get there?

Advent Sermon Series This is a time of increasing fear in our world. A time that will call for moral clarity and resolve. Simply being afraid will do us no good. Thankfully, it's this time in the church's story of Christ, that angels begin to appear. The angel Gabriel to Mary, the angels around the manger, and the first words of an angel are always, “Do not be afraid." This Advent we will listen to that angelic voice. We will set fear aside and seek to behold the Christ. To behold the great miracle that God is doing in Christ. Gather with us this Advent, and Behold, the Light.

As we begin the countdown to Christmas we come with similar human struggles from those who were waiting for salvation over 2,000 years ago. The call from the gospel is that we increase in love for one another in the midst of our hoping and our fears, our planning and our anxieties, that we continue to lean on love in the midst of our lives. When we do that, salvation begins to emerge in us, for us, and for the world.

It is sorta tradition for Dr. Jim Keck to pick the top ten things he is thankful for the Sunday before Thanksgiving. So we will hear the typically odd assortment of things he explores, but we will be reminded of how key the ‘attitude of gratitude' is to our lives.

Jesus was a storyteller. Fully one third of all his teachings are in the form of short, imaginary stories called parables. This week, Dr. Jim Keck, will unpack the great story we call “The Prodigal Son.” Hidden within this story is the theme of joy and how crucial Jesus felt the experience of joy was to a human life. Come and experience the joy of a God who rushes out to embrace each one of us.

As we prepare for the holiday season the texts of scripture begin to get a bit harsh, troublesome, and dystopian. It would be easy to ignore these ancient warnings about the end of things . . . and yet, if we pay attention and get beyond our initial discomfort we'll find good news in good times and in difficult times. The divine life showing up and asking us to pay attention, to be hopeful, and to bear witness.

First-Plymouth's Rev. Juan Carlos Huertas, Minister of Proclamation and Practice of Justice and Rev. Neil Thomas, Senior Pastor at Cathedral of Hope in Dallas, discuss issues of mental health, just action and how sexuality and gender identity play a role in our Spiritual lives, in this latest edition of the Just Conversations Podcast.

Rev. Dr. Katherine Willis Pershey Guest Preaching Rev. Dr. Katherine Willis Pershey is the Co-Pastor at First Congregational United Church of Christ, in Appleton, WI. Rev. Pershey received her Master of Divinity degree from the Claremont School of Theology in California. She recently completed a Doctor of Ministry degree on the theme Holy Presence: Eugene Peterson and the Pastoral Imagination from Western Theological Seminary in Michigan. She was the solo pastor of South Bay Christian Church for five years and served as Associate Pastor of The First Congregational Church of Western Springs for fourteen years. Katherine is a member of the Board of The Christian Century and is also a regular contributor to the magazine. She is the author of Any Day a Beautiful Change: A Story of Faith and Family and Very Married: Field Notes on Love and Fidelity. She completed yoga teacher training in 2018, and is certified through YogaDevotion to teach faith-integrated yoga. Katherine and her husband, Ben are raising two teenage children.

Not enough seems to be a constant concern, a constant worry, and a constant source of much fear. The fear of scarcity can bring out the worst in us and often it leads us to create others, making enemy of fellow persons. This week, Pastor Juan Carlos Huertas invites us into an ancient story of abundance, scarcity, and what it all means in light of the good news of Jesus.