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In this captivating conversation, we dive deep into the intersection of bread, theology, and community with guest Kendall Vanderslice. Kendall shares her lifelong love of baking, which began as a way to process emotions and eventually blossomed into a vocational calling. But her journey took an unexpected turn when she discovered the rich theological and cultural dimensions of food, particularly bread. As Kendall studied the anthropology of food and explored biblical narratives around sustenance, she uncovered powerful parallels. The chemical process of bread-making, with its cycle of death and resurrection, mirrors the gospel story. And the act of breaking bread together has long been a way for diverse communities to bridge divides and find common ground. Perhaps most compelling is Kendall's experience with a "dinner church" - a community that held their services around the table, sharing meals and communion despite varying political and theological backgrounds. The way this group navigated their differences while breaking bread offers a powerful model for us all. Kendall also delves into the symbolic significance of bread in the communion table, explaining how the humble loaf can represent nourishment, community, and the transformative work of God. Whether you're a bread enthusiast or simply curious about the deeper meaning of everyday things, this conversation is sure to leave you with a fresh perspective. Prepare to have your eyes opened to the hidden spiritual and communal depths of the humble loaf of bread. Kendall Vanderslice is a baker, writer, speaker, and the founder of the Edible Theology Project, a ministry that connects the Communion table to the kitchen table. She is a graduate of Wheaton College (BA anthropology), Boston University (MLA gastronomy), and Duke Divinity School (master of theological studies). Kendall is the author of By Bread Alone and We Will Feast and lives (with her big-eared beagle named Strudel) in Durham, North Carolina, where she teaches workshops on bread baking as a spiritual practice.Kendall's Book:Bake & PrayKendall's Recommendations:Remarkably Bright CreaturesThe Spirit of Our PoliticsJoin Our Patreon for Early Access and More: PatreonConnect with Joshua: jjohnson@allnations.usGo to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Threads at www.facebook.com/shiftingculturepodcasthttps://www.instagram.com/shiftingculturepodcast/https://twitter.com/shiftingcultur2https://www.threads.net/@shiftingculturepodcasthttps://www.youtube.com/@shiftingculturepodcastConsider Giving to the podcast and to the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link belowFriar TimeThrough meaningful interviews and heartfelt conversations, Friar Time, hosted by Fr....Listen on: Apple Podcasts SpotifySupport the show
On today's episode, we discuss the ways our faith has changed as we've grown in discipleship and justice work. Our spiritual practices, as well as our relationships with church, God, and the non-Christian world have all transformed over time, sometimes in surprising ways that would have made us uncomfortable in our earlier years as followers of Jesus. It's a personal and instructive conversation on how to grow up with Jesus that we know will be helpful for a lot of people. Plus, after that conversation we get into the war in Sudan and why it's an important topic for us to learn about and engage with.Mentioned in the episode:- The episode of the Movement Memos podcast about the war in Sudan- The link to donate to the Sudan Solidarity Collective via PayPalCredits- Follow KTF Press on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Subscribe to get our bonus episodes and other benefits at KTFPress.com.- Follow host Jonathan Walton on Facebook Instagram, and Threads.- Follow host Sy Hoekstra on Mastodon.- Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify.- Our podcast art is by Robyn Burgess – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.- Editing by Multitude Productions- Transcripts by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra.- Production by Sy Hoekstra and our incredible subscribersTranscript[An acoustic guitar softly plays six notes in a major scale, the first three ascending and the last three descending, with a keyboard pad playing the tonic in the background. Both fade out as Jonathan Walton says “This is a KTF Press podcast.”]Jonathan Walton: I'm trying to live in the reality that God actually loves me and he actually loves other people, and that's just true. And to live in that quote- unquote, belovedness is really, really, really difficult in a extractivist, culturally colonized, post-plantation, capitalistic society.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].Jonathan Walton: It's really, really hard when every single thing that I was raised to do goes against, just receiving anything.[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/ That it will roll in abundance/ And that you're building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]Sy Hoekstra: Welcome to Shake the Dust, seeking Jesus, confronting injustice. I'm Sy Hoekstra.Jonathan Walton: And I'm Jonathan Walton.Sy Hoekstra: This week we have a great conversation. There's no guest this week, it's just Jonathan and I. And we are actually going to be talking about something that we originally were gonna talk to Lisa about in the last episode, but we ran out of time [laughter]. And we thought it would be, actually it was worth taking the time to talk about this in a full episode format. And the topic is basically this, as people grow not just normally in their faith, but also in the kind of work that we're doing, resisting the idols of America and confronting injustice and that sort of thing in their faith, your personal spiritual life tends to change [laughter], to put it mildly. And we wanted to talk about that.It's something that we don't necessarily hear a lot of people talking about as much and I think it's something that people are kind of concerned about. Like it's in the back of people's heads when they start to dive into these justice issues. It's something that I think conservative Christianity has put in the back of your heads [laughs], like your personal walk with Jesus, or your something like that is going to falter if you stray down this road. And so we wanna talk about how things have changed with us, and be as open and honest about that as possible, with our spiritual practices, with our relationship with God, with our relationship with church and kind of the world outside.And then we're gonna get into our segment Which Tab Is Still Open, where we dive a little bit deeper into one of the recommendations from our newsletter. This week, we will be talking about a really fascinating and informative podcast on the war that is currently happening in Sudan that has been going on for about a year and a half. If you don't know a lot about that war, or if you just want some more insight into what's going on there, please stay tuned for that. It'll be an interesting conversation, for sure. So we're going to get into all of that in a minute. I think this is gonna be a really fruitful and helpful conversation for a lot of people. Before we jump in though, Jonathan,Jonathan Walton: Hey friends, remember to go to KTFPress.com and become a paid subscriber to support this show and everything we do at KTF Press. We're creating media that centers personal and informed discussions on faith, politics and culture and help you seek Jesus and confront injustice, that's so desperately needed today. We're resisting the idols of the American church by elevating marginalized voices and taking the entirety of Jesus' gospel more seriously than those who might narrow it to sin and salvation or some other small, little box. Jesus' gospel is bigger than that. The two of us have a lot of experience [laughs] doing this in community and individually.We've been friends for a good long time, and so I hope that you can come to us and trust us for good conversation, dialogue and prayerful, deliberate action. So become a paid subscriber, and get all the bonus episodes to this show, access to our monthly subscriber Zoom chats. You can comment on posts and a lot more. So again, go to KTFPress.com, join us and become a paid subscriber. And if you really wanna double down, become a founding member. Thanks, y'all.Sy Hoekstra: You get a free book if you're a founding member. So that's…Jonathan Walton: You do get a free book.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Because we publish books too. I guess we didn't… we have to tell people that.Jonathan Walton: That's true.Sy Hoekstra: If you're listening, if this is your first episode, you didn't know that. We've published a couple of books.Jonathan Walton: [laughs].Sy Hoekstra: Alright Jonathan, let's dive in. Let's talk about, as you have grown over the past however many years since you've been doing this kind of work, which for you is what now, 15? No, almost 15.Jonathan Walton: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: More than 15. It's more than 15 years.Jonathan Walton: It's more than 15. It'd probably be like… I was trying to reflect on this. I think I seriously stepped into this stuff in 2005 when I wrote that first poem about child soldiers and sex trafficking victims and was like, “I wanna do this, because Jesus loves me, and Jesus loves all people.” And so yeah, almost 20 years.Sy Hoekstra: Was that “Decisions?” Is that the poem?Jonathan Walton: I think it was actually “Invisible Children.” That poem.Sy Hoekstra: Okay. Literally because of the documentary Invisible Children.Jonathan Walton: Yes. That was the first advocacy poem that I wrote.Sy Hoekstra: So since then, how have your individual spiritual practices changed your scripture reading, that sort of thing? The kind of thing that at one point we might have called our quiet time, or our daily whatever. Where are you at?Jonathan Walton: [laughs] Absolutely. So I do not have daily quiet times. How do I explain this? When the Psalms say, “write the words of God on your hearts that you might not sin against him,” I think with all of us, it's kind of like building a habit. So I read a lot of scripture when I was a kid. I read a lot of scripture when I was a college student. And I think it was because I literally needed flesh and bones on just the air of my faith. And I think literally sitting there and listening to sermons for hours as I go about my day in my room and not study in college, or me and my brother would do [laughs] these weird things because we lived in the South and had nothing to do on this 30-acre farm, is we memorized the entire Charlton Heston film, The Ten Commandments.So me and my brother literally memorized the entire six hour epic that is The Ten Commandments. And so I just had this desire, and I think habit of just like memorizing and learning about God because the context that you're in. And so I think that there was a season in my life where sitting in the word of God was just a regular practice. And now I would say, just to overtake scripture, scripture is for me a process of recall and reflection. Like I have to give a talk next week on racism and racial reconciliation and justice. And if you had said to me, “Jonathan, what passage are you gonna speak from?” Like, because I've studied Genesis 1, because I've studied Isaiah 61, because I've studied Isaiah 58, because I've leaned into John 4, because I'm leaning in to Luke 4, I can grab from any of these places because it's almost like riding a bike in that way. I don't have to ride a bike every day to know how to ride a bike.And so I think if you're sitting there thinking to yourself, “I don't do a daily quiet time,” I don't know that you are negatively impacted. I know that you may be shaped differently, but we don't lose God, just like we don't lose the knowledge of something in that way. So I think Scripture for me has become more of a remembering and reflective process, rather than an active like, “Oh man, I need to know more.” And I think if we do scripture prayer, so let's talk about prayer, liturgy has taken on a more significant part of my life.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: Partially because I've stepped out of the, “let's prioritize this as better” box. So when I grew up in the South, I was like, oh, I go to a Black southern Baptist church, not a Southern Baptist Church. Let's be clear about that.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Spontaneous worship was quote- unquote, the best in my mind. Then I come to InterVarsity and more quote- unquote, evangelical spaces, and then it's like, well, popcorn prayer. Every single person goes individually and we all listen and try not to fall asleep.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].Jonathan Walton: And then I go to another place and it's like the quote- unquote, warrior prayer. Like this lion's war prayer. Everybody's praying at once. And that was amazing.Sy Hoekstra: Charismatic.Jonathan Walton: Yeah. And it was amazing, but overwhelming. And I would go to these places and say, oh, one is better than the other, when in reality, these are just expressions of God's faithfulness to different parts of his body. And so I think the season I'm in now, I've leaned into the prayer without ceasing, where it's like I am in conversation with God. I can be in prayer just going about my every day, similar to scripture with the riding the bike thing. These are things that I've marinated in, and so I'm riding the bike all day. I might get on the bike in the morning, I might not, but God is an active part of my day. And so I think the last thing just about church and preaching. This is hard [laughter].And some people might get upset with this, but church has taken, the institution; going to, sitting in. That's probably the last thing that I'm still processing. My children don't want to go to church some days, and I have a high value for that. And I have to ask myself, why do I have that high of a value? And Maia asked me, because she was crying, she didn't wanna go to church. She said, “Why do you wanna go?” And I told her, I said, “Maia, sometimes I have a really hard week, and I go to hang out with other believers because they encourage me that God is faithful and I can make it through.” And I said, “Some weeks are good for me, and then I go to church, and someone may be having a poor week, and then I'm able to encourage them to make it through and center ourselves on Jesus.”And I said, “In that way…” I didn't say this this way, but we bear one another's burdens with love. We are able to come alongside each other. And she didn't get it, and that's fine, she's eight.Sy Hoekstra: [laughter].Jonathan Walton: But I recognize that that's actually what I'm looking for when I go to church. And so if that's what I'm looking for, how can I have that in other spaces that my family also feels closer to God as well, so that we can grow together in that way? So I've stopped expecting the pastor to serve me a platter of spiritual goodies every week. [laughter] I've stop expecting this community in some way to be the buffet from which I gather my spiritual authority and intimacy with God. And that didn't used to be the case. It was like, “I got to go to church or I'm wrong. I got to be in the building, or something's messed up with my faith. I might be falling away.” And that's just not true, because I don't forget how to ride a bike. Like it's just not a thing.So, yeah, I would say those big three things of prayer, scripture and going to church have changed. And later we could talk about justice stuff, but those things around just our relationship with God have changed for me.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. It's funny you said the thing that was a big deal to you, the second one was about like the spontaneous worship is the best, or this kind of prayer is the best or whatever. And that it's just so cultural and stuff because I never had any of those.Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: I was like it's whatever. Nobody taught me that one… maybe somebody tried to, but it never got really inculcated in me that one kind of prayer or something was better than the other. But the daily scripture reading thing was so… Like you saying, “I don't read scripture every day,” there's still some little part of me that feels like, “Ooh, should he say that?” [laughter]Jonathan Walton: Right. Right, right, right.Sy Hoekstra: And it really just depends on where you grow up. Because a funny thing, like part of the scripture thing for me is, at some point I realized, I was like, “Hey, wait a minute [laughs], for the overwhelming majority of Christians who have ever lived, they A, could not read…”Jonathan Walton: [laughter] Right.Sy Hoekstra: “…and B, did not have access to the printed word.” The only time they were getting scripture was at mass on Sunday. And it's just one of those things where it's an enormous privilege, and we should, I'm not saying take it for granted, but it's something that has not only been not necessary for discipleship, but literally impossible for [laughter] most Christians who have ever lived. It's just an enormous privilege that we treat like a necessity or we treat like an imperative. And the distinction between those two things can be subtle, but it's real. They're not the same thing [laughter].Jonathan Walton: True.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, so for me, I've talked about this in one of the bonus episodes we did, but I'll make a slightly different point about it, which is, I used to, like you sort of alluded to, I used to come at daily scripture reading and prayer and everything from a place of deep anxiety. Constantly trying to stay up on whatever I had decided was the requirement for the day, and then falling behind and becoming anxious about it, and just getting on this treadmill of trying to catch up and then being anxious again. And a funny thing happened when I got into, as we were talking about on our recent subscriber call, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality [laughs] and learned about that anxiety and where it was coming from, and tried to change my relationship to it, and it decreased a lot, I realized when the anxiety went away I started to feel like my love for or even just my care for God, was going away.Jonathan Walton: Huh.Sy Hoekstra: Like if I wasn't anxious that I was reading scripture every day, it's kind of like what I just said, like there's still some part of me that feels like ugh [laughter]. If I wasn't anxious, then I didn't love God, which is kind of dark.Jonathan Walton: It is. Yes.Sy Hoekstra: You know what I mean? It's like putting yourself in a sort of abusive relationship with God and saying, “If you don't keep up with me, then I'm gonna punish you in some way,” or something negative is gonna happen. It was never entirely clear what negative thing was gonna happen to me.Jonathan Walton: Just a threat. Just a threat.Sy Hoekstra: That something was bad. I was gonna backslide in some way. So, yeah, but the amount of time, like on a daily basis, that I spend praying or reading scripture has also decreased, and then anxiety went away. And then I had to get used to the anxiety not being there and being like, “Hey, that's okay. This is actually a reflection of the fact that I now on a much more embodied level, understand that God loves and accepts me.” [laughter] That's a good thing.Jonathan Walton: That is a great thing. Yes, for sure.Sy Hoekstra: Another big thing for me was, this is my change with regard to scripture, is letting the Bible be what the Bible says that it is, as opposed to what the spiritual authorities in my life told me that it was supposed to be. And so that's things like, I had a really interesting experience where I went through this thing called the Academy of Christian Thought. There was this three-year read-through-the-Bible program. It was run by this scholar named Ron Choong, a Malaysian guy who's really incredible. But one of the things he talked about was the idea that every word of the Bible is literally true. And he would go through it and he would say, “Okay, so there are these stories that Jesus tells, that when he tells them, like the parables.Like say, The Good Samaritan or whatever. We understand that Jesus is telling a story here, and whether or not the story itself is true doesn't matter. He's making a point.” It's a sermon illustration, effectively. And Jesus never claims that the stories are true. We're all fine with that. We're not saying if the guy didn't actually get beat up on the road to Jericho, then the Bible's integrity is in question. And he was like, “Okay, so how about the book of Jonah?” He's like, Take the whole thing with the fish and the spending three days in the belly of a fish, which seems scientifically impossible, and then you get… like without dying, whatever. It could be a miracle. But does the Bible ever actually say, does the book of Jonah ever actually say, “The following is a true story?” The answer is, no, it doesn't [laughter].And can you still learn all the same lessons about faith and everything from the book of Jonah if it's not true, like the parable of The Good Samaritan or any other parables Jesus tells? Yes, you can.Jonathan Walton: Right. Right, right.Sy Hoekstra: So does it really matter [laughs] whether the story in the book of Jonah is true? No, it does not. It affects nothing [laughter]. And by acknowledging that, you're just letting the Bible be what it is, which is, it's here's a story. It just told you a story, and whether or not it was true or not is not a point that the Bible makes, and therefore is not a point that matters.Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs] And so there were a lot of just simple things like that. He was like, The book of Revelation, you do not have to have a perfect understanding of what every twist and turn in that bizarre apocalyptic dream meant. You don't. You don't you don't have to have it. Because the Bible never tells you that you had to have it [laughter]. It just says, “Here's a dream from John,” and then it tells you a bunch of stuff that happened [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yeah. It's true.Sy Hoekstra: And so it's like there was a lot of that that I thought was extremely helpful and allowed me to then use my mind. And then people would come back with the verse in 2 Timothy, “All scripture is God breathed,” and et cetera, et cetera. And [laughs] Ron would just be like, “That was literally written at a time when the New Testament was not canonized, and half of it was not even written yet.” [laughs] So it's like, what scripture is God breathed, you know what I mean? [laughter And also, does God breathed or trustworthy for instruction, does that mean the book of Jonah's literally true? No. [laughter] Like letting the Bible be what the Bible is was important to me, and understanding…We talked in that episode with Mako Nagasawa about how sometimes translations of the Bible differ from each other in significant ways, and we picked which one we followed, and that's just a reality [laughs]. And you can still have a very high view of the authority of Scripture, it can still guide your life, it can still be an authority, it can be all those things, and you can acknowledge realities, and your faith doesn't fall apart. That was a big one for me [laughs]. A lot of that also has to do with letting go of the need to have everything under control in a perfect little box.Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: Which is a very… was just a real White way of thinking about it to be frank [laughs]. We must have our systematic theology, and everything must be clear and tied up neatly. So the last thing for me, I think, is just knowing that the way that God speaks to people changes over time. And so like I know there are ways that I could be going back and trying to find the things about my early faith that were really exciting and new and gave me these big spiritual highs, and a lot of those things just don't happen anymore. And I see that as I get older, there are so many people I know like that. And there are so many, there's such a range of reactions to that from people who are like, some people are totally comfortable with the fact that God changes how he talks to people over time.And that even happens in the Bible. People hear from God in different ways, in new ways. And there are some people who are like, can lose their faith over that. They can panic, and it's like, “I'm not hearing God the way that I heard got at one point,” and I guess the possibility of change is not there [laughs]. And so it's like, if I'm not getting that same experience, then something has gone terribly wrong or whatever, and I need to get back there. I would just really encourage people to drop that way of thinking [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yes, absolutely.Sy Hoekstra: It is okay if your relationship with God changes, the way that you communicate with God changes.Jonathan Walton: There's nothing healthy about a plant that stays the same size over year's time.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, exactly.Jonathan Walton: Man.Sy Hoekstra: Alright, Jonathan, you talked about this one a little bit already, but I wanted to talk about our relationships with churches and the institutions of churches. Did you have more to say on that, or was…?Jonathan Walton: Well, yeah. I think something that is intriguing to me, and I dabble in thread and Facebook debates sometimes just to ask questions.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].Jonathan Walton: And just as an example, and friends, I again, in the just modeling the growth and change and willingness to ponder in a way that doesn't shake my salvation, I'm gonna try to model that. And so a question that came up for me yesterday while I was on threads, there's a man named Eugene Kim, who I've just followed for a little while.Sy Hoekstra: He's a pastor, right?Jonathan Walton: He was a pastor, and he is a pastor now, but they just launched this thing called the Wild Fig organization. And so essentially, they're trying to decentralize the church and say, there are lots of people who follow Jesus and wanna organize in ways that are transformative and help for them in their walks with God. And we just need to figure out a different way of credentialing people than getting folks organized around this man who we believe is God named Jesus.” And there's another thing like this out in Seattle called Dinner Church, where a church sold their building, and they have 25 dinner churches where people come to church to have dinner, and they just eat and talk about God, almost like they did in Acts. Whoopitty.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].Jonathan Walton: And so that's what they're doing, and they're actually putting pastors in these house churches just to be present at these dinner churches. And so there are people who would say, “No, we cannot do that.” Like, I remember sitting down with a pastor in New York City who was just like, “Jonathan, I don't think that you should do campus ministry, because it should be done in the church.” And I was like, “Oh, well, I think this meeting is over.”Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].Jonathan Walton: “And I hope you pay for this food.” But all that to say it's like, that was one conversation. Another conversation was like, “If you do that, what about the traditions of the church?” All of these things. And I'm like, I hear you on the tradition, but why are we choosing to model some things from Acts and then saying other things we can't do anymore? Seems like the Great Commission commissioned all people to baptize. Seems like the Great Commission commissioned all people to… like 2 Corinthians and the model about how to take communion. I don't see where that says I can't do that at home, because they were done in homes. So all of this. Some people say that's great, some people say you can't do that.But when I was specifically looking at the Wild Fig network yesterday in this threads conversation, someone said, “You're doing a heretical thing, you're breaking off. And if you wanna join anything, just go back to the Catholic Church, because that is where it all began.” And I thought to myself, and this is a genuine question, and I haven't seen his response yet, but I said, “Did Jesus come to build the Catholic Church?” There may be, very well be an argument for that that I'm not aware of because I'm not Catholic. Right?Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, there definitely is [laughs].Jonathan Walton: There definitely is [laughter]. And so I am wondering what that means, as someone downstream of colonization, abuse, violence and oppression, coupled with the Catholic Church, the Episcopal Church, and every other Western faith, political faction that decided to join themselves on the colonialist project, I wonder if Jesus came to build the Catholic Church. And there's 1500 years of arguing about that and making that case to be true. At the same time, I'm like, 1 Corinthians one, when Paul is writing to the church at Corinth, he says, “Some might be for Paul, some might be for Cephas, which is Peter. Some might be for Apollos, but the reality is, we all need to be for Jesus.”So if this person is making an argument against pastor Eugene Kim, I'm like, “Why are you saying he can't go do that? What's the goal?” Because if Eugene goes and baptizes a thousand people, and all these people come to faith and it's an amazing thing, what is the loss for the kingdom? You know what I mean?Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Well, so here's the loss. I still don't think this is correct, but the loss from the Catholic perspective is you only can experience the fullness of the revelation of the Spirit of God within the Catholic Church. That is where it happens, and it happens nowhere else, and it cannot happen anywhere else.Jonathan Walton: Now see, okay, this is where I would push back ridiculously hard.Sy Hoekstra: I mean, me too, but yeah [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yeah, and using Peter, Peter in Acts chapter 10 has a very specific way that he thinks the Spirit of God is being revealed. And God blows that wide open first with a vision for him. The sheet comes down, look at this three times, three times, three times. Then the same thing for Cornelius. And so if we try to limit the spirit or movement of God, we will fail. So why do that [laughs]? There's so many points in scripture where God is breaking through in ways that we cannot fathom or recognize.Sy Hoekstra: Amen to that.Jonathan Walton: And so, I think the thing about the church, I'm like, it's evolving for me, not in the Darwin way, but just like a development. Because to be like, “Oh, evolution,” because we have these wrong conflations in our brain. But my faith is evolving, but I'm not moving farther away from Jesus, and that includes the church. Because similar to you, I would say I am closer to Jesus than I was when I was 17 years old… 16 when I got thrown across the parking lot on a motorcycle, or 19 years old when Ashley told me to follow… Ashley Byrd, me and Sy's staff worker for InterVarsity, invited me to follow Jesus. I'm still close, I'm closer to Jesus than I was then, and I've been a part of very different churches and all those things.So my relationship with God is predicated on my adoption into the capital “C” Church, not the specific church on my block in my neighborhood, or where I gather with folks. And so I'm grateful that the rapture catches all of us and not just insert your denomination here.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. So for me, I am less engaged than I used to be, but that's because what I used to do was let Christian community and Christian programming activity take up the vast majority of my free time, because I thought we had something to prove as a community. You know what I mean? Like, I thought you had to be, it's a little bit vague what I thought I think, or a little bit blurry to me now. But it was something along the lines of, some interpretation of the idea that we're the hands and feet of Jesus, or we are here to testify to him and his goodness as a community. That meant that you had to be super involved in your community. You had to be something to prove the worthiness of God, basically.Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: Which is completely the opposite of what I now think, which is that no matter what your community is, the fact that God loves you is the proof of the worthiness of God [laughter].Jonathan Walton: Amen.Sy Hoekstra: You don't have to prove nothing. Similar to my quiet times and everything, it took a lot of the pressure off of my need to be involved in religious activity, and therefore it decreased, but not in like a I'm leaving the church way, just in what I think is a healthy way [laughs]. I am now very suspicious if I go to a church and the consistent thing that they are telling people to do in terms of discipleship is just get more involved in that church's programming. As opposed to being something in their neighborhood, or trying to turn outwards in some significant way. That, to me, is a big ol' red flag. I'm constantly now thinking about what is reasonable to expect of a church, versus what I would have want a church to ideally be.I think this happens to everyone as they grow up a little bit, is you start to see the inner workings of a church and how just very ordinary and sometimes petty and gross, it can be.Jonathan Walton: [laughter] Ordinary, petty and gross.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. It's just another fallen institution [laughs]. And people have all their own little individual problems, and some of those problems are big and some of them are small. And it's just not that different than any other organization. And that is disappointing if you think it's supposed to be this shining beacon on a hill, which is actually a metaphor for the kingdom of God, and not your individual neighborhood's church [laughter].Jonathan Walton: Yes, yes, yes.Sy Hoekstra: Scripturally speaking. I think about that balance more, like what can I reasonably expect versus what would I ideally want this institution to be? And from what I've talked to, like Christians who are much older than me, that never changes. That's the mature way to go about [laughter] looking at a church. You just, you have to do it that way, and not just think of the church as this thing that needs to be something that is like this shining example to the entire world of how to do or be something. And this is especially true in a context where we have the idols of empire built in. I have to go to my church in New York City in 2024 and I have to recognize this is a culture that is filled with greed and self-interest.And so odds are, this church is also going to be filled with greed and self-interest. So what can I reasonably expect from this church [laughter]? That's part of it. And again, it's just reality. It's sad. It's a thing that I had to work through emotionally. But it is also a reality that you have to come to terms with.Jonathan Walton: Amen.Sy Hoekstra: I'm much more ready to walk out of a church when I hear nonsense than I used to be [laughter].Jonathan Walton: I'm just willing to go. Thanks.Sy Hoekstra: Which I don't necessarily… that doesn't even mean like leave the community and turn my back on everyone. I just mean if I hear some nonsense from the pastor, I can go home, and that's okay [laughter]. And I've done that a few times. I had this one pastor a while back who just got on a streak. I don't know what happened, man, but it was this one month where at maybe two or three of the sermons he just said some stuff that was super ableist. I don't know what happened. He never even talked about people with disabilities before, and all of a sudden it's like, got to bring disabled people up all the time. You got to say really nonsense, insensitive, ridiculous stuff.And there was one time I just left. I was like, “I'm gonna go to the bathroom.” And then I came out of the bathroom and I was like, “Actually, I'm not going back in there.”Jonathan Walton: [laughter] Right. Yes.Sy Hoekstra: I just remember looking at the door back into the service and the door to leave the building, and the choice could not have been clearer [laughter]. It was like a hundred percent of me wants to go this way, zero percent of me wants to go that way.Jonathan Walton: Brunch with Jesus. I'm gonna leave now. Yeah, that makes sense.Sy Hoekstra: Alright, Jonathan. Last question. How have things changed between you and the rest of the world [laughs]? The people outside of the church? How are you thinking differently? I'm sure there's a lot to say here, but…Jonathan Walton: Lord have mercy. Okay, so I can be friends with non-Christians…Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Not every woman in the world, their primary relationship to me is I shouldn't sleep with them.Sy Hoekstra: Oh, I see.Jonathan Walton: So either this woman is my wife or a temptation. Like that…Sy Hoekstra: Oh, I got you.Jonathan Walton: This is a human being made in the image of God that I am incomplete without on this side of heaven [laughs]. Like God desires shalom between me and her or them. It's a group. Also, it's very possible to be generous to people, and if it doesn't go against my taxes, it's still a great thing to give to. Friends, there's so much crap in that, and I wanted to say the other word.Sy Hoekstra: Churches make a big deal out of that your gift here will be tax deductible or whatever [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: And institutional giving or whatever, and you're just like, “No, actually, I can tithe to the guy on the corner who needs a sandwich.”Jonathan Walton: Yes, absolutely. I also think that, along with the every, I can be friends with non-Christians, and this is still actually hard for me, is I can learn from people that don't believe in Jesus the same way I do.Sy Hoekstra: Is it hard for you? Because I think sometimes, like we were talking about Valarie Kaur the other day, the seek prophet who says amazing things and you were…Jonathan Walton: Yes, yes, yes. So here's what I mean by that. And I think my wife is the one who challenges me on this.Sy Hoekstra: Okay.Jonathan Walton: It's very different to learn from someone online and through their books, but she said, “Jonathan, when you have relationships with people, intimate relationships with them,” she said, “It doesn't register for me as you're talking with them, Jonathan, that you want to learn from them.” And I'll also be really honest, my pastor told me this. When I first met him, he invited one of his friends over, and we wanted to have this conversation. And I asked him, I said, “What was that like for you?” And he said, “Well, it seemed like you were not interested in getting to know us. You just wanted to know what we thought about these things.” And that to me, is something that I'm like, oh.I believed, past tense, and I'm still working through that, I think my relationship with God is based upon my utility to people around me, and if I'm not useful, then I'm not valuable. And if I believe it about myself, I'm gonna reflect that outwards.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: And so, something that bothers me that I'm still working through is, how can I be in relationships with people and learn from them, and not require them to change or grow in some way or become or believe like me, those things would probably be the biggest, but that last one is probably… I mean, all of those I'm still working through, but that last one is the most potent right now as I try to make friends and be in community with people. What about you? Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, the friends with non-Christians thing is funny to me. The specific thing for me is that I'm not trying to, it's similar, I'm not trying to convert and change everybody. There was a while when I was young kind of late teens or early 20s, where I literally thought just every interaction I had with a non-Christian had to be toward the end of making them a Christian at some point.Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: And I now realize that ensuring the salvation of anyone, including myself, not my job [laughs]. No one ever said that was my job in the Bible, at least. And my job is to talk about the truth, like talk about what has happened in my life, but that's all I got to do. Just talk about it [laughs]. I got to testify to the truth, and that does not mean that I need any individual person ever changes as a result [laughter]. That is not part of my job. I want people to know Jesus, but that's different than thinking that everything I do must be toward some end of like, honestly kind of manipulating people into [laughs] that, which is the constant evangelical tendency, hell being the biggest manipulator. “Do this or you will be tortured forever,” and framing it that way.We're constantly framing things in terms of manipulating people to just be one of us. I don't do that anymore. Thank goodness [laughs]. And stuff like that that makes me, I look back and I'm always like, I don't think that anything I was involved in actually meets the definition of a cult. But there was some cult-y aspects of it, for sure [laughs]. There was some stuff in there that was [laughs]9 weird in terms of how you related to other people. I'm much less suspicious to the rest of the world. I don't think the rest of the world, kind of like you said about women, just anybody in general, isn't trying to tempt me out of something or send me down a wrong road, which then allows me to enjoy, not just learning from people like you said, but also just beauty and joy in places that I couldn't, I wasn't allowed to find it before.A result of all that is people are no longer projects to me. This is all very similar to what you said, actually. So I think those are my main ones. And I said the last thing was the last question, but I actually did have one more question written down here. Do you wanna [laughter] go through that one too, or no?Jonathan Walton: I mean, I think we've talked about this a lot where it's like, your last question being, how has my relationship and view of God changed?Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: And what I would say is… and you said this way back in the podcast already. I'm trying to live in the reality that God actually loves me and he actually loves other people, and that's just true. And that can be my posture bent orientation to the world at all times. And to live in that quote- unquote, belovedness is really, really, really difficult in a extractivist, culturally colonized, post-plantation, capitalistic society.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].Jonathan Walton: It's really, really hard when every single thing that I was raised to do goes against just receiving anything.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: [laughs] I mean, that's why the grace of God is confounding. But all that to say, I think I'm trying to live in that. And I think teaching my children that has taught me that more than anything.Sy Hoekstra: Early on in my faith, one of the seeds that I think God planted really early on was, and I've talked about this before. I had a lot of trouble with the idea of hell when I was considering following Jesus. And the way that that got resolved for me was to stop, I stopped asking questions about the unfairness of the idea of hell, because I came to trust Jesus as a person and say, “Whatever thing is going on there with these problems, with the unfairness of hell that I have, Jesus did something to himself. God did something to himself in the form of the cross that was also extremely unfair [laughs], actively harmed himself in order to get us to trust him.” You know what I mean?Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: Actively harmed himself, is maybe a weird way to put it. Like, lived in such solidarity with us as humans, and especially as oppressed and vulnerable humans, that he died and had some terrible spiritual fate that people characterize in different ways, depending on what denomination you're from or whatever, happened to him [laughs]. And that then makes me trust him and ask questions about, why would God do this to God's self?Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: Why would God do this to himself, as opposed to, why would God do this to us? And I decided to follow and trust Jesus before I really had answers, or had passed through all the different theologies of hell or any of that stuff. And so the seed there is talking about truth and talking about faith as trust in a person, and not as belief in specific doctrines or trust in specific doctrines. And I've leaned way into that. That's the thing that has grown over time and has replaced a lot of the anxiety and trust that I was putting in other things that were either of my own effort, or what other people told me I had to believe or whatever, is trust in God the being, like the spiritual entity with which I have actually interacted and I know and I love.And that part of my faith has just grown, I think, exponentially, and has allowed me to be okay with things I don't understand. And I have long term things that I don't understand, that I do not have answers to that make me uncomfortable. And still be okay with that [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yes, because it's about a relationship, not perfect understanding at all times.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: And if you trust God, you don't have to understand all things, just like we trust people, even though we don't understand every single thing about them.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, which is different than trusting God as a replacement for understanding [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yeah. So let's get into our segment Which Tab Is Still Open, where we dive a little deeper into one of the recommendations from our newsletters. And remember, you can get our newsletter for free just by going to KTFPress.com, and signing up for our mailing list. You'll get recommendations on articles, podcasts and other media from both of us on things that will help you in your political education and discipleship. Plus you'll get reflections to keep you grounded and hopeful as we engage in this challenging work together, news about what's going on with KTF and a lot more. So go get that free subscription, and if you want to, you should become a paid subscriber at KTFPress.com.So this week, Sy, we're gonna be talking about the war in Sudan. Can you summarize the main points for us?Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, sure. And I know there are some people who know nothing about this war, so I will give kind of all the basics here. Basically, Sudan has been at war for about a year and a half, since April of 2023. And it's between two state-armed factions, one is the regular military, and the other is kind of a paramilitary force that was set up at one point that were supposed to kind of integrate into each other, and instead they were fighting over power. But what they had done previously together was to suppress the popular uprising that began in 2018 and it was to oust the longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir, and it had started as these organizations called neighborhood resistance committees all over the country.It's a little bit tough to document how many of them there are, but they're these highly localized, very fluid groups that don't have a single leader who are doing all kinds of political organizing at a local level all around the country, coordinating with each other incredibly well, and also providing mutual aid and humanitarian aid as this war goes on. They basically organized these sit ins where they had, I mean, I don't remember the numbers, a ton of people in Khartoum trying to get rid of, Khartoum is the capital, trying to get rid of al-Bashir, and they successfully did it. And then they had a whole plan to transition to an actually civilian-led democratic government, but they were sort of beaten back by military and this other paramilitary group in a coup in 2021.So there was an attempt for a couple of years to really transition Sudan to a democracy government accountable to the people, and it did not work because of this counter revolutionary coup. And so the resource that I had was this podcast from Truthout that's called Movement Memos, and they were talking to two members of the Sudanese diaspora in Canada who, one of the main points they were trying to make was that this is a counter revolutionary war. A lot of the media will portray it as a civil war, and really it is forces fighting over who gets power after basically pushing people down. Racism is a big part of the context of this too, because a lot of the elites, the military and the paramilitary elites, and everybody who's in charge of the country are Arabic. Like ethnically or racially Arabic. And a lot of the people from the South and from the resistance committees who are part of the revolutionary groups are Black.So I think a lot of the reason that we haven't talked about this is the US is not directly involved. There are things that the US does that create some problems, like the sanctions that we still have on Sudan. But the reason everyone needs to care about this is, first of all, about fifteen or sixteen thousand people have died, which is not on the same scale of death as Palestine exactly or whatever, not to minimize those deaths or anything, but they have created the largest displacement crisis anywhere in the world. There are more than eight million people who have been displaced by this war. There's famine and starvation happening. Surrounding countries are refusing refugees. In some cases, Egypt has been doing this for some time.The guests of the podcast are really saying that these neighborhood committees are the people who need outside support the most, because there's, a lot of the NGOs and everybody have fled. So amidst this humanitarian crisis, these people on the ground doing this mutual aid are the only people keeping people alive. And they actually gave a link, which I will provide, to an organization called the Sudan Solidarity Committee I believe. I can't remember the last word. Sudan Solidarity something, where you can just donate money directly to these resistance committees. They're getting it to them via PayPal, and people are just dispersing it as needed. And it's direct giving. It's nothing paternalistic.You're just giving them money, and they're doing with it what they need. And apparently a lot of the Sudanese diaspora is trying to support this group, but they can't do it on their own, and a lot of them are struggling with their own, all the financial issues that come around immigrating to other parts of the world. So yeah, we'll have the link for that in the show notes. Jonathan, that's a lot of information I just gave. I just kind of wanna know what it is that you think about this whole situation, your reaction to it, anything about the podcast that you thought was interesting.Jonathan Walton: So one thing that's really important to me is history. And fortunately, whether we're talking about Gaza, whether we're talking about Haiti, whether we're talking about Hawaii, whether we're talking about any of these places, really anywhere that colonization has touched, there's a history.Sy Hoekstra: Yes. They get into that in the podcast too.Jonathan Walton: They do. They get into it in the podcast, because history, we need to understand how we got here to be able to make something different. And what I thought was normal and revolutionary is what the scholars who are participating and being interviewed and things like that, have done with their education. So the folks they're interviewing got their education here in the West with a mind for liberation of their own people, but not their own people, understanding how this racially assigned group downstream of colonialism called Black is basically undergirding the entire economy in the world for the last 350 years. We have to engage with that as a reality, that Africa as a continent can hold the United States, China, Russia and Europe in it with room to spare. The second largest rainforest in the world is in the Congo.We've got these huge, massive amounts of resources in Africa, not just but also including its people who have been enslaved in various ways by various groups for the last 400 years. So it's helpful just that background that was provided, and then how that trickles down into then conflict in Sudan.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Can I just note one interesting fact that they've mentioned?Jonathan Walton: Absolutely.Sy Hoekstra: That I don't think we think about a lot, is when the colonial government left Sudan, they just vacated 800 government administrative positions or something. I can't remember what the exact number was. It was hundreds. They just vacated them. They did nothing to transition them. They didn't find people to fill them. They just left them empty [laughs]. And what do you think is gonna happen when you just create a massive power vacuum like that, with no transitional plan? You get a dictator, shocking. You know what I mean [laughs]? You get a dictator doing the exact same thing that the colonialist government that came before it did, which was effectively be a dictator.Jonathan Walton: Absolutely. Because whoever had access to power post the colony is the people that colonizers empowered the majority of the time. Those educated folks, those are the people with power and resources. And so what do they do? We do what's been taught to us because we're hundreds of years removed from our own ways of leadership, our own matrilineal, patrilineal, or communal ways of governing and dividing ourselves and working together. And so all we have is the master's tools, as Audre Lorde would say. And so I think that connection to history, the connection to globalized blackness, and then just the ridiculous amount of coordination that I think, in the United States and in more resource places gets minimized, but in order, and this is where I might, “Oh, Jonathan, you're a Marxist,” and da da da.But let's lean on the reality that something Ta-Nehisi Coates said, and something will come up in the newsletter is, the way that we organize ourselves and the way that we exist together in the world is not inherent. We need to have nations that do X, Y and Z. That's a young system. Sharing is as old as we are, and so could we as followers of Jesus, as people who want to see beauty, love, justice and all these things flow in the world, just connect with our neighbors in ways that are transformative and helpful to say, “You are going through something, let me leverage my creative capacity and imagination to create ways that you can get what you need?” And I shared a video on Instagram today of a young woman named Taylor was sharing from North Carolina.She said, “If we can precision bomb people in a building a world away, we can precision guide food to people who need it.” We can do that. And so what I am empowered by, Munther Isaac said this similarly with what's happening in Gaza, when you are forced to be creative, that is where Jesus is, and that's where we can learn. And I think followers of Jesus like me in Bayside, I'm like, “Oh it's so hard for me to buy nothing and figure out this free thing and do this and do that.” And it's because I could just go to Target. I could just order on Amazon, but we don't have to do that. And I was emboldened and encouraged and empowered by the creativity, because I wonder what would happen if we learned from these people.Instead of creating a new way to do things when there's a crisis, we could actually create new ways to do things before the world is just destitute. And so I'm praying for the folks of Sudan. I wanna share [laughs] the ways to give. I'll probably sign up to give myself and then just would God move in us the way he has moved in them to mutually help and care for one another amid such destitution.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. One of the things that the guests said about the neighborhood resistance committees, that I thought was really interesting was, they were like, these committees are running services. Like they're providing food. In a couple cases, they actually took over abandoned hospitals and reopened them, found doctors and staffed them and get supplies there, whatever. They are running the country in a way that these paramilitary organizations are not. And they are out there actively proving we don't need these people [laughs]. We don't need these people, we can run the garment ourselves[laughs]. We can run the country ourselves. We have the energy to do it. We need the resources to do it. We could do so much more if there wasn't so much violence and displacement and poverty and famine.But yeah, that kind of imagination, that kind of, you're right. That kind of necessity has created in them just an incredible capacity to share and to love each other, frankly. And I also hope that we learn from that. But at the same time, that's why they've seen so much violence and repression, is because they are threatening the power structure. And not only that, but when they were doing the sit ins a few years ago, and they ousted Al-Bashir, there were other countries starting to look to them for similar resistance. There are people in, like they mentioned specifically in the podcast, there're people in Lebanon looking at Hezbollah and going, “Could we do something about this?” [laughs]People in other countries are actually looking to these Sudanese organizations. And so the ruling power structures have to shut that down. And it means that there are other countries involved in helping them shut it down. So it's like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia and Egypt and other countries that are not interested in seeing revolutions like this [laughs] are involved, are providing weapons, are doing all kinds of things and just interfering in a regional way, in the way that we as the US are used to doing globally all the time.Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: This particular conflict, the US doesn't see as being as closely aligned with its interests as say, defending Israel, or now empowering Israel to go invade other countries.Jonathan Walton: Yes [laughs].Sy Hoekstra: Which is what has just started as we are recording this. I'm sure we'll have more to say about that.Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: So go listen to this podcast. Go read more about this conflict in the media. The reason we wanted to bring it up is, I didn't wanna become the thing I'm critiquing and not talk about Sudan just because it doesn't affect the US. But man, the media is not talking about Sudan when we should be. So please go listen to this podcast. The link will be in the show notes, please just go learn more. Give if you can. They're asking for 10 Canadian dollars a month, which is like 7.50 US [laughs]. So please, if you have some money to spare, there are people in desperate need of it who are doing very good things with it. Alright, I'm gonna wrap us up there. Thank you so much for listening today. Jonathan, thank you for a great conversation, as always.Jonathan Walton: Absolutely.Sy Hoekstra: Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra. Our podcast art is by Robyn Burgess. Transcripts by Joyce Ambale. Editing by Multitude Productions. And the producers of this show are the lovely paid subscribers. Again, please consider becoming a paid subscriber at KTFPress.com, get all the bonus episodes of this show, join our monthly Zoom calls, comment on our blog, on our Substack, and more. Thank you so much for listening, and we will see you in a couple of weeks for what I think will be the… yeah, will be the last show that we do before the election. So we'll be talking more about some current affairs then, and doing a great interview. So we will see you in two weeks.Jonathan Walton: Stay blessed y'all.[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/ That it will roll in abundance/ And that you're building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.] Jonathan Walton: That was the first advo—like [sound of something repeatedly hitting the mic hard]whoa, hit the mic [laughter]. My first quote- unquote, advocacy poem that I wrote, for sure.Sy Hoekstra: But can you say that again, just without laughing or hitting the mic [laughs]?Jonathan Walton: Yeah, and slapping the mic? Yeah. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.ktfpress.com/subscribe
In this episode of The Biggest Table, hosted by Andrew Camp, guest Amy Dolan discusses the intersection of food, faith, and community. Amy, who hosts the Feeding People podcast and founded Sunday Supper Church, shares her journey through the traditions of a Jewish and Christian upbringing, how cooking became a creative outlet during her ministry, and her work advocating for food equity in Chicago. Together, they explore how preparing and sharing meals can diminish loneliness, restore dignity, and create joy. Amy also shares insights on the importance of mutual care in food justice and the vulnerability and joy of cooking for others.Amy Dolan is the host of the Feeding People Podcast, Founder of Sunday Supper Church, and former Strategic Consultant for the Chicagoland Good Food in Healthcare Initiative. Amy believes that eating together has the power to dispel loneliness, restore dignity, and create joy as we share sacred moments with each other around beautiful tables. Of all the tables she's created and hosted, weeknight dinners with her husband Kelly and pit bull Maddox in their Chicago apartment are her favorite. Feeding People Podcast Follow Amy on InstagramThis episode of the Biggest Table is brought to you in part by Wild Goose Coffee. Since 2008, Wild Goose has sought to build better communities through coffee. For our listeners, Wild Goose is offering a special promotion of 20% off a one time order using the code TABLE at checkout. To learn more and to order coffee, please visit wildgoosecoffee.com.
Dinner Church is a Fresh Expression of the 21st Century Church that revisits its roots in the 1st Century. It utilizes principles and practices from the early church like eating meals together, telling the "Jesus Story," worship, sacraments, and reaching marginalized people. Come learn about the theology and practice of Dinner Church to reach the unchurched & de-churched in your community and beyond. Carl Bauchspiess Dinner Church Director, OCMN Anthony Johnson Radiant Life Church
We're talking with Rev. Heather Jallad about the creative, fun and innovative ways that church is coming together and meeting the world. It's an invitation to Rethink Church. This episode of Compass dives into new expressions of church like Dinner Church and Messy Church. It's all inspiring… and it gets us thinking about how we, […]
Since JD's church in Minneapolis reimagined itself as a Dinner Church, they've reached people in their neighborhood they would never have met before. This shift was inspired in part by their experience at Thanksgiving. In this episode, you will hear J.D.'s story about how they used the lessons of a Holiday service project to help start a different kind of church.Fresh Expressions is a worldwide movement of everyday missionaries who want to see churches thrive in the places we live, eat, work and play by leveraging the creativity and endurance of the inherited church. To learn a simple five-phase process for starting a new expression of church go to freshexpressions.com/howtostart.If you love this free resource, you can access our entire library of practical and inspiring training materials and connect with other church leaders on FX Connect. Sign up for your free account at fxconnectus.org. Help us spread the word about the Fresh Expressions podcast by subscribing and leaving us reviews on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you enjoy your podcasts.
Interview with FBC and Branch pastors and Dinner Church Ministry Coordinator
Interview with FBC and Branch pastors and Dinner Church Ministry Coordinator
This episode begins a two-part series with The Revd Liz Edman, author of Queer Virtue. Liz (she/her) is an Episcopal priest and political strategist who has been igniting people's understanding of Christianity and queer life for more than 25 years. She has served as an inner city hospital chaplain to people with HIV/AIDS from 1989 to 1995, helping craft political and communications strategies for marriage equality efforts, and persevering for almost two decades to become an openly queer priest in the Episcopal Church. Born and raised in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, Liz has lived most of her adult life in New York City. She is a member of St. Lydia's Dinner Church in Brooklyn and Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, the LGBTQ synagogue in Manhattan.
This conversation is SO SPECIAL to me! Oh gosh. We talked about a "fresh expression of Christ", with Dinner Church, which completely blew my mind! We talked about discipleship, which is something I am SO passionate about, and we talked about how to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus and keep our hearts pure in the midst of distractions and craziness. I learned so much, was challenged so much, and was encouraged so much! I pray you are too! Grab a drink and join us as we pour it out! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ccwa/support
In this episode Fr. Lorenzo talks with Fr Jon Davis about the dinner church movement in the US. What is it? What does it take to do dinner church? And what are the steps to follow to get one going. Fr. Jon Davis Quick: Fr. Jon is the coordinator for Fresh Expressions. www.freshexpressions.com and coordinator for Dinner Church - https://www.dinnerchurch.com/ Twitter: @fatherjond and Facebook: fatherjonThe Dinner Church Website - https://www.dinnerchurch.com/ The Fresh Expressions Website - https://freshexpressions.com/ https://youtu.be/5hGYaIMqVdg This is a commercial not Dinner Church - an initiative called Eating Together - but very moving - https://youtu.be/yLsSy64xILI Dinner Church School of Leadership Graduate Coursehttps://www.dinnerchurch.com/graduate-course Register at - https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dinner-church-school-of-leadership-2023-2024-registration-tickets-595734898117
Gina's guests are JD and ChristianAnn Larson who are pastors of an innovative church plant in Minneapolis called North City Church. They're here to talk with Gina specifically about what they call "Dinner Church" which they see as a way to follow Jesus' example of taking temple things into table spaces. Their story is sure to give you some creative imagination for mission in your own neck of the woods!MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: People of Peace Prayer Exercise (FREE DOWNLOAD) North City Church, Minneapolis 3DM Web Site
How do you teach people about Jesus without using a typical "sermon?" In this episode, you'll hear from Verlon Fosner and Kris Beckert about "Jesus Stories," a simple, Biblical and enjoyable approach that fits well in settings like Dinner Church.Fresh Expressions is a worldwide movement of everyday missionaries who want to see churches thrive in the places we live, eat, work and play by leveraging the creativity and endurance of the inherited church. To learn a simple five-phase process for starting a new expression of church go to freshexpressions.com/howtostart.Season three is brought to you by FX Connect, an online community full of other church leaders passionate about reaching new people in new places. Access our entire library of practical and inspiring training materials and connect with other church leaders at fxconnectus.org.Verlon Fosner & his wife Melodee have been in church leadership for 35 years, and for the past 18 years have served a 93 year-old church in Seattle, Washington. In 2004, their long effective church began to decline, and they were faced with the decision: move to the suburbs or become an urban church. They felt called to not only stay, but to dive further into the urban neighborhoods of Seattle – especially the ones with a sparse church presence. What began as an urban Dinner Church spread into a multi-site Dinner Church, and then expanded into a national Dinner Church Network. Kris Beckert is pastor of Table Life Church. She completed the M.Div. at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC and has served at churches in the Baptist, United Methodist, and Nazarene traditions. Prior to being called to ministry, she received an M.S. in environmental science from the University of Maryland, where she also worked in the field, researching coastal environments and enhancing science communication. Kris is an avid runner, cartoonist, and archer and enjoys cheering for her Carolina TarHeels and Philadelphia Phillies.
A at John 12:1-8 and how this peculiar worship experience points us towards how we are called to be the church in the world today.
In this episode, Church Multiplication Director, Al Yanno, sits down with U.S. Missionary James Turner and Ohio Dinner Church Coordinator Carl Bauchspiess. They elaborate on how Dinner Church is going and its impact on Ohio communities. They talk about how God has been faithful to so many people through the Dinner Church and how to get one started in your community. You do not want to miss out on this episode and conversation! Resources: https://www.ohiocmn.com/dinnerchurch
In this second episode of our Dinner Church trilogy, Eric Bryant interviews Luke Edwards, Mission Strategist for Fresh Expressions and author of Becoming Church:A Trail Guide for Starting Fresh Expressions. Our goal with The Post-Christian Podcast is to reframe, simplify, and focus on our mission to make disciples in a post Christian culture. We discuss reaching new people and raising up leaders while removing the barriers of churchianity. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/eric-bryant1/support
In this episode, Eric Bryant interviews J.D. Larson is Coordinator of Community Development for Dinner Church Collective with Fresh Expressions. He and his wife, ChristianAnn, co-pastor a Dinner Church called North City Church in Minneapolis. Our goal with The Post-Christian Podcast is to reframe, simplify, and focus on our mission to make disciples in a post Christian culture. We discuss reaching new people and raising up leaders while removing the barriers of churchianity. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/eric-bryant1/support
Why is it that some pray to great effect, while others see little, and still others struggle to pray at all? Verlon Fosner and Jon Davis come from vastly different Christian traditions, but share a belief that prayer you can learn to pray. In this episode, you'll develop a deeper appreciation for how to pray for your church and ministry.Verlon Fosner has led a progressive congregation in Seattle Washington since 1999. In 2008 the congregation transitioned from a traditional proclamation church into a multi-site Dinner Church called Community Dinners. In 2016, Verlon joined the Fresh Expression US leadership team and began coaching declining churches, leading “Dinner Church Encounters” across the country, and hosting “Seattle Immersions” at their home, which enables a few leaders at a time to observe Dinner Churches in action followed by training conversations around a fireplace. Verlon holds a Doctorate of Ministry from Assemblies of God Theological Seminary, and has written several books. He and his wife Melodee have three adult children, five grandchildren, a collection of grand-foster-kids, and two grand-dogs.The Rev. Jon Davis PhD, an Episcopal priest is a known and recognized leader in the Episcopal Church and beyond. He has expertise in youth ministry, worship and liturgy (PhD dissertation), church growth and planting, missions, conference leadership and more. He is now on staff with Fresh Expressions. He is a sought after, dynamic and engaging speaker, writer, worship leader and ministry trainer. He and his wife Beth live on a little farm in Oviedo, Florida with a couple of horses, a number of cats, chickens, English Bulldogs and other critters.
Jesse Enniss and Kim Ingram talk with Rev. Dr. Myer Dahn about Rediscovering the Evangelistic Power of Personal Redemptive Storytelling, the title of his Doctor of Ministry dissertation. Myer talks about how he used storytelling as a primary foundation for empowering laity to share their faith and start a Dinner Church. In this podcast, Myer also shares his story and how it has shaped his call and leadership. Show Notes: Fresh Expressions Dinner Church Resources Luke Edwards WNCC Associate Director of Church Development and coordinator of Fresh Expressions Hood Theological Seminary
J.D. Larson wanted to plant a church. So he raised support, gathered a team and launched. When COVID hit, they struggled to connect and decided to try something different. In this episode you'll learn why one church planter chose DInner Church to reach his community.J.D. Larson is a Mission Strategist and Coach with Fresh Expressions. He and his wife, ChristianAnn, co-pastor a Dinner Church called North City Church in Minneapolis. North City is currently working to open a second Dinner Church and has helped other churches nearby start their own Dinner Churches. J.D. previously served as an Executive Pastor at Mill City Church and graduated from Bethel Seminary with a M.Div. He and his wife have three kids and a cocker spaniel who all love the outdoors and good food.Related Resources:Dinner Church: Why Some Churches Thrive By Focusing on Food with Verlon Fosner & Isaac Olivarez | Season 1, Episode 8Dinnerchurch.com
In this episode, Eric Bryant interviews J.D. Larson, the Coordinator of Community Development for Dinner Church Collective with Fresh Expressions. He and his wife, ChristianAnn, co-pastor a Dinner Church called North City Church in Minneapolis. Our goal with The Post-Christian Podcast is to reframe, simplify, and focus on our mission to make disciples in a post Christian culture. We discuss reaching new people and raising up leaders while removing the barriers of churchianity. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/eric-bryant1/support
Misty Harper-Anderson is someone who values deep connection and authenticity inrelationships. She has led in various faith spaces for the past eight years after spendingthe first part of her vocational life in the corporate world. She is a visionary leader whoappreciates the power of collaboration. Misty is the Senior Director of Event Management for Pulse (https://pulse.org). Additionally, she serves as the Lead and Planting Pastor for Aspen Community Church. Misty and her husband, Bill, live in Eagan. Even though their children are all adults, atleast technically, they spend a lot of time together. Their oldest daughter, Sydney,married a great man, Ludwig, in 2020. Their son, Jacob, lives in Alabama and loves thesouth. Their youngest daughter, London, is now at MNSU Mankato. So, they areexperiencing the empty nest for the first time. This is a family who loves board games,hiking and traveling togetherDanielle (00:18):Hey, welcome to theArise podcast, Conversations on faith, race, justice, gender and healing. And the guest on the podcast is just a dear friend today, Misty Harper Anderson. First of all, you're gonna hear me say that I have a room in her house. I've stayed in the same room twice, and I have, uh, my own drinks in there, LaCroix my own flavor, Misty Ann is truly the embodiment of hospitality, someone I trust, uh, who's willing to have difficult conversations. Someone who's been in the liminal space before and has persisted in that space. She's an event planner, um, a pastor, a church planter, and someone that's hung onto her faith in very authentic in real ways. Love to hear where you're at, what you're doing. Any recent changes you're willing to share. I, I love you. Respect you. I've been in your house. I have my own room there. Um, yeah, , and I've been wanting to get you on the podcast for a long time. I know we collaborated on a writing project a while backElection. And I think after that experience, I was just knocked out. I've written here and there since then, but, you know, it was like a lot of emotional experience for all of us. So yeah, tell me what are you comfortable sharing about what you're doing? I know you have some exciting things going on, so I'd love to hear about them.Misty (01:36):Yeah, for sure. Well, first know this, you still have a room here. It still has your LaCroix water in it, and there were some m and m's there now safely in like a, a jar that's tightly sealed. So whenever you come back, they are waiting for you in your room. Uh, what I'm doing right now, so many things. So, so many things. Um, I, I just accepted a full-time job and, uh, I am really excited about the, the title of, of the position as Senior Senior Director of Event Management. So really it's going to be logistics behind these really large evangelism events. And, uh, I love nuts and bolts and things. I love spreadsheets. That's like one of the nerdy things about me. I love color coded spreadsheets. Uh, so that's new that will start this coming Monday. So in just a couple of days.And in addition to that, I am doing event management for our friend Joe Saxton and, and Steph O'Brien. And that, that part of my work will wrap up probably like the end of November. Uh, and that's been very fun. You know, I have such great love and respect for both of them, and I love AZA is their event, and I love that. And just everything that they represent in this world and how they uplift and encourage women. So it's been such a privilege to work with them. And then I teach a New Testament and Old Testament at Buffalo University, and that too, that will wrap up, uh, the first week of December. And I teach students with intellectual disabilities, so autism, uh, and Down syndrome. And it has been my oldest daughter, Sydney. She said, Mom, there's no other job that's given you that has given you heart eyes than like that job, because it's been such a good passion project for me.I love those students and I'm glad that I get to finish up this with them. Uh, and we're church planning still. We've been in the process of church planting since, uh, fall of 2020. Really, really started to kick things off more like spring, summer, fall 2021. And now we are moving into this model of church that actually comes outta Seattle. Uh, it is in Seattle. It's known as Dinner Church, and we will call it Table Church. But it's simple. It's this, We meet around tables, we share food together. Uh, there is, uh, what's called a short Jesus story. So we just, uh, any, any of the stories that come out of the New Testament about Jesus, because I love the Old Testament, will sneak some of that in there too. Uh, and, and then it creates space for conversation about we're, what we're teaching about, and there are a few things that I really love about this.Something that's just really been on my heart lately is that when we come to these tables, there's no food insecurity. We don't know where people are coming from. We've had people join us who are homeless, to people who come from relatively significant wealth. I mean, at least comfort. And when we're at the table, it is an even playing field, and you only have to share your story or those parts of your story if you really want to. And, uh, it is just this way for us to get to know each other deeply, and for us to build this place of trust. So many people are coming out of situations where they've been hurt by church. And so for us to be able to have this, what's called fresh expression of church, which really is like original church, right? Book of Acts church is what this is. Uh, it's been so beautiful to watch this unfold and it's still unfolding. We're still figuring things out and how, how this will look for us and for our community specifically. So those are all the things, Danielle,Danielle (05:34):That's so many things. I mean, that's funny. You've been on a journey, right? We were, I think we paralleled like being in grad school together for a bit.And then you graduated and what's your master's degree in?Misty (05:46):It's a master of divinity.Danielle (05:48):Okay. So you're a boss,Misty (05:50):, that's the goal, right? I mean, that's the goal,Danielle (05:53):And so I, I know you were on this journey, like what is, uh, what does the next step in life mean? Like, I have my degree, what do I wanna do next? And so I know you've been exploring and allowing yourself to try different things, and I don't know if you'd be even be willing to speak about like what it was like to like live in that unknown or be exploring that.Misty (06:16):Yeah, so incredibly uncomfortable , so uncomfortable. Uh, you know, that part of my story is leaving a really traumatic church experience and, and feeling so confused because that happened just as my seminary time was ending and feeling like, Okay, God, I really feel like you led me into seminary. I feel like this was the right move. And yet here I am, uh, I'm no longer part of a church. Like we didn't have a church to attend. I wasn't working at a church anymore, and that was March, 2020. So it's pandemic. So finding a new place to come together to worship with people, uh, it it was just a really tricky PO process. And we have met some great church planters and church people along the way, and that's been part of this redemptive story for us, Uh, to see, to see healthy churches that are functioning well, people who really love each other.Well, that's been so good. And still, and I'm gonna be real honest here, that Tuesday morning, uh, so a week ago Tuesday, I'd been praying about this, this position that I was just offered. And I, and I've been praying for months, like, God, what, what is it that you want from me? Like, have I really missed so many cues for you? Or have I messed my life up too badly that something good can't come from this? And just so many big doubts. And that morning I'd had it really, my husband who has been working from home, uh, actually went into the office that day. So I had the whole house to myself, and it was my voice raised to God. And I don't mean like raised and praised, I mean like, I was yelling at God and tears and like, What do you want from me? And I'm so frustrated. And in that same time is when I was getting the email saying, Hey, can you send us your resume and cover letter for this job? So then I had to go back to God the next day and be like, Thanks for loving me how I am.But also like he sees, he sees these frustrations. He knows how difficult this liminal space is. And, uh, that is much as I know that I'm seen and known and loved by God. I couldn't feel that then I, I felt so, uh, yeah, not seen, not understood, not heard. And I know that timing and prayer isn't necessarily our timing. And still, I was just getting to the end of my patienceBecause you can't see, you can't see when the end is coming. Right. The, I didn't, there wasn't anything in my path at that moment that even looked like a glimmer of hope to me mm-hmm. and I was at my lips end.Danielle (09:20):Yeah. Yeah. So you've got an invitation to submit a resume and a cover letter. Like how did they find you? Do you know?Misty (09:27):So I'd applied for the job. Okay. And, uh, through an online application process. And they specifically wanted my resume and cover letter to go to a specific person, so that, to the hiring manager. So to send it again, which allowed me the possibility of rewriting my cover letter because I'm an overthinker Danielle, I, I wrote one, I sent it, it was specific to the job, but still kind of generic. And then I'm thinking about this over the course of like, what, three or four days? Like, Mm. I should have said this. So then I did.Danielle (10:00):Yeah. I love it that you gave your chance yourself a chance to rewrite the cover letter yourself permission to say, Hey, I wanna do this differently. And you tried it.Misty (10:11):Yeah. Yeah. And it's paid off. Uh, the meetings with this organization were so good. And now I have a friend who started working with them on Tuesday, and she, uh, has been just talking about her time with them so far, and how it seems to be like real relationship, like healthy relationship between, uh, director level and employee level and management. And, uh, so just, just to even have this hope of, of a healthy work environment mm-hmm. is really encouraging.Danielle (10:45):Right. Because part of what I think was like stalling was this traumatic event at this church organization.Misty (10:52):Yep. Yep. And all of these people who I believe really love Jesus, and yet people who really love Jesus can behave very poorly sometimes. So, uh, and, and I'm not, I I'm guessing that we're gonna have moments of that too in this new position. I am not looking for rainbows and unicorns here. I, uh, I hope to be in a space that, that we recognize when we are behaving poorly and can ask for forgiveness after that. And, and that's been some of the, the redemption, the restoration story from this church experience too, is that there's been lots of healing in those once broken relationships. And while they'll never be what they once were, they're so much better than what they were two and a half years ago.Danielle (11:45):How do you see your experience now as you're mo you've moved through so much liminal space and now you have like many jobs.Misty (11:54):It's too many.Danielle (11:55):Yeah. Too many. Like how do you see that traumatic experience right at the tail end of grad school? Like, has it reframed it for you? Has it cemented things for you? Like Yeah.Misty (12:07):Yeah. Good question. I, one of the things, it's made me more aware. So even going into the interview process for this new position, I was, uh, very upfront with the questions that I had about things like accountability and support for their leaders mm-hmm. . Uh, so how, how does this organization, uh, I don't know that you can actually ensure, uh, that there isn't going to be any bad behavior, but what, what are, what does this organization do to, uh, to try to prevent it anyway, to, to keep their people accountable? And there were some really good answers, and those were questions that I wouldn't have necessarily thought to ask before. Uh, because with the work that I do with our church plant, well, I'm the person that needs the accountability. And, uh, because that's something important to me. I'm, I'm, I'm very open and honest with the people that I'm leading.Uh, with the work that I'm doing at Bethel University, uh, I am accountable to a director who also is very open and communicative and also, and then, and then there's the work with Steph and Joe, and we just know them so well. So it's just not something that I even think about with them. But going into this, it's a larger organization with people that, I don't know, it made me more aware of. I, I want to know the answers to these questions before I would ever say yes. And it, it seems to me like they have really good systems in place, uh, to try and avoid some of maybe that celebrity culture that we've seen in the Christian realm in the last few years. And, and a lot of the shake up and the, the lights that, the light that's been shown on some bad behavior in Christian culture. Mm-hmm.Danielle (13:59):How do you, I think what I hear is you see yourself as part of the change.Misty (14:05):Yeah. Yeah. That's been my part of my hope.It was in the last church too. And, and part of that is there are a couple of things. One of them being a woman in ministry, uh, and coming out of a highly complementarian setting, uh, and also wanting something so different for the church as a whole. And I would, I would say specifically the, the Western church, uh, wanting to be part of something that's so much like in the community, getting to know the people, whether, whether people ever come to your church or not, But getting to know people and really caring for them. Uh, that's been part of the change that I've wanted to see. And now there are ways in which I get to be part of making it.Danielle (14:53):What things do you particularly latch onto as, um, as pre, like, as ways you wanna engage leadership?Misty (15:01):I love being able to see giftedness in people and then to challenge them to use their gifts. I also love learning from other leaders. So for instance, in our church plant, we're small. We are about maybe seven households right now. And, uh, in that, I've seen three other people who are excellent communicators. And so they, they teach for us sometimes on Sunday mornings, but also in that we have people in, even in the small group of people we have, uh, Gen Z through, I think boomers probably. Okay. And, uh, and then people, like my very own son-in-law right, is from El Salvador. And so we have different perspective from him. We have, uh, a family who, the husband in the family is African American, the wife is Iranian. And, um, so just learning different perspectives from different people and how do we incorporate that into our church? Because isn't at the beauty of the kingdom of God is people from every tribe and tongue and nation. And so I think to be an effective leader in our community, in our family, in our church, it's really about seeing people for who they are and how uniquely they're created and celebrating that instead of trying to make everybody be the same.Oh, it's been a really, um, maybe like more like Lewis and Clark style, right? Like, it's taking some time, it's taking some time. This isn't a, a fast trail. Um, cuz when you think about, okay, let's think about really creating a trail and like chopping down branches and making a path and going through storms and, and whatever that means, uh, there's a lot of grit that comes with it and, uh, you don't necessarily see the rewards right away. That's been one of the things that I've had to really hold onto in the last couple of years, is in a society that highly values instant gratification, that's not what this work is about. Mm-hmm. , this isn't about selling a product and seeing profits instantly or quickly. Uh, this is long, hard work that is so beautiful. And some of this, I would guess I may never see the results of it, Right. They may be things that happen in generations to come and can I sit in that tension and, and be okay with it. Mm-hmm. , it's been a lot. That's been a lot of inner work that I've been doing. Mm-hmm.Thank goodness for my therapist and my spiritual director because I don't know how I would do this without them.Danielle (18:03):Yeah. Talk to me a little bit how you care for yourself through this process, because clearly you have your mind around things, you're able to really articulate where you're coming from. And I, my guess is you're doing that with care.Misty (18:15):Yeah. Yeah. Self-care has been a key for me. And, uh, also I'm somebody who loves schedule and routine, and so that's gonna shake up a little bit in this next week. Uh, uh, like physical self care. So exercise has been super important to me. I love to lift heavy weights, , it's a really great way to get rid of some tension and walks. It's fall here in Minnesota right now, and it's beautiful. I know that winter's coming, but for right now, I'll enjoy fall. Uh, but my therapist and my spiritual director really are two key people in my life and functions so differently. Uh, and I tell, I tell my kids sometimes I feel like my therapist, I pay her a copay to be my friend , like, she's so lovely. Uh, uh, but just to have these, uh, so my therapist isn't somebody that I know outside of, you know, my normal life.She is a professional that I've met and, uh, has this perspective of my life that is different from the people who are in my life, who are who, right? She can give me this outside perspective of it. And then, uh, my spiritual director actually is a woman that I've known for, I think 20 years now, or almost 20 years. And she, uh, knows so much of my life and also, um, really is so very connected to the Holy Spirit. And so to have conversations with her, again, with both of these women, it's this opportunity to, uh, see pieces of my life from their perspective, things that I wouldn't see on my own. Uh, so that's been really key for me to, uh, keep, keep calm, uh, to stay focused. Uh, now clearly I told you I just freaked out at God, just a week ago. So that doesn't happen all of the time, but, uh, it does happen most of the time that I can stay focused on what really matters.Danielle (20:29):Yeah. So what, what are like your top three things you would tell to someone else in like coming through that liminal space?Misty (20:43):First, have really good people around you. Really good people. Yeah. Um, my husband has been incredibly supportive. Uh, he just, he's a really supportive man and, uh, has given me the space to like li sometimes physical space, like literal physical space. Like I need to be left alone to process some of these things, but also as somebody that I can have a conversation with. So him, our kids, friends, uh, the people in our church, like these are good people who've come alongside me. Uh, I also am a huge proponent of journaling, and that is because now I can look back, I actually have the same journal for, uh, the last two years. And I can look back on these pages and see some of these repeated prayers and repeated themes. And uh, it helps I think in those times where you, for, for me as a person of faith, where I'm like, Okay, God, are you even hearing what I'm saying to you? And, and then to see maybe the, the gradual answers, whether they're yes, no, not now, whatever they are mm-hmm.And then the third thing is to take time to see what really brings you joy.And I think that I, I read something or I saw something the other day about, uh, people who go through long periods of liminal space and can no longer even remember their why or, um, have like no sense of calling anymore because they are just trying to, Oh, it might have actually been stuff. And Joe, it it, it was this like, you just are so used to disappointment that you don't even know what it's like to like long for something or hope for something more. And that holding onto that hope can be really difficult when it's been such a long time since it's been affirmed.Danielle (22:49):Right. That feels hard to hear.Yeah. And you know, like those seasons of drought when, you know, hope is dangerous.Misty (23:02):Yes, for sure. For sure. Uh, I was in this training a couple of months ago and they were talking about, it was different language, but it was liminal space and how also also understanding how things might not go back to the way that they once were mm-hmm. . And so it's also learning to, to let go of something so that you can lead in the space that you're in instead of holding onto this hope of the past. Can we hope for something in the future, even if there's this hard thing that you have to let go of mm-hmm. that has been a, a theme in my life. I think you maybe know I turned 50 in August. Yeah. Uh, yeah. Yay. And I'm one of those people I'm super thankful for every year that I get, uh, I, I last both of my parents in the last few years and so you bet I'm gonna celebrate every single birthday that I get to celebrate.And I've always loved my birthday. I actually celebrate the whole month. But turning 50, I was thinking about this year of Jubilee and that comes from the Old Testament. And it was like after 50 years you release debts, you release people who had been enslaved to you. Um, like so there are these people that are coming out, uh, and have this freedom, whether it's freedom from debt or freedom from being somebody's servant. Well then also there's this letting go of the person who was holding onto the debt. So there it's this, this idea of, for me it's this idea of, okay, what do I need to let go of that I've been holding so tightly to so that I have a room for whatever God has next to me. And that too has been part of this process in the last couple of years. Okay. I'm holding on to some hopes and dreams of, of things from the past and those things, they're not reality anymore. And so can I let go of them so that I can be open and ready for whatever is next. And it's hard. It's been really hard, but it's also been what's been so good.Danielle (25:15):I just, I would love to ask people three questions. Okay. Okay. What are you reading right now? What are you listening to and who are what's inspiring you?Misty (25:26):Mm, good questions. I am somebody who reads lots of things at the same time, . So, uh, we as our church have been talking about spiritual practices. Uh, we've been calling them Jesus experiment. So I have been going back through some of Ritual Lotus's, the deeply formed life. And also I love that book. I, he is, he is just one of my favorites. I I share almost everything that he has on his Instagram cuz there's so much wisdom there. Uh, and then, uh, the Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster. Those are a couple of things that I'm reading and I appreciate both of their perspectives. Uh, I listen to a pile of podcasts, so the Lead Stories podcast is one that I listen to every week. I so just for fun, I love The Office Ladies, have you ever listened to that or did you ever watch The Office?Danielle (26:20):No, I know what you're talking about though. ,Misty (26:23):It's so silly and it's so funny. So it's just a really nice way to not have to think about anything, just just to laugh about something. Gemma Kucher, that's another, I think her podcast is called Gold Digger. Like Gold Geo l Digger and that's primarily for entrepreneurs. But, um, I don't know, there's lots of good stuff that she shares too. And then was the last one what brings me joy orDanielle (26:49):What Yeah, sure. What brings you joy? Who or what's inspiring you?Misty (26:52):Oh, what's inspiring me? Well, the other thing that you know about us is our youngest went to college in August and uh, it's been a huge change just for all of us. Uh, so three kids. Our oldest is married and she and her husband just bought a house. So that's been exciting. Uh, our son's in Alabama so we don't get to see him actually very much. And then our youngest moves out, so it's just my husband and me at home now. And while he and I like we are enjoying our time together. Uh, it's been this really weird freedom of we don't have soccer games three nights a week anymore. So that's been so weird. Uh, but to see my kids, my kids really inspire me. So to see Sydney and her husband and they've been married now for two years and worked so hard and now that they, um, are working hard again cause they bought this house and there's lots of work to do and thankfully a lot of super handy.So we can do lots of things, but like to see them coming into their own and finding their own path and life. And now for, uh, London. Uh, so she goes to college the first week is like, Yeah, awesome. I'm on my own and I am making these new friends. And then a couple of weeks later it's like, hmm, there's some conflict between some of these people and I don't like conflict, but I don't really wanna address it. Mm-hmm. and maybe I should just transfer schools. I was like, okay. And then now we are at this place where she's finding where she fits and she is enjoying school and thinking that this will be the uni university that she'll be at for the next three and a half years or so. And to see them all go through such change mm-hmm. and they're doing okay.But, it's hard sometimes and, and too when like, I see her, our youngest who is almost 19, but still my baby mm-hmm. and she's hurting and she doesn't wanna go back to school mm-hmm. . Uh, but to see those things and no, I can't fix them and also I shouldn't fix them because it's part of what makes her her is learning how to take care of some of these things. Um, again, they're figuring it out and they're becoming stronger, better people for it. And uh, I just so appreciate them and all that. I get to learn, learn through them. I hope that they've learned some things from me, uh, but also I learned things from them.Danielle (29:33):Well, I'm sure they're learning things from you because one way to manage transitions is to have strong attachment with your parental figure or figure. And so I think that indicates some groundedness that you've instilled in given to them. So.Misty (29:49):Well, thank you for that encouragement,Danielle (29:51):Yeah. Well, I mean, it doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be good enough, you know. Yeah,Misty (29:55):That's right. Yeah. There is no perfection in parenting.Danielle (29:59):No. Um, thank you so much for being with me and you know, I'd love to have you back and interview a guest or you know, love for us to collaborate in the future. So thank you.Misty (30:10):Yeah. Thanks for having me. This was so good. Yeah. Talking to you.Danielle (30:13):I know. Me too.
Jamin has been the lead pastor at 1208 Greenwood for 11 years. He has written 8 books, released several hours of music, and has helped launch unique expressions of the church here in Jackson, including Dinner Church, Nerd Church, and an online church. As an activist he has chaired, founded, and served in several different coalitions and organizations around Jackson, especially ones that look to help the poor and those dealing with addiction. He blogs and podcasts regularly at jaminbradley.com.
Mark 2:14-22 -- At a dinner party Jesus lives out and illustrates his authority to forgive sins. The post Dinner Church appeared first on Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church.
In its early days, many churches met around tables. This episode will introduce you to the rapidly growing Dinner Church movement and inspire you to encounter Jesus at the table.Verlon serves on the Fresh Expressions team as director of the dinner church collective. He and his wife Melodee live in Seattle, WA where they lead community dinners, a network of dinner churches they planted out of an inherited congregation. Isaac Olivarez and his wife Jaime founded Urban Outreach Denver in 2012 and believes God is calling the church back to the table where Jesus spent much of his time. https://www.lovedenver.org/
Dinner Church is the way the early church did church. In this session, we'll briefly discuss modern culture and its impact on the church, church history including the dinner church, and the adaptability of the dinner church model to modern culture. Carl Bauchspiess AGWM
Episode two in our conversations about Dinner Church. This episode explores what dinner church is and what it is not (for North City and other dinner church expressions). We walk through what it's like to participate in Dinner Church and what the essential elements of the gathering are. This episode is for those who are curious about dinner church (either interested in joining us around North City's tables or starting your own dinner church - You can do this!). If you'd like to connect with us about Dinner Church we'd love to talk with you. Email JD at jd@northcitychurchmpls.com
Pastor JD & CA sit down for a special series of episodes diving into what it means for North City to be a dinner church. Why is North City a dinner church? What is a dinner church? How does North City choose to be a dinner church? How do you participate in a dinner church... how do you engage with people at the table who are different than you? In the next few episodes, Pastor JD & CA explore these questions and more. It's important for our community to pause and talk about why we do what we do, the intention behind it, and the vision God has given us to love our neighbors in the way of Jesus. Whether you are a part of the north city or just curious, these conversations will help you more deeply understand dinner church and why North City is choosing it.
God loves the children in our life more than we do, and praying for them is one of the most important things we can do as a parent or caregiver. Today we explore how prayer can be strategic, proactive, and powerful in a group. Ready to learn why we should we start with prayer? Let's go.... BARB COLE serves as the Mid-Atlantic Division Coordinator for Mom's In Prayer, a ministry that gathers moms locally to pray for one hour each week for their children and the school they attend. Barb and her husband, Ken, live in south central Pennsylvania and have been married for 45 years. They have two grown sons, two daughters-in-love, and four grandchildren. Barb is currently serving in a local Dinner Church known as Common Ground. She enjoys reading, mentoring women and children in their Christian faith, and praying for her grown children and grandchildren. Resources For You: Moms In Prayer Matthew 7:7 1 Samuel 18:1 Psalm 25:4-5 Philippians 4:6-7 Contact Barb Cole Next Steps: Visit the Moms in Prayer website Share this podcast with a friend Connect with us on Facebook and Instagram Explore Bible2School for YOUR school
In this episode, Al Yanno and Verlon Fosner talk about the foundations of Dinner Church, how it all began and the impact this movement can make in our communities.
Today we continue our series on emerging church models with Tim and Todd speaking with the final part of our conversation with Verlon Fosner on Dinner Church. In this episode Verlon answers the overarching questions of steps to actually launching a Dinner Church or a Dinner Church Campus. www.advancement.cc info@advancement.cc
Today we continue our series on emerging church models with Tim and Todd speaking with Verlon Fosner about the Dinner Church Model. In part 3 of 4, Verlon begins continues talking about the practical steps to establishing a Jesus Table Gathering as with talking about the food, team, evangelism, and messages. www.advancement.cc info@advancement.cc
Today we continue our series on emerging church models with Tim and Todd speaking with Verlon Fosner about the Dinner Church Model. In part 2 of 4, Verlon begins to lay out the practical steps to establishing a Jesus Table Gathering. www.advancement.cc info@advancement.cc
“God listens and understands. Isn’t that what we all desire? To have somebody listen and understand our pain.” We are continuing our Moms in the Bible Series with Barb Cole, the Moms in Prayer Mid Atlantic Division Coordinator. You‘re not going to want to miss a moment of this encouraging episode as she takes us through the account of Hannah. Hope for discouraged moms is here! About our Guest: As the Mid Atlantic Division Coordinator, Barb Cole oversees Washington DC, NJ, MD, & DE in addition to her beloved home state of Pennsylvania. She has been involved in Moms in Prayer International for 24 years but didn’t start praying in a group until her son was preparing for college. She is grateful the Lord brought this ministry to her attention when she most needed to learn to surrender control to God. Barb has been married to her best friend, Ken for 46 years. They have two sons, two daughters-in-love and four grandchildren. Barb and Ken serve together in ministry with a local Dinner Church inviting people of all backgrounds to a Jesus Table. She enjoys reading, volunteering at her church’s coffee house, hearing other people’s stories, mentoring women and children in the Christian faith, and praying for her grown children and grandchildren. Scripture: Scriptures on Hannah found in 1 Samuel 1-2 1 Samuel 1:8 (NIV) Her husband Elkanah would say to her, “Hannah, why are you weeping? Why don’t you eat? Why are you downhearted? Don’t I mean more to you than ten sons?” 1 Samuel 1:10-11 (NIV) In her deep anguish Hannah prayed to the Lord, weeping bitterly. And she made a vow, saying, “Lord Almighty, if you will only look on your servant’s misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life, and no razor will ever be used on his head.” 1 Samuel 2:26 (NLT) Meanwhile, the boy Samuel grew taller and grew in favor with the Lord and with the people. 1 Samuel 3:19-21 (NLT) As Samuel grew up, the Lord was with him, and everything Samuel said proved to be reliable. And all Israel, from Dan in the north to Beersheba in the south, knew that Samuel was confirmed as a prophet of the Lord. The Lord continued to appear at Shiloh and gave messages to Samuel there at the Tabernacle. Numbers 30:6-8 (NIV) “If she marries after she makes a vow or after her lips utter a rash promise by which she obligates herself 7 and her husband hears about it but says nothing to her, then her vows or the pledges by which she obligated herself will stand. But if her husband forbids her when he hears about it, he nullifies the vow that obligates her or the rash promise by which she obligates herself, and the Lord will release her. Psalm 10:17 (NIV) You, Lord, hear the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry, Psalm 18:16-19 (NIV) He reached down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters. He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes, who were too strong for me. They confronted me in the day of my disaster, but the Lord was my support. He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me. Psalm 138:3 (NASB) On the day I called, You answered me; You made me bold with strength in my soul. Links: https://momsinprayer.org/register-update-group/ https://momsinprayer.org/get-involved/register/international-registration/ To give to the ministry of Moms in Prayer: Support Our Mission | Moms In Prayer International Moms in Prayer International- www.MomsInPrayer.org
Today we continue our series on emerging church models with Tim and Todd speaking with Verlon Fosner about the Dinner Church Model. In part 1 of 4, Verlon gives the basic outline and ecclesiology. www.advancement.cc info@advancement.cc
In this episode I talk with Kendall Vanderslice who is the author of We Will Feast: Rethinking dinner, worship, and the community of God. Kendall has traveled all across the country visiting a new kind of church: the dinner church. These communities gather around the table for sacred meals. In our discussion we talk about why this model is church is gaining popularity today, the loneliness we experience in our culture, the sacredness of food and how this model is similar to the way the first Christians would gather and worship. You can find out more about Kendall Vanderslice at her website: www.edibletheology.com
Listen in for an episode full of local news from Clifton, Meridian, Valley Mills and beyond. For our feature stories today, we'll talk to Jackie Murski of BARK about the recent Aloha Gala, and what it means for the near future at the kennels. You'll hear from Marie Garland of the City of Meridian about the upcoming election, and dates county-wide. Listen in for a heartfelt story about Dinner Church, which is starting once again at Break Bread Bakery and Deli. Listen in for more local events, news, and specials.
A conversation with Rev. Christian Scharen, Interim Pastor at St. Lydia's Dinner Church in Brooklyn, NY, & Dr. Gregory Smith, Associate Director of Research at Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C.A conversation bringing together diverse perspectives on theological education in America today. Imagining what the future of theological education could and should look like.
Okay, do you see a theme here? All these people planting churches during Covid19? God's gonna do what God's gonna do! So fun connecting with Lenae. Stick around to the end when we fangirl over our denominational leadership. LOL. www.annapolishoperising.org
On June 7th, 2018, Jamin had a special interview with Christian activist and author, Shane Claiborne. We share it here as a bonus episode in light of our JXN Cloud interview with him. Shane is well known for his ability to bring communities together and impact them with the love and peace of Jesus. We were excited to talk with him about all kinds of things related to our work as a church and our direction into the dinner church model.
Simple Church, Mirco-Church, missional community, dinner church? What actually are these? And why are more and more missionally minded people attached to slow, simple, and smaller expressions of the Church? In this episode Andrew begins a Simple Church conversation with Jamie Freeman (Head of Mission at NSW/ACT Baptists) and Jono Ingram (missional Dinner Church planter in Melbourne's west) where we define what a simple church is, and explore whether they are even biblical. Reimagine Mission is a production of the Baptist Union of Victoria. More information about the BUV can be found at: https://www.buv.com.au/
On this episode Zach Bauer talks with Mark Cryderman win Detroit Dinner Churches. We discuss the shift from a traditional church expression to a dinner church expression, and the model and method of table gatherings. Resources: http://www.detroitdinnerchurch.com https://www.wearereddoor.net/table Dinner Church Book Verlon Fosner
Kendall Vanderslice is a baker and writer on the East Coast. She has an MLA degree and an MTS degree from Duke University. We talk about her book, We Will Feast, and what she has learned about bread and faith. It's a great episode with insight into the growing awareness of the dinner church movement. www.kendallvanderslice.com Instagram @kvslice We Will Feast https://amzn.to/2UHNDvG
The Legacy & Faith Show with Paul Grant
The Legacy & Faith Show with Paul Grant
For All Who Hunger a Conversation with Emily M.D. Scott The Food and Faith Podcast is co-hosted by Anna Woofenden and Sam Chamelin www.foodandfaithpodcast.org Emily Scott (she/her/hers) is a church planter, and a Lutheran pastor. She’s the founder of St. Lydia’s, a Dinner Church in Brooklyn that sparked a wider Dinner Church movement in the US. Currently, she’s planting a new, LGBTQ+ rooted congregation called Dreams and Visions in Baltimore. Her book, “For All Who Hunger: Searching for Communion in a Shattered World,” is out on May 12, from Penguin Random House. Order "For All Who Hunger" from bookshop.org or your local bookstore! Support the Farm to Stoop Project! Connect with Emily here:Dreams and Visionswebsite facebook instagram
The Rev. Emily Scott has pastored not one, but two new churches: St. Lydia's Dinner Church in Brooklyn, and now The Church of Dreams and Visions in Baltimore. A Lutheran (ELCA) pastor, Emily believes that Christian practice holds out rich possibilities that call us to reach out across boundaries in love, to learn through discomfort, and to build relationships that bring God's realm close. Emily's book, For All Who Hunger: Searching for Communion in a Shattered World, will be released on May 12.
The original church was a time when Christians gathered around tables, included the strangers and the poor, ate together, and talked about Jesus. This form of church occurred mostly during the first three hundred years of Christianity, and was highly effective in bringing lost people to Jesus. Come learn how you can design a "Dinner Church" to uniquely reach people in your community and beyond. Larry BogenriefLead Pastor, Willow Praise AG
The original church was a time when Christians gathered around tables, included the strangers and the poor, ate together, and talked about Jesus. This form of church occurred mostly during the first three hundred years of Christianity, and was highly effective in bringing lost people to Jesus. Come learn how you can design a "Dinner Church" to uniquely reach people in your community and beyond. Larry BogenriefLead Pastor, Willow Praise AG
Reverend John Cannon, Senior Pastor of Asbury United Methodist Church, is our guest on Discover Lafayette. A native of Shreveport, John graduated from the University of Arkansas and LSU Law School. While working as an Assistant District Attorney in East Baton Rouge, he began to discern a call to pastoral ministry that he had first experienced as a youth in the Episcopal Church. Following that call, John attended the Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri. Before joining Asbury as Senior Pastor, John served as the District Superintendent for the 74 churches of the Acadiana District of The United Methodist Church. Cannon's first appointment as a pastor was at Church of Our Savior in Junction City, Kansas. Located near U. S. Army Fort Riley, the congregation was multi-ethnic with about fifty members, most of whom were retired military. It was a simple time for Cannon and his wife, Erin, and the church provided a home for them to live in as he commuted twice a week for two hours to attend his theological classes in Kansas City. Asbury UMC is one of the largest churches in Louisiana, with about 1000 active members attending services in any month. Cannon explained that even in large churches, it is important to maintain a "small church feel" so that people feel connected to one another. Large congregations have to work to create that feel; small groups such as Sunday School classes or adult and children ministries are important so that each individual member can connect with others and share their God-given gifts. Cannon's training in his first career as an appellate attorney has many similarities with his work as a pastor. He believes the best lawyers are storytellers and the best stories are the ones that make you think and bring you to a new place of understanding. Today as a pastor, Cannon is a collector of stories....odd, humorous and interesting stories of real people he finds in the news and saves in a manilla folder for use in his sermons. The congregation enjoys his humorous openings to sermons where the true, offbeat human story is woven into a relevant passage of scripture to more impactfully deliver the message. Cannon believes that is why Jesus used parables as he taught His messages so that the crowds could understand the teaching and relate them to everyday life. You could say that John Cannon makes his closing argument for God each and every week! John Cannon is a collector of stories....odd, humorous and interesting stories of real people he finds in the news and saves in a manilla folder for use in his sermons as he weaves in a relevant passage of scripture to deliver an impactful message. You could say that John Cannon makes his closing argument for God each and every week! Asbury draws a diverse crowd of all ages, socioeconomic backgrounds, and is a place of acceptance for the LGBTQ community. Cannon is proud that the congregation models what it means to be a family, even when all members don't agree on every societal issue, and stated, "At the end of the day, we love each other, support each other, and have each other's back." Ultimately, it's all about love, the love that Jesus exemplified in His two great commandments: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[a] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:35-40. Asbury has started a new church ministry in Youngsville and offers a service on the second Sunday of each month at 5:30 p.m. at Ascension High School. Led by Reverend Allison Sikes, the service is a casual, family experience that is a "Dinner Church model," where attendants enjoy acoustic music and share conversations around the table. Cannon says you can just walk in dressed in shorts and t-shirt. *Please note that all services offered by Asbury have been su...
It’s not something you notice until someone points it out, but food has a central role to play in the life of faith. So we’ll hear from baker and writer Kendall Vanderslice as we hear her story and explore questions like:-What is the relationship between food and faith?-What role does (and can) food play in the life of faith?-What does church communities incorporating food in their worship look like?-How will the church be different if we did worship over a meal?And more!Kendall Vanderslice is a baker and writer from Durham North Carolina, and she writes on the intersection of food and faith. She is a graduate of Wheaton College (BA Anthropology), Boston University (MLA Gastronomy), and Duke Divinity School (Master of Theological Studies). She writes for Christianity Today, Christ and Pop Culture, Religion News Service, and Faith & Leadership and is the author of We Will Feast: Rethinking Dinner, Worship, and the Community of God. Check out her website at http://kendallvanderslice.com/ and follow her on either Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter @kvslice. And get a copy of her book available on Amazon and also on Audible at https://www.amazon.com.au/We-Will-Feast-Rethinking-Community/dp/0802876307
In this episode, Luke visits The New Covenant Dinner Church in Lenoir. Dinner Church is a way of being church around the dinner table. If you would like more information about starting a dinner church you can visit the church development website here or email Luke Edwards at ledwards@wncccumc.org. NOTE: This was recorded before COVID-19 reached North Carolina. We recommend all churches follow the CDC guidelines of avoiding hosting in person gatherings at this time. Some dinner churches are offering to-go meals in the meantime.
Food and Faith Gathering Talk www.foodandfaithpodcast.org Rev. Karen Mann Karen is a pastor in the United Church of Christ and worked for a number of years as a hospital chaplain before following her passion for food on to the farm. The first stop was as the Market Manager for a network of farms for refugees. Given that she didn’t meet any of the qualifications, she’s pretty sure she got the job by describing how much she loves turnips. She has now settled on her own farm in central Virginia, Heart & Bones Hollow, with her partner and two kids. Together they raise goats, pigs and a variety of produce for market. She is also the pastor of a new Dinner Church in her rural community and hoping to find ways to bring the farm and the faith community together.
In today’s episode we talk with Lauren Boyd, Pastor of Be3 Dinner Church and the Director of Programming and Culture at the Newport Street Retreat in Denver, Colorado. In our conversation we discuss what dinner church is, what it has looked like at Be3, and how her church has repurposed their building for this new form of worship and for alternative funding models for ministry. For More info about Be3 Dinner Church you can visit their facebook page here or their website here. You can also visit the Newport Street Retreat website here. My favorite book about dinner church is We Will Feast by Kendall Vanderslice. The email list that Lauren recommended is One Last Thing from Emily P. Freeman. Today's episode brought to you by the Church Development Office at the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church. Music from https://filmmusic.io "Macarray Bay" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) If you have a question about the future of the church that you would like for me to research or have a suggestion for a future guest you can email me at luke@churchischanging.com or leave me a voicemail at (980) 320-0568 and you might end up on the podcast. Today’s episode and many other resources for the next church can be found at www.churchischanging.com
Writer and baker extraordinaire, Kendall Vanderslice is my guest today. In her new book We Will Feast: Rethinking Dinner, Worship, and the Community of God, she shares with us her experiences around the US with the dinner-church movement, where she discovers the Holy Spirit working in beautiful ways connecting people, healing hearts, and transforming lives. Kendall's passions for theology and food come through in this beautiful book and in our conversation. Make sure to connect with her at the following: IG: kvslice She has the best instastories!! www.kendallvanderslice.com to sign up for her Edible Theology newsletter and find all things Kendall And to order her book We Will Feast click the link: https://amzn.to/34cfCWY We talked about Samin Nosrat's kitchen must Salt Fat Acid Heat which is on special right now! Click here to order: https://amzn.to/2O6wlFy
(00:00-09:18): Brian and Ian cover the topic of evolving churches. Michael Frost wrote a couple of pieces “Dinner Church, anyone?” and “New Kinds of churches really are the hope of the future”. They cover how changing churches may be what is needed around the world. (09:18-19:10): Dominique Gilliard writes in MissioAlliance “The Church’s Complicity in Mass Incarceration” talking about how the church primarily substituted God’s grace with imprisoning people who have done wrong. (19:10-28:37): So...we need insurance to order pizza now? Brian and Ian discuss Domino’s’ new pizza delivery insurance. Domino’s says it is a way to send back your order if you aren’t completely satisfied. Isn’t that on the restaurant to get your order correct? (28:37-38:15): What really grinds our gears? Brian and Ian touch on a couple things that rub them the wrong way. From lack of eye contact, to...you guessed it...turning signals, these guys need to let loose and get stuff off of their chest. (38:15-48:27): Beth Moore has responded on multiple accounts to John MacArthurs “Go home” remark and staunch position on disallowing women leaders. Brian and Ian listen to NT Wright defend women leaders as well as touch on Moore’s response on twitter. (48:27-59:03): “Beauty Will Save the World” In this brief spoken word, written in defense and encouragement to the artists of the world. Brian and Ian talk about what beauty is and how to notice it despite the distractions of the world. (59:03-1:09:36): Brian and Ian talk about “6 Key Practices for Every Board” which talks about accountability and transparency for leadership. They reflect on this as pastors and how people in their church keep them accountable. (1:09:36-1:16:07): Brian and Ian’s “Weird Stuff We Found on the Internet”: North Carolina police are not racist, they said so. If you’re going to eat poisonous sea urchins, prepare to have dreadful hallucinations. UK construction is the pettiest of all construction, almost as petty as smuggler’s surgery. Meanwhile, global warming is proving to be productive in Russia.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Verlon tells us how God used 2 dreams in his life to provoke a return to the first century’s approach to reaching others for Christ, the dinner church. We get a ringside seat to understanding how God brought him into this renewal and what it can mean for us and our churches. https://dinnerchurch.com/ Verlon FosnerDr. Verlon Fosner leads a progressive congregation in Seattle Washington, and have done so since 1999. In recent years the congregation transitioned from a traditional proclamation church into a multi-site Dinner Church called Community Dinners (www.CommunityDinners.com). In this decade when more US churches are declining than thriving, Verlon sensed that a different way of doing church was needed for their 93-year old Seattle congregation. After a long season of trial and error (and mostly error), they hearts became stirred by the manner of church that was practiced during the Apostolic Era. In 2008, they opened up their first Dinner Church in a sore neighborhood some blocks south of their church campus, and immediately the room began to fill up with more sinners, strangers, and seculars than they had seen in years. Soon they were opening up another one, in another sore neighborhood, and on another night; the results were the same. They now pour into many neighborhoods throughout their city each week with a simple idea – that Jesus still wants to have dinner with sinners and wants his church to set the table. It soon became obvious that they were not the only ones who needed a new way of doing church. So in 2014, so they founded coaching network centered on Jesus’ dinner table theology (www.DinnerChurch.Com). Presently, Verlon offers half of his time to help leaders outside of Seattle look at the sore neighborhoods in their cities with new eyes. In 2016, Verlon joined the Fresh Expression US leadership team and began coaching declining churches, leading “Dinner Church Encounters” across the country, and hosting “Seattle Immersions” at their home, which enables a few leaders at a time to observe Dinner Churches in action followed by training conversations around a fireplace. Verlon holds a Doctorate of Ministry from Assemblies of God Theological Seminary, and has written several books: “Dinner Church”, “Dinner Church Handbook”, and “Welcome to Dinner, Church” (which has a nine-week companion video series that enables it to be used as a discussion guide). All of these resources are intended to help leaders and congregations learn how to work with Jesus at one of his dinner tables. Verlon has been married to Melodee for 38 years, and together they have three adult children, five grandchildren, a collection of grand-foster-kids, and two grand-dogs.
Rev. Karen Mann is a pastor in the United Church of Christ and worked for a number of years as a hospital chaplain before following her passion for food to the farm. The first stop was as the Market Manager for a network of farms for refugees. Given that she didn't meet any of the job qualifications, she's pretty sure she got the job by describing how much she loves turnips. She has now settled on her own farm in central Virginia, Heart & Bones Hollow, with her partner and two kids. Together they raise goats, chickens, pigs, one dairy cow, and a variety of produce for market. She is also working to start a new Dinner Church in her rural community and hoping to find ways to bring the farm and the faith community together. You can follow the farm on Facebook at www.facebook.com/heartandboneshollow or visit their website heartandboneshollow.com. Or you can read some of Karen's reflections on faith and farming at carrotseedfaith.com.
Zach Kerzee joins Christy and Chloe at the table to talk about dinner church, bread, and community.
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Jamin Bradley joins us to talk about 1208GREENWOOD, the meaning of Dinner Church, hospitality, and the Holy Spirit! The story Jamin referred to is in 2 Kings 4:38-41. Jamin's latest book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/sitb/B07GSX1956?ref=sib_dp_aw_kd_udp Thanks to everyone who contributed to the FMC Radio booth at GC19! Register for the Embrace All Conference: www.westmorrisfm.org/embrace-all Leave a voicemail for the show by calling: (914) FMC-USA1 Please like the show page at www.facebook.com/fmcradio and follow us on Twitter @FmcRadioShow Email Josh: josh@befreemc.org
Today we had a special interview with Christian activist and author, Shane Claiborne. Shane is well known for his ability to bring communities together and impact them with the love and peace of Jesus. We were excited to talk with him about all kinds of things related to our work as a church and our direction into the dinner church model.
A pastor learned about how serving dinner helped her church grow.
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