POPULARITY
Today, Jonathan and Sy talk with author and international speaker Mark Scandrette about:- How Mark went from fundamentalism to loving his neighbor through political protest- The cost of leaving a fundamentalist world and speaking out against injustice- Why the beatitudes should guide our discipleship and voting- How discipleship is practicing the way of Jesus, not learning doctrine- And after the interview, a discussion on a really thoughtful article about how patriarchy harms Palestinian menMentioned in the Episode- Our anthology, Keeping the Faith- Mark's website, MarkScandrette.com- His organization's website, Reimagine.org- Frederick Joseph's article on Patriarchy and Palestinian menCredits- 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 subscribersTranscriptIntroduction[An acoustic guitar softly plays six notes, the first three ascending and the last three descending – F#, B#, E, D#, B – with a keyboard pad playing the note B in the background. Both fade out as Jonathan Walton says “This is a KTF Press podcast.”]Mark Scandrette: We all struggle with a sense of not enoughness, and what do we do with our lack. And we can either be closed handed, anxious, worried, and greedy, or open-handed and trusting. And that's blessed are the poor in spirit. It's hard to face the realities of a complex world, and so we wanna hide and escape, but Jesus says, blessed are those who mourn. And so that opens up opportunities for lament and confession and things like that. So in a way, I call it like the Beatitudes I think, and the Sermon on the Mount are like the psychology of how to live in the kingdom of God.[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: Welcome to Shake the Dust, seeking Jesus confronting injustice. I'm Jonathan Walton.Sy Hoekstra: And I'm Sy Hoekstra. We have a fantastic show for you today. First, we are continuing our series of interviews with authors from our anthology that we published in 2020 about Christianity and the election, which is still relevant because it's the same election we had, are having now. Time is a flat circle. This episode we have Mark Scandrette talking about his journey from a fundamentalist devout Republican upbringing in the eighties and early nineties until today, the cost that leaving that world had on his personal life, and his thoughts on living out the beatitudes practically in everyday life and in voting, and a whole lot more with him. That's a great conversation.And after that, hear Jonathan and my thoughts on the conversation, as well as our segment, Which Tab Is Still Open, diving deeper into one of the recent recommendations from our newsletter. This week, a powerful essay by the author Frederick Joseph about patriarchy and its effects on men in Palestine. You do not wanna miss that.Jonathan Walton: Yes. Such a great essay. And if you like what you hear and read from KTF Press and would like for it to continue beyond the election season, please become a paid subscriber, like and share our work and encourage others to subscribe as well. Our goal over the next six months is 1000 paid subscribers, and right now there are 167. So we've got a ways to go, but we believe this work is valuable and we hope you do too. So like, share, subscribe, and tell a friend. We'd really appreciate it and look forward to reaching that goal.Sy Hoekstra: Mark Scandrette is an internationally recognized specialist in practical Christian spirituality. He is the founding director of the ReIMAGINE Center for Living Wisdom, where he leads an annual series of retreats, workshops, and projects designed to help participants apply spiritual wisdom to everyday life. His multidisciplinary studies in psychology, family health, and theology, have shaped his approach to learning and transformation. Mark teaches as contingent faculty in the doctoral program at Fuller Theological Seminary.His most recent books include FREE: Practicing The Way of Jesus, Belonging and Becoming: Creating a Healthy Family Culture, and The Ninefold Path of Jesus. That's the book from which a lot of what you will hear today come from. It's his most recent book. Mark is passionately engaged in sustainability practices and efforts to create safety in neighborhoods for all people. His essay in our anthology was called “Vote Like the Beatitudes Matter.”Jonathan Walton: Awesome. Let's get to the conversation. Here is the interview.[the intro piano music from “Citizens” by Jon Guerra plays briefly and then fades out.]Sy Hoekstra: Mark Scandrette, thank you so much for joining us on Shake the Dust today.Mark Scandrette: Great to be with both of you. Appreciate you guys so much.Sy Hoekstra: Same to you. Absolutely.Jonathan Walton: Absolutely.How Mark went from Fundamentalism to Loving His NeighborSy Hoekstra: So let's just dive right in. In your essay in your anthology, you write about kind of your upbringing in sort of fundamentalist Christian nationalist kind of spaces. I remember you particularly saying that Billy Graham and Chuck Colson were considered too liberal for the places… or were suspiciously liberal.Mark Scandrette: Yeah. Yeah [laughs].Sy Hoekstra: Which is, that is a niche community right there [laughter]. And so we have a lot of listeners who probably… you said that your view started to change basically after the 1992 election. You were very active in the Republican party, and then things started to change after that. And we have a lot of listeners who are either people who had their whole political outlook change from conservative kind of Christian politics recently, like in the past several years because of Trump in 2016. Or we have a lot of listeners who are kind of helping… who know a lot of people who are in that situation.And so as somebody who is at this point more than like 30 years out from your own political shakeup in your worldview, what would you say to people who are kind of experiencing the shock and confusion of that change, or who are trying to help people through the shock and confusion of that kind of change?Meeting People Who Didn't Fit StereotypesMark Scandrette: Yeah. When I… you tried to put a point on it of being like 1992. I think that was maybe towards the beginning of a very long process. It's not really a binary. So I think that there were some gradual steps. Like I was repeating the things that my community was saying and believing about the world and about politics. And maybe my first step was not… like pausing to not say those things anymore, or not feeling like I could say them. And the sense I got was that there was some very clear borders of what would be considered in and out ideas or perspectives in the Christian communities that I was part of, and in my family. And so I just, I was just quiet for a lot of years sifting through what do I really think about things?One of the key things for me was having experiences beyond the boundaries of the community that I was raised in. For me, being around… I'm a White male, so being around people of color and people in poverty and struggle. And actually meeting people that my community would've labeled as liberals and finding out that they weren't the, those people weren't the caricature that I had been given. And that there wasn't this clear, there wasn't this binary. Not all of them were atheists and not all of them… Like they still had values and ethics. And so these were like layers of kind of surprise to me and a little befuddlement that I'd been given a narrative that just real… like my experiences in the world did not confirm.Sy Hoekstra: Right.Mark Scandrette: And another thing that may be good to know about me, is I moved to San Francisco in 1998. And so you have this little house on the prairie, White, Midwestern pastor family moving to the mission district of San Francisco that was mostly immigrant in a very progressive city. And I could, like I would trot out some of those ideas about the world that I'd inherited and grown up with. And to see the reaction and the kind of check on those things was really powerful for me.Accepting Complexity, and Loving Your Neighbor PoliticallyAnd I think a lot of us who have spent time in evangelicalism, we like a simple world. We like it, we wish the world was really simple and that there's a couple of things that would fix everything [laughs]. And so I've entered into, in my neighborhood, into complexity.And that was a big part of my shift in perspective. I would say it all came to a head in 2015 when a young man on our block was shot and killed by the police. And I had enough information to know police broke their protocols. He was shot six times in the back. They didn't address him in his native language and they misread a situation. And that was a series of about 15 police killings over just a couple year period in San Francisco. And I think that prior to that, my sense was as a follower of Jesus… and I think, I don't think I'm alone in this. I'm just gonna be apolitical and try and live out the teachings of Jesus in my everyday life, love my neighbor as myself. And I'm not gonna participate in the political world because It's dirty. It's a dirty thing. It's full of crooks and [laughs]…Sy Hoekstra: Which isn't wrong. That's not a wrong thing to say about the political world [laughter].Mark Scandrette: But with the killing of my neighbor, I realized there was all kinds of complexities to this about police hiring practices, their own protocols, the police commission and the union and all these things. And then when I would go to these organizing meetings, I would find out that most of my Latin and Black neighbors had had similar experiences. Everyone had somebody in their family that had been mistreated or killed. And I would say, “When they broke into your house and woke you up with guns [laughs] to your faces, did you make a complaint?” And they said, “No. We were just glad that they eventually left and that we're still alive.”And so I was like there's an… if I wanna love my neighbor as myself, it's more than just my direct action to love that person. I also need to advocate for them, and that gets me into politics and public policy. And so that was kind of a huge learning curve for me, to go from being apolitical to actually feeling like I needed to have a voice and participate at a different level.Sy Hoekstra: That's a useful story for people to hear because I mean, a number of things that you've highlighted is like, I mean, the story highlights is proximity to marginalized people is the willingness to enter into complexity and not shut it down by making things simple. And the how loving your neighbor actually takes shape when you get involved with real people in the real world as opposed to what you've been told about them. I mean, all those points, there's probably more in there that Jonathan could point out, but at least those three points come out of that story [laughs].The Importance of Firsthand Experiences in a World of Secondhand MediaJonathan Walton: Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the biggest thing that stands out to me for folks who are on the like, “I want to help this person,” is that we can't help people who are unwilling to put themselves in close proximity with folks who are different.Mark Scandrette: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: The information is not gonna be the transformation. I'm sure you saw documentaries about what happened when your neighbors are hanging with you. But when you're breathing the same air in the same room, you shop at the same grocery stores, you get on the same public transit, you ride on the same bike lanes, it creates a different narrative, right? And that I think, particularly for folks who are like, “Oh man, I don't know how this person would change.” I think there's a powerful invitation that Jesus says when he says, “Come and see.” And you came and you saw. And the interpretation of that was what then you're able to respond to, which is great.Mark Scandrette: So one of the things I try and emphasize is that I want to have firsthand experiences rather than relying on second or thirdhand reports about things.Jonathan Walton: Exactly.Mark Scandrette: And I think that a lot of our media-fueled political discourse operates at that level of secondhand, thirdhand information. And I could see it in action. We spent a year doing weekly prayer vigils and walking from the site of his, the killing site to our local police station.Sy Hoekstra: Oh wow.Mark Scandrette: And on anniversaries there would be a particular attention from the media. And it would be mostly, it'd be a couple hundred grandpas and grandmas, observant Catholic folks from the neighborhood who were actually praying. And then a few radical communists would show up at the end with masks and hammers about six of them. And [laughs] that's the image that would go on Fox News.Sy Hoekstra: Right, of course. Yeah.Jonathan Walton: Mmhmm, yep, right.Mark Scandrette: Not these devout people praying and not saying mean things about the police, but saying our liberation is bound up with one another and calling on God's grace to help us learn to live together in love. And so yeah, firsthand experiences I think are really powerful. And I'll tell you, maybe a hard thing for me was when I shared my firsthand experience, how people would tend to go to rhetoric with me very quickly. And I would go around to churches and tell the story of my experience with my neighbor, and people would assume I was saying bad things about their uncle who was a police officer, or whatever.Sy Hoekstra: Right.Mark Scandrette: And I said, “I didn't say anything about your uncle. I'm a writer and a storyteller. I try to be very careful about what I say. And so you're really making assumptions and backfilling what I didn't say.” And it's hard to get to that. In conversations with family and friends, it's really hard to get to that person to person level if one of us is talking from rhetoric.Why Should the Beatitudes Guide Our Voting?Jonathan Walton: Yeah. I mean, I feel like if the willingness and ability to resist relationship and go to rhetoric for simplicity's sake, which really means my own safety and my, I don't have to change, right? You, as a storyteller, as a writer, as someone who's shepherding folks in the way of Jesus, you landed on what you wrote in your essay for us, which was like voting in line with what you find in the Beatitudes. So there's these things happening in the neighborhood. You resist oversimplification, you make these things personal, and then you're like, all right, “I'm gonna step into the policy ring and vote from the Beatitudes.” So how did you land there, and why is that the passage of scripture as opposed to Isaiah 1:17 or Micah 6:8, or Matthew 25. For the folks who don't know the Bible, those are all the justice passages [laughter].The Beatitudes Are Some of Jesus' Most Important Teachings, and They Show Us How to Think and Live Like We Will in God's KingdomMark Scandrette: Sure. There's two layers to the question. One is I was mentored by somebody, by a philosopher named Dallas Willard, who would often say that the Sermon on the Mount is the curriculum for Christlikeness, the best collection we have of the teachings of Jesus. It was sort of like, if you have a favorite comedian, they do the same set hundreds of times, and you just, when they record the special you're getting the best hits. And I think the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus' best hits. So the Beatitudes fall at the beginning of that passage, and I think the Beatitudes can be seen as a way of Jesus naming areas of the human condition and human struggle that his teachings address.So we often, we all struggle with a sense of not enoughness, and what do we do with our lack. And we can either be closed handed, anxious, worried and greedy, or open-handed and trusting. It's hard to face the realities, and that's blessed are the poor in spirit. It's hard to face the realities of a complex world, and so we wanna hide and escape, but Jesus says, blessed are those who mourn. And so that opens up opportunities for lament and confession and things like that. So it's like a, in a way, I call it like the Beatitudes I think, and the Sermon on the Mount are like the psychology of how to live in the kingdom of God.What's the inner work, a new way of seeing that allows me to show up in new ways in the world. And so I think there's just incredible richness there. The other part of the answer is I did get invited into a project in 2015 called Nine Beats, where a group in the UK invited me to spend particular time on the Beatitudes and I developed a curriculum around it that we've introduced to groups around the world. And my main, my biggest passion is how do I invite other people to follow the teachings of Christ in the messy details of everyday life? Like, how does that work? Where do we start? What's the self-awareness we need to have? What are the practices that might help us learn to see and be like Jesus in the world?And so we created some labs around the… I call it a learning lab, a lab around the Beatitudes that would look at those principles from the Sermon on the Mount, and then we'd invite people to do experiments and practices around them. And actually it's, I'd say there's a political component to that because some of those teachings really confront our habits around how we show up in civic life. Like when we were looking at “blessed are the merciful,” we asked people to make a commitment to practice positive speech for one week. For one week, I won't say anything critical or disparaging about myself or another human being, including politicians.And we just asked people to do it for a week, and then notice how that changed the nature of their conversation and their attitudes. And most people, when we invite them to do this practice, they're like, “Oh, I don't know if I could do that.” Or there's a little bit of a chuckle knowing how much contempt is part of how we talk with each other.Sy Hoekstra: I literally just called politicians crooks. So yeah, I got you on that one [laughter].Jonathan Walton: And that piece, you said like “how much contempt marks our speech about each other and ourselves.”Mark Scandrette: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: It's good.Mark Scandrette: Yeah. We did another… when we looked at “blessed are those who mourn” or “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness or justice”, we just asked people to think about, consider who tends to be excluded or on the margins in their context, and get curious and meet someone from that group. Or with “blessed are the peacemakers,” who do you put on the other side of us and them? Go have a conversation with that person, be curious and listen. And it's exciting to see. We had like, some of my work is in Australia and a lot of older White Christians in Australia carry some pretty judgmental I would say racist attitudes towards the original peoples of that continent.And it doesn't seem to cause much conflict within them as followers of Jesus. But with this lab, we just say, who do you put on the other side? Look at how Jesus did this, hanging out with the Centurion and the Samaritans and the occupiers, would you be willing to meet someone who is from that original people group and get curious about them and to see the kind of changes in attitude and learning, “Oh, that's why they wanted to see the referendum go through.” And it's been really powerful. And I'd just say, what I've noticed is by inviting people into the Jesus practices, you can get a lot further in the conversation around politics than you can by pushing your agenda forward.Jonathan Walton: Right. Almost like if you lift him up, he'll draw all people unto himself [laughter].The Beatitudes Are sometimes Unintuitive, and They Challenge Privileged People to Think DifferentlySy Hoekstra: Almost like that. I think thinking of the Beatitudes as the psychology of what it means to be a Christian, that you just made something click in my brain. And that was because there… and the reason I think it clicked is there are so many things in the Beatitudes that I find helpful, but it's not necessarily immediately clear why [laughs]. Like even just “mourn with those who mourn,” it's like—"Blessed are those who mourn.”Mark Scandrette: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: It's like that was never a command. Like that's not a, here's what you do to be righteous, or here's what you do to live well or whatever. I don't know. Like why you need to mourn is not immediately clear versus why you shouldn't steal or kill or commit adultery [laughs].Mark Scandrette: Yeah. And it's right there. It's the second thing Jesus says in this great sermon, is blessed are those who mourn. So that's probably out of all the beatitudes, the one that's hit people the hardest from dominant culture, is the scriptural invitation to lament and complain. And that it gives us an opportunity to both mourn how we've been hurt by personal or systemic forces, and to also sit with how we maybe have been complicit in systems and structures of oppression. And that it's okay and good to do that. And our healing's gonna come by realistically facing mistakes in our past and collective mistakes that we've made.What Was the Cost of Leaving Fundamentalism And Speaking Out Against Injustice?Sy Hoekstra: So in your turning to this way of thinking, you made it clear in the essay you've had some strain in some of your personal relationships. And I don't, without obviously you getting into the details of your personal life [laughs], I'm just kind of wondering in general how your relationships with people who disagree with you have changed and how you try to continue to approach people who are close to your part of your community who disagree with you in truth, but also in love at the same time.Mark Was Misunderstood When He Left Conservatism, but Being Misunderstood Is Part of Following JesusMark Scandrette: Yeah. I find it to be challenging, and it's been with my immediate family and extended family and with people who've even been donors to our work and organization over a very long period of time. And some of it really surprised me because… and I think that it has to do with that acceleration of divides that happened over the last four to six years. It surprised me who would be so adamant around and defensive around issues of racism and racial justice and things like that. I'm a sensitive person. Like I will say and do what I believe, but I don't go out of my way to offend. And so I like to, I'm a nice guy [laughs], but so it surprised me when I'm met with such anger from people I love. And I spent a lot of time trying to talk through things.I had one friend who was very offended because we organized a group of people just after George Floyd's death to do a lab on anti-racism. And he was really offended by some of the Black voices that we had as part of that and what they said. And I just spent hours trying to compose a response to him that was gentle and helpful and non-reactionary. And one thing that brings me great comfort is that part of Jesus' spiritual formation was to be misunderstood by the people closest to him. And so his mother and brothers thought he'd become mentally unwell and should have been committed to a mental health ward during his ministry [laughs]. People in his hometown rejected him.And not that any, like, we could go the wrong way with this to be like, oh, just because I offend people that means I'm following the Jesus way. But I do think there might be something archetypal in that if you keep trying to follow the Jesus way, you will be misunderstood and you will be misrepresented, and that that is part of your formation. So instead of taking it personally, just go, “This might be necessary because I've liked being liked. I've liked people agreeing with me thinking that I had wise things to say, and now people are not giving me that affirmation. Can I still be at rest and centered as a person who's trying to listen to God's voice and God's spirit when I'm not getting rewarded for it [laughs] by my community?” And that's a, it's a hard, but I think a necessary spiritual development step.Practicing the Way of Jesus Is Discipleship, Not Learning DoctrineJonathan Walton: Amen. Amen. So, as we've had this conversation, you put a lot of emphasis on practicing the way of Jesus, right? Like following Jesus looks like this. The Jesus way looks like this, the kingdom of God is like [laughs]... And so your training and discipleship focuses on trying to exercise that muscle. That you, how you wanna behave in the world. You just talked a little bit about that, rather than just saying the doctrines about Jesus and what we believe is true. Okay? if you were to make it succinct for people, why do you do that? Who helped you get to that point?Mark Scandrette: You know, I came up in a faith tradition that emphasized having the right beliefs and doctrine. And I was a good student of my tradition, as a young person I was reading the Bible one to three hours a day, memorizedSy Hoekstra: Okay.Mark Scandrette: …chapters and books of the scriptures, sang worship songs for an hour or two a day. Went to church every time it was open, handed out tracks to my friends at school. I don't know if that is a thing anymore, but it was in the eighties [laughs]. But carried a bible with me wherever I went. And having a head full of scripture did not magically make me into a well-formed person. And so I came to a point of frustration where I was like, there's just a tremendous gap between how I know I'm being called to live and how I actually live, there's been a missing element here. And I think it's the missing element is a commitment to practice and to really considering how do I, not just what is the right thing for a Christian to do, but how do I learn to do that right thing?What are the belief structures that need to change? What do I need to be honest about where the gaps are? What practices? And so we created something that back in the early two thousands, a program to try and approximate learning to have that student apprentice to rabbi relationship with Jesus. And the earliest disciples took him that his social place was as rabbi, and he was teaching them how to live his way of life. Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. Learn from me. And so we called it the Jesus Dojo. I know that's a little bit of cultural appropriation. I don't use that term anymore, but it got to the point that to be a Christian in the way of Jesus looks more like being in a karate studio than in a college lecture hall.And I'd spent so many years in the college lecture hall of my faith getting a head full of information, but had not been in a gym or studio where I could work it out. And so I just found that when I'd gather groups of people and we'd say, how do we learn to not judge? Who are the Matthew 25 hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, and lonely in our neighborhood? How would we care for the least of these? Let's meet them, let's share food. As we got active in trying to practice the Jesus way, that's when my heart and life really came alive, and it was so deeply transforming to me.Western Culture, All along the Political Spectrum, Privileges Words and Thoughts Over ActionsAnd I'll just also make this point that I think that this is not just symptomatic of people who identify as Christians, but I would say it's all Western culture, is our inheritance is that Greek Hellenistic way, trying to be objective and thinking that in our minds we can get the right picture together of life, and that words and thought is the whole game.And so I would say across the whole continuum, from conservative to progressive, there's a lot of rhetoric around words, and Jesus invites us into embodied practice. So some people, when they make the, if they've grown up conservative and Christian, and they're making a shift to let's say a more progressive way of being Christian, it's still just words. They just have different [laughs] slogans now.Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.Mark Scandrette: But you haven't changed the game. You haven't gotten up into the real thing yet. And the real thing is embodied love in practice. So there's a curious phenomenon where some people live better than their ideas. I would say I have family members like this. I don't like what comes out of their mouth about certain groups of people. I don't like the literature I see in their house. I have concerns about it, and I'm afraid of how they vote. But man, they live and love well. They live better than their ideas. And then I think some of us, maybe I'd include myself in this, I don't live as good as my ideas [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yeah. I agree with you.Mark Scandrette: And so, I think to people both on the… if you, I don't like these binaries, but across the continuum of right to left, we're all being invited by Jesus to live our values, to live love rather than just spouting rhetoric.Sy Hoekstra: Amen.Jonathan Walton: And who is one person that you're like, if you all hear someone talk about this, who's your person? Who are the folks that have helped you imbibe that reality?Mark Scandrette: Oh well, I think Dallas Willard to some extent was an early influence in that way, I think. I think Richard Rohr saying the best critique of what is, is to live a better story, has inspired me in that way. And to not…Maturity Is Moving Past Deconstruction to Synthesizing What Is Good from All Your ExperiencesI think the tendency when you feel like you're moving out of one community is to disconnect from it. You might feel rejection, but I think the mature posture of a Jesus follower would be to say, “I want to transcend and include.” Like I come from this community, I came up with these ideas, I'm moving beyond them. And maybe the first, let's say in a process of rethinking or deconstruction, it's very easy to disregard everything from your past, and to embrace the new.The more healthy approach would be to value whatever was good. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Value what was good, and then add to it more nuances in your understanding of reality, and not do this in a binary sort of way. It's hard to do that, it takes time. And maybe there's early stages where you have, it's like maybe even psychologically necessary to reject and renounce and disassociate, but eventually a Christlike maturity would be, I try to stay engaged. I don't create walls and boundaries.Jonathan Walton: Amen. Amen to all that.Interview Outro, and Where You Can Find Mark OnlineSy Hoekstra: Amen to all that. Mark Scandrette, this has been wonderful. We probably should've had you on the show earlier, but thank you so much for coming on [laughter]. We really, really appreciate you taking the time.Mark Scandrette: Yes. Yeah. I love what you guys do. I appreciate the way you show up in the world.Sy Hoekstra: Thank you so much.[the intro piano music from “Citizens” by Jon Guerra plays briefly and then fades out.]Jonathan Walton: You can find Mark's work at Markscandrette.com and his organization at Reimagine.org. Lots of the content he talked about in this interview come from his most recent book, The Ninefold Path of Jesus. We'll have links to all of that in the show notes.Jonathan and Sy's Thoughts After the InterviewWe Can't Control When White People Respond Well to New Information, but the Spirit Is Always WorkingSy Hoekstra: All right Jonathan. After that interview, what are you thinking about?Jonathan Walton: [laughs] Well, I think the thing that both encourages me and frustrates me is that I can't control how and when, and exactly what happens when folks encounter deep suffering and then are transformed or not. Like his sharing of like, okay, I'm a White guy, middle upper class, living in the suburbs in San Francisco, and all of a sudden, boom, police brutality is at his doorstep. Fifteen people are killed by the police, and all of a sudden the statistics he may have heard, or in the 1990s with Rodney King, prior to that, growing up in the sixties and seventies and eighties, like, there's these things coming up over and over again, but they didn't impact him.But now, boom, it's in his neighborhood and now he's impacted. And then he makes radical, quote- unquote, radical choices in response to that. And it changed his life, it changed his ministry, it changed his leadership, changes his family. Like generations of his family are different because of how he chose to respond to the incidents in his neighborhood. I just wish I could control that for every White person that I know [laughter]. You know? But I can't. I can't. So I take deep joy and I love Mark. He's one of my favorite people, and I just wish that more people went on that journey. I just wish it was as simple as, oh, just put people in proximity to one another and their lives would change and they'll become empathetic and transformative leaders. But that isn't the case, you know? And so I think taking that to Jesus is what I'll do because I know that he is the power and the gospel is the power of transformation. I just wish it was my persuasion or oratory skills from lots of leaders, but it's not. And talking with him reminds me of the work that I must do, because who knows what God will do when these seeds are planted? At the same time, man, I just wish it was easier to control the bearing of good fruit for the seeds that are planted.Sy Hoekstra: Okay, but so question, you said at the beginning, the first thing you said at the beginning of all that was that everything you just said is both frustrating and encouraging to you. I understand why it's frustrating. Why did you say encouraging?Jonathan Walton: It's encouraging because if it was just me or just leaders then we're confined to space and time, but it's the Holy Spirit, so he can literally do it whenever he wants.Sy Hoekstra: Oh, I see.Jonathan Walton: He can have people all the time. Like God is sovereign, omnipresent, omniscient, can just be dropping stuff all over the world, and people are being ignited and lit up all the time. It's not just one organization or all those different things. And so as Tisch Warren would say, there's this mystery between what God is doing, what we are doing. And somehow that marriage of obedience and faithfulness creates an amazing transformation that we get to be a part of. And so I'm encouraged because God is at work. I'm discouraged because I wish what he did worked all the time. So, yeah. What about you? That was a lot. So tell us what you're thinking.How Listening Skills, Curiosity, and Proximity to Diversity Helps Us See Through False Media NarrativesSy Hoekstra: I'm thinking along kind of similar lines, or at least the same story of him kind of moving to the mission and having his perspective changed. But it's kind of how it affects the, how we engage with media in a certain way. But before I get to that, actually real quick, you mentioned that he's just a nice guy and one of your favorite people, I don't think I ever told you this. When we finished recording with Mark, you had to go. You had some scheduled thing, you had to leave. And then Mark and I just sat there and talked for like 45 minutes.Jonathan Walton: [laughter] That's awesome.Sy Hoekstra: Because he has this incredible… and he did not say, “I have time, let's hang out, Sy, let's catch up,” whatever. He's just one of those people who starts asking questions, and he does it in a way where he's like, “I'm fully engaged, I want to hear your answer. It's important to me, and I've got all the time in the world.” You can just tell that from his tone, and that's a really cool thing that not a lot of people are good at, and he's very good at it [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yes. Yes, absolutely. He's genuinely interested in what you are saying.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, for real. And has been ever since I met him when I was like 19 and probably didn't really have anything interesting to say [laughter].Okay, but getting back to him going to the mission, right? So he goes into the mission, he gets proximate to people who are very different than him. He exercises listening, he exercises curiosity. And that's how he finds his way past the media narrative about the marches in his neighborhood, right? Because he's got these, I can't remember if he said weekly or monthly. Oh, no. It was annual on the anniversary of the kid from their neighborhood who the police killed. They were doing these marches.And he said it was mostly like older folks from the community, largely Catholic praying as they marched. And at the very end, there's these Antifa or whoever they are, guys show up and start breaking stuff, and there's like a handful of them and they're just being difficult. And that's always on Fox News, is the anarchists. Right?Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: And it's so easy to get the completely wrong picture of people who are different and far away from you, that we need to get good at exercising the skills that he was sort of demonstrating, or at least that he demonstrated through the stories that he was telling about how his transformation happened.Jonathan Walton: Absolutely.Sy Hoekstra: And that's really hard. There are so many people… I have a similar story to him where it was like I was just displaced from a lot of super White spaces that I was in and happened to randomly end up close to people who are really different than me in college and beyond. So there's a lot of people like that for where it just, you have some point of contact that's, you don't necessarily seek out, it just happens to you. And then like you said, people's responses are just so different. But if you wanna get to know people well, you have to be able to discern through those media narratives in a way that is really hard if you're not there.And I think a good example of that is all of the crime narratives that have been going on recently, not just because of the election, but have been going on for years now, that Trump is made into such a big deal for his whole political career. Is this idea that just basically if you live in the city, you're just, I don't know, you're just dodging bullets wherever you go [laughter]. You're just like, crime is up all the time, it's never gone down, whatever. And all the statistics are actually showing in general, crime going down, way down in 2023 actually, like murder and some other crimes have gone way down. If you looked at a graph of the crime in New York City from like 1990 until today, it would be comical to say that crime is up in New York City. It is so, so far down than it was when I was a kid coming into the city for Yankee games or whatever [laughs].And people just, I don't know, you and I had both had the experience of people who used to live in New York City years ago coming back to visit us and being like, “Is it safe to walk through your neighborhood? Are we gonna be okay?” And we're just like, “Yes. It has not changed. Nothing has changed. I'm walking down the street with my toddler on my back in a carrier every day and we are fine.” But you wouldn't know that if you just watched the media. And so I think take some lessons in discernment from Mark, I think is what I'm saying [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Absolutely.Which Tab Is Still Open?: Patriarchy and Palestinian MenSy Hoekstra: So we're going into Which Tab Is Still open?, our segment where we dive a little bit deeper into one of the recommendations that we posted recently in our newsletter that you can get totally for free at ktfpress.com if you wanna go there and do that. Jonathan, this one was your resource. So why don't you tell the people about it?Jonathan Walton: Yeah, absolutely. The essay that I put in a newsletter a couple weeks ago is called “For Palestinian Fathers, Sons, and Brothers.” And I read it on Father's Day. It's by the bestselling author Frederick Joseph. It's about patriarchy and Palestinian men. That is the overarching container, but it goes so deep. And so Joseph argues that patriarchal power men receive from society is a devil's bargain because it robs men of humanity by making us people whose value comes from fitting a certain mold of being physically threatening, socially and sexually dominant, and emotionally unavailable. Like just a stoic figure. If you aren't those things, you don't get power and you aren't fully human.And then he talks about the various disparities in the ways that the media discusses Palestinian men. And we always talk about, we see this on Instagram. We see this particularly on the major, quote- unquote, major news outlets already, where it's the number of women and children are killed by Israel are propped up as though the number of men are less consequential or inconsequential. Because men who are victims are always put under the guise of terrorists, or they must be doing something evil, they're different, they are subhuman. And I think that is exacerbated even more when we talk about the level of sexual violence that's perpetuated against Palestinian men, while the many stories about Israeli soldiers or prison guards violating them just gets less airtime.When I encourage you, it is difficult, but to please go and read the New York Times' interviews of Palestinian male detainees. There's a long CNN article that also exposes just the terrible things that are happening to these men that are detained. And so this he argues, and I absolutely agree, that this is a pattern of dehumanization of what was largely like Muslim and Arab men coming out of 9/11, but especially true of just a campaign perpetuated by the West and Israel to dehumanize Palestinian men, specifically around the idea of occupation and giving Israel and the superpower allies just an excuse for their atrocities.One civil rights leader said the first step towards committing violence against someone is their dehumanization. And we've seen that pattern start from the beginning of occupation before the Nakba started up through till now. And so, understanding these men as fathers, and sons and brothers, and humans who value their lives and relationships and have deep grief and suffering due to war, can move us towards liberation.Mourning with Those Who Mourn Helps Us See the Humanity of Other PeopleI think Jesus's invitation command for us to mourn with those who mourn is a door for rehumanizing Palestinian men. It's a door for rehumanizing ourselves because we were actually made to be in relationships with one another, and our liberation is bound up in the liberation of all people.So when I'm celebrating Father's Day, I can hold the beauty that comes with that, but I can also resist the reality that I do not have to dehumanize other dads to make myself more of a Father. I don't. I don't need to do that. And so the pictures of men from all different backgrounds holding their kids in deep, deep, deep, deep suffering is something that I had to engage with. And this essay was a door to that, because the reality is they are men just like me. They're human just like me. I am no more or no less human than them. And God has made all of us in his image. And pushing back against narratives of dehumanization is a way to reflect that theology and make it more than just a thought, but turn it into a feeling and a practice. So yeah. Sy, what'd you think?Sy Hoekstra: [laughs] You just did a lot of really deep stuff and then you just ended it with, “So, yeah. [laughter]. This is how Jonathan and I talk, we get way too casual about very important things [laughter]. All that is so true and so good.Men Need to Understand How Patriarchy Hurts Them to Sustain the Fight Against ItSy Hoekstra: And I think another layer of why this essay is important to me is he's doing some really important psychological work that can feel awkward for men to do when it comes to talking about the patriarchy, because here's the background. I've been listening, I mentioned last episode I've been listening to Scott Hall, who's one of our previous guests from season three, and Erna Kim Hackett. I've been in a cohort with them from, with Erna's organization, Liberated Together, fantastic organization if you wanna go check it out.And one of the main points that they've made about Whiteness and White people doing racial justice work, and I'll connect this to patriarchy in a second, is that if you want to sustain motivation over the long term to do racial justice work as a White person, you can't be in it for altruistic purposes. Like you just can't. Because people, if you are there to help other people and not yourself, then at some point you are going to burn out, or you're going to demand that you be respected or rewarded or lauded in some way that makes you a bad ally. Right? You're going to burnout or be unhelpful, is what it comes down to because you're not doing what you just said, Jonathan, understanding that everyone's liberation is tied up together.So you have to say that White supremacy actually harms me as a White person and figure out how that happens, and then figure out how you as a White person need to heal yourself and participate in racial justice work for that reason. To heal yourself and other White people because basically that motivation will sustain you.It's kind of selfish, or it's kind of self-centered, but that's the reality of how humans work [laughs]. You need a personal motivation a lot of times to, or most of the time to do anything over a long stretch of time. The same thing is true of patriarchy. It's men need to understand how patriarchy harms us. And the reason it's awkward to talk about that is for two reasons at least. One is you can go too far with that and you can end up being like a men's rights activist, right? [laughter] Or like somebody who's just complaining about how men are victims and how women get unfairly treated, get stuff they don't deserve ahead of me or whatever. Go on that dangerous road. But the other reason it's awkward is when you think about patriarchy, obviously the first thing you go to is the way that it harms women.And you don't want to, you might not want to be caught complaining about how it harms you, because the harm on other people is so much worse. And the answer to that is, yes, it's worse. Fine, that's true. But the fact that somebody else got hurt worse than you doesn't mean that you didn't get hurt. Right?Jonathan Walton: Yes. Absolutely.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. If I break an arm and you, Jonathan, break two arms and a leg, that doesn't mean I don't have to go to the doctor [laughs], right?Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: I gotta go to the doctor. And so what Joseph is doing is just some really good thinking, deep thinking, about how patriarchy hurts himself. He talks about himself as a Black man and how it hurts him, just like you did. And he talks about the Palestinian men and really digging into this so that you can feel the grief and then subsequently process those emotions and then be able to do the work afterwards that you need to do to fight patriarchy to help everyone. Help everyone get out of the snare that it is. That was a lot of talking. Jonathan, any thoughts?Jonathan Walton: Well, yeah. I mean, I'll just lean into, try not to go even more down a rabbit hole, but I agree with everything that you said. And it's like you've talked about this before with like just hierarchies of dominance and power. It's a very different thing if a woman or someone from the a non-binary person says I'm gonna resist patriarchy. Patriarchy doesn't necessarily end because the folks downstream of it decide to stop. Patriarchy ends when men refuse to participate in the system. When the master walks off the plantation, that's when the plantation stops. And so we actually need men to say, “I'm going to opt out of this system of oppression because I can see that the first person it dehumanizes is me.” Because I am not a person anymore as soon as I decide to put myself on top of somebody else. That's not how God made us.We were made for relationships with one another. We weren't made to dominate and rule over each other. And so, something that I wanna push back against too is like a soft acceptable misogyny, where it's like we just walk around with assumptions about women and assumptions about non-binary people. I think what Frederick Joseph is doing is like when he pushes back against these narratives, I think our response should be just like Mark had when he was first encountering these things, is radical interrogation. To say, “Where am I being complicit? And let me stop that.” And repentance is part of that. We say, I'm doing this thing, I'm gonna turn from that and do these set of things instead.We need to make that as practical and as clear as possible as we can so that we can move towards freedom, not just by ourselves, but as we already talked about, like our liberation is bound up together. So the men and the folks downstream of me don't have to participate either. So, yeah, great job Frederick Joseph. Amazing essay. Thank you so much.Sy Hoekstra: Great job [laughs]. He needs our validation, not multiple New York Times bestseller awards or anything, yeah.Jonathan Walton: Awards and thousands of followers and all that. I hope my encouragement means something to you [laughter].Outro and OuttakeSy Hoekstra: All right, cool. Well, we will end it there. This was a great episode. Thank you so much Jonathan, for being here as always. Thank you all for listening, we will see you in two weeks. Our theme song as Always is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra. Our podcast art is by Robyn Burgess. Our editing is by Multitude Productions who just started doing the editing for us. We are so grateful to them. Transcripts by Joyce Ambale, and we will see you all in two weeks. Thank you so much for listening, goodbye.Jonathan Walton: Bye-Bye.[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 welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]Jonathan Walton: Welcome to Shake the Dust, seeking Jesus, confronting injustice. I'm Jonathan Walton.Sy Hoekstra: And I am Sy Hoekstra. We have a fantastic show for you today. First, we are going to be continuing our—I... didn't turn off my air conditioner. Be right back [laughs]. 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
Season four starts next week! Hear Jonathan and Sy talk about:- What to expect this year from the show during this election cycle- A reintroduction to everything KTF does, and why we do it- How we really, genuinely need your support right now, and ways you can helpCredits- Follow KTF Press on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Subscribe to get our newsletter and bonus episodes 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.- Production, editing, and transcript by Sy Hoekstra.TranscriptWhat's Coming in Season Four[An acoustic guitar softly plays six notes, the first three ascending and the last three descending — F#, B, F#, E, D#, B — with a keyboard pad playing the note B in the background. Both fade out as Jonathan Walton says “This is a KTF Press podcast.” After a brief pause, the intro piano music from “Citizens” by Jon Guerra plays briefly and then fades out.]Sy Hoekstra: Welcome to Shake the Dust, seeking Jesus, confronting injustice! I'm Sy HoekstraJonathan Walton: And I'm Jonathan Walton. Welcome to season 4!Sy Hoekstra: We are so excited to have you here. We're going to be doing something very special for this season during this presidential election cycleJonathan Walton: Yes, we're going back to our roots. The first thing we did with the company that makes this podcast, KTF Press, was publish an anthology in 2020 called Keeping the Faith. It had 36 authors writing political theology and personal stories to explain their opposition to Christian support for Donald Trump.Sy Hoekstra: We called it an anthology of dissent, a record of resistance toward the church's political witness in America. And our guests this season are going to be authors from that book, talking about what they wrote and how they're thinking about their faith and the political landscape now.Jonathan Walton: You've heard some of the writers from the book on this show before, like Dani Espiritu, Scott Hall, and Wissam Al-Saliby. And we're excited to bring you Dr. Randy Woodley, Brandi Miller, Mark Scandrette, Rasool Berry, and many more this season. The first episode is dropping this upcoming Friday, May 24, with Dr. Woodley.Sy Hoekstra: We've recorded some of these already, and we're really excited to get them to you in the coming months.What We Do at KTF, and WhySy Hoekstra: But before we jump into this season, we want to give you all a bit of a refresher on what exactly it is we do at KTF Press and why we do it. And the reason that we want to tell you all that is because we really need your support right now.Jonathan Walton: That's right. We do everything that we do to help people seek Jesus, confront injustice, and resist the idols of the American church that got us to the religious and political mess we're in right now. This show is all about hearing personal stories and informed discussions to help you do just that.Sy Hoekstra: And our weekly newsletter is where we curate media to help you in your discipleship and learning about politics and policy. You get commentary from us on issues important to our national discourse, and we also give you something each week to help you stay grounded and hopeful. Plus, you get news about what's going on with us at KTF, previews of this show, and a whole lot more.Jonathan Walton: We also write articles on similar subjects for our website, we have the anthology, and Tamice Spencer-Helms' incredible memoir we published last year, Faith Unleavened, about how White Jesus nearly destroyed her faith, and how she left him behind to find her way to liberation and the real Jesus.Sy Hoekstra: And we do all this with a couple things in mind. First, we always pay the most attention to marginalized voices, the people who our society oppresses and pushes to the side. We had a whole discussion on this in our very first episode, so if you want to learn more, you can always listen to that. But simply put, The opinions of people who a society favors get the most airtime, but people who a society harms and ignores actually have the clearest insight about the character of that society. And so if you want to understand the world around you better, you have to talk to marginalized people. Plus, God's ministry throughout the Bible is primarily directed toward the poor and oppressed, and his disciples primarily come from them. So you just have to train yourself to learn from people whose perspectives come from that angle on the world if you want to follow Jesus.Jonathan Walton: Another value of ours is trying to be both kind and humane toward people we disagree with, while remaining uncompromising about our own views. We believe, despite all the evidence on the internet to the contrary, that this is in fact possible [Sy chuckles]. But it requires a lot of intentional growth in the area of emotional health, so we talk a lot about that too.Sy Hoekstra: The good thing is, we've been practicing all this for a long time. We have been friends for 18 years now, talking and learning about these subjects together, and having our own sometimes very strong disagreements. We have had to learn how to talk across lines of difference with each other in real time as friends and followers of Jesus. Fortunately, we have been able to do that in communities with friends and mentors who are doing the same thing. On top of that, Jonathan has been doing justice ministry for well over a decade, and my career before this was in law and advocacy, and we want to just share all of this experience with you.We Need Your Support to Keep KTF RunningJonathan Walton: So, if all that sounds like something you can get behind, here is our ask of you. We need you to go to KTFPress.com and become a paid subscriber to our Substack. We have to get more subscribers if we're going to keep this going. So, if you can afford it, please subscribe. If you can't, just write to us at info@ktfpress.com and we'll give you a free or discounted subscription, whatever you want, no questions asked. Because we want as many people as possible to have access. But if you can, please go to KTFPress.com and sign up. On top of supporting what we do, you get access to all our many bonus episodes, and coming soon, monthly subscriber chats with me and Sy. Also, if you're already a paid subscriber, consider upgrading to our founding member tier, which will immediately get you a free book.Sy Hoekstra: We've been doing all this podcasting and writing and book publishing as a side project for a while now, and we have some incredible subscribers supporting what we do. And they are covering the costs of what it takes to produce this show, to keep the websites running, and pay a bunch of our regular business expenses. We actually would not be here without them. But we've kept those expenses very low. I don't know if you know, but we're not recording this from KTF Press Studios, right next door to NPR. This company is two people with some basic sound equipment that our subscribers paid for, and our laptops. We occasionally get help from other people with laptops. We work in whatever room is available in our homes that are full of other people. At least once, that room was my closet.Jonathan Walton: [laughs]The point is this might sometimes sound like an established operation, but it's a little scrappier than you think. And I think you would agree work like this should not be a side project.Sy Hoekstra: To be fully transparent, I cannot afford to keep doing this as a side project. Jonathan does this work around his full-time job, but if I'm going to keep putting as much time into this as I do, which is a lot, I'm going to have to stop working for free.Jonathan Walton: So here's what we're doing. We're leveling up our branding and designs. You may have seen that on our website and in our emails. We'll also be doing some advertising, and of course continuing to put our best work here. But we need you to do your part!Sy Hoekstra: Jonathan, how many paid subscribers do we have right now?Jonathan about 120.Sy Hoekstra: And how many do we want to have by the end of this year?Jonathan Walton: One thousand! [laughs]Sy Hoekstra: So we have just a few more to go. Please, please go to KTFPress.com and sign up. Don't wait.Jonathan Walton: And there are a few free things you can do apart from subscribing. That newsletter we mentioned is free, so sign up for our free mailing list if you can't become a paid subscriber, and forward that thing so many times. That's also at KTFPress.comSy Hoekstra: You can also give this show a five-star review on Apple or Spotify, and say something nice about us in a review if you're on Apple Podcasts. You can also like our Facebook page and follow us on Instagram and Threads. But to reiterate, the most important thing we need you to do is go to KTFPress.com and become a paid subscriber. By the way, cool new trick. If you're listening to this on Spotify, just go back to the bonus episode right before this one in the feed, click the button to unlock that episode, and it will take you right where you need to go to Subscribe.Outro and OuttakeJonathan Walton: Alright everyone, thank you so much for listening. Once again, we're starting season 4 this upcoming Friday, May 24, with Dr. Randy Woodley. We will see you then![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: Okay, [singing a made-up tune] let me hit the button to stop this recording.Jonathan Walton: [commanding, in an English accent] Cease recording. Immediately.Sy Hoekstra: [with fake dramatic anger] Cease it now! 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 final episode of Emerged, we combed through 70+ hours of interviews with dozens to look back on the movement and assess its successes, its failures, and its legacy. We talk about the central aspect of the ECM — friendship — and we listen in as two churches die. And finally, we say our goodbyes. Voices include Mark Scandrette, Doug Pagitt, Brian McLaren, Jason Mitchell, Danielle Shroyer, Lilly Lewin, Rudy Carrasco, Jonny Baker, Tim Keel, Tim Conder, Morgan McKenna, Brad Cecil, Brad Smith, Jay Bakker, Barry Taylor, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Gerardo Marti, Mike Clawson, Mike Stavlund, Diana Butler Bass, and Anthony Smith. ______________ Emerged is a crowdfunded project. If you join, you'll have access to extra material, ad-free episodes, private livestreams with the hosts and guests, and an array of gifts at various levels of partnership. Learn more and join at EmergedPodcast.com. Our Producers: Karen Sloan - karensloan.net The Open Table Network - https://opentable.network/ Brad Cecil Chris Estus Music by The Cobalt Season (compliments of Ryan Sharp), Solomon's Porch (compliments of Ben Johnson) Order Tony's Book "The God of Wild Places: https://reverendhunter.com/books Get Tickets to Theology Beer Camp here: theologybeer.camp **Use code: EMERGEHOBBIT for $25 off at check out*** Produced by Josh Gilbert: joshgilbertmedia.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
By 2001, a lot had changed for the nascent emerging church movement: Doug Pagitt left Leadership Network to start a church, and shortly thereafter, Leadership Network shut down the Young Leaders Network. (Also, a notorious pastor in Seattle was asked to leave the group.) The “Group of 20” became the “Terra Nova Project,” before ultimately settling on the name, Emergent Village. Ecclesia Church in Houston hosted a conference on the Bible in postmodern society – it was a success, and the momentum increased. Then came book deals and the Emergent Convention, so that by 2005, the movement was at its peak. Guests in this episode include Dwight Friesen, Doug Pagitt, Brian McLaren, Brad Smith, Lilly Lewin, Mark Scandrette, Chris Seay, Michael Toy, and Mark Oestreicher. Music by The Cobalt Season (compliments of Ryan Sharp), Solomon's Porch (compliments of Ben Johnson), Ecclesia and The Voice Bible thanks to Chris Seay. Emerged is a crowdfunded project. If you join, you'll have access to extra material, ad-free episodes, private livestreams with the hosts and guests, and an array of gifts at various levels of partnership. Learn more and join at EmergedPodcast.com. Our Producers: Karen Sloan - karensloan.net The Open Table Network - https://opentable.network/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
As we kick off 2024, Mark Scandrette offers up profound wisdom from the nine sayings of Jesus from the Beatitudes. It's what Mark writes about in his latest book, The Ninefofd Path of Jesus. This episode is an invitation to the postures that the beatitudes provide us personally but also how to communicate these from pulpit. Mark unpacks his preaching methodology, how he arranges a sermon to be practice focused to help the congregation try on the concept. EPISODE LINKS Mark's book: The Ninefold Path of Jesus Website: www.markscandrette.com The Ninefold Path website: https://ninefoldpath.org/ IG: @scandrette @steveryancarter @craft_character Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mark Scandrette has spent a week talking to different ministries in Grainery Church and finally brings one last amazing message before he heads back to San Fransico, USA based around Practicing the Way of Jesus and focuses on the beatitudes in Matthew 5
Life, Culture and Current Events from a Biblical perspective.Help Vision to keep 'Connecting Faith to Life': https://vision.org.au/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Microchurches! Today we are continuing in our series by hearing from Mark Scandrette, founding director of ReIMAGINE: A Center for Integral Christian Practice, where he leads an annual series of retreats, workshops and projects designed to help participants apply spiritual wisdom to everyday life.In this episode, we'll discuss the value of not only studying the life of Jesus and His ministry as we consider our missional communities, but also letting Him teach us how to model our very lives after His way. One way this can be done is through experiments and practices that challenge the ways of the world and lead us into deeper connection with Jesus and those around us. Resources mentioned: Practicing the Way of Jesus, Soul Graffiti, Free, Belonging and Becoming, and The Ninefold Path of Jesus by Mark Scandrette
On this month's episode of Deeper and Wider we are talking all things beatitudes with internationally recognized specialist in practical Christian spirituality, Mark Scandrette. Mark is the founding director the ReIMAGINE Center for Living Wisdom, where he leads an annual series of retreats, workshops and projects designed to help participants apply spiritual wisdom to everyday life. His multidisciplinary studies in applied psychology, family health and theology have shaped his approach to learning and transformation. A sought after voice for creative, radical and embodied faith practices, he frequently speaks at universities, churches and conferences nationally and internationally and also serves as adjunct faculty in the doctoral program at Fuller Theological Seminary. His most recent books include The Ninefold Path of Jesus (which, by the way, is THE book on the beatitudes), also three other book including FREE, Practicing the Way of Jesus, and Belonging and Becoming: Creating A Thriving Family Culture. Mark lives with his wife Lisa and their three young adult children in an old Victorian in San Francisco's Mission District. He loves walking city streets and discovering beauty in unexpected places. He is passionately engaged in sustainability practices and efforts to create safe neighborhoods for all people. To find out more about the workshops that we spoke about today in the episode, head over to head on over to reimagine.org, go to the learning labs tab, and register your interest to be part of that. To learn more on Mark himself, he can be found at his website www.markscandrette.com.
Mark Scandrette is an internationally recognized expert in practical Christian spirituality, and the founding director of ReIMAGINE: A center for integral Christian practice. He is the author of a number of books including, Practicing the way of Jesus, making him a great guest for this episode where we discuss what The Way of Jesus is and how it differs from contemporary Christianity. Mark also offers some helpful signposts as to how we live in Jesus' way in our everyday lives and encourages us to ask important questions of our own faith journeys and how they do or do not look like the Jesus we claim to follow. If you found this episode helpful please leave a review and share it with your world. If you would like to do further reading around this topic you can visit the Follower Blog and subscribe to receive articles, stories, and more on how we follow Jesus to the depths of His heart and the ends of the earth.
In this episode, Mark Scandrette talks about what it look like to practically live out the teachings of Jesus in our own personal context, within community, and with an outward orientation toward our neighborhood and culture. Mark Scandrette is an internationally recognized specialist in practical Christian spirituality. He is the founding director of ReIMAGINE: A Center for Integral Christian Practice, where he leads an annual series of retreats, workshops and projects designed to help participants apply spiritual wisdom to everyday life. His multidisciplinary studies in applied psychology, family health and theology have shaped his approach to learning and transformation. A sought after voice for creative, radical and embodied faith practices, he frequently speaks at universities, churches and conferences nationally and internationally and also serves as adjunct faculty in the doctoral program at Fuller Theological Seminary. His most recent books include The Ninefold Path of Jesus, FREE, Practicing the Way of Jesus and Belonging and Becoming: Creating A Thriving Family Culture. Mark lives with his wife Lisa and their three young adult children in an old Victorian in San Francisco's Mission District. He loves walking city streets and discovering beauty in unexpected places. He is passionately engaged in sustainability practices and efforts to create safe neighborhoods for all people. www.markscandrette.comMark's Books:The Ninefold Path of Jesus: Hidden Wisdom of the BeatitudesPracticing the Way of Jesus: Life Together in the Kingdom of LoveMark's Recommendations:Daniel SiegelAnatomy of the Soul by Curt ThompsonConnect 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 at www.facebook.com/shiftingculturepodcastSupport the show
"Like a muscle that can be strengthened, we can train to see with eyes of compassion. I try practicing this when I am walking down the street or am ina crowd. I look into the face of each person and silently whisper, 'Child of God, may you be well.' This interrupts my normal tendency to label and judge."--Mark Scandrette, The Ninefold Path of JesusClick HERE to download my free online course, "Leading Your Church Through Change." Or go to markuswatson.com/leadchange.
Welcome to our podcast for Sunday 22 May 2022. This week we start our new series based on the beatitudes entitled The Ninefold Path of Jesus … or “Ninebeats”. Join us as we hear from the author, theologian Mark Scandrette who will introduce us to the series. This podcast is an excerpt from our online church service that includes music and a tribute to our volunteers. If you wish to view the full service, we invite you to follow the link below. https://youtu.be/gC-8O9zvZCo This series has a focus on not just hearing the words of Jesus but putting them into practice, being part of a study group is really vital part of the process. If you would you like to sign up to a group, or connect with our online (zoom) group on Wednesday evenings you can do so by following the link below. https://goodlifebuderim.elvanto.com.au/form/c8cce1eb-18e2-413a-90be-cdd9898cfeaf For more information and to keep up with all that's happening at Goodlife visit our website! https://www.goodlife.org.au/ If you would like prayer or need care, we want to help! Visit https://www.goodlife.org.au/care or email prayer@goodlife.org.au to reach out. If you would like to participate in giving to the work of Goodlife, please visit our website to find out how. https://www.goodlife.org.au/giving
If you're interested in learning more about keeping the Sabbath, check out books, such as MaryAnn's Sabbath in the Suburbs: A Family's Experiment with Holy Time, Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal and Delight in Our Busy Lives by Wayne Muller, and The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time by Judith Shulevitz.You might be interested in other ChurchNext classes on similar topics. Try: Handling the Work/Life Balance with David Gray; Living a Spiritual Life with Mary Gray-Reeves; How to Discern God's Will with Ruth Haley Barton; How to Forgive with Virginia Holeman, and How to Simplify Your Life with Mark Scandrette.We close with a reading from Night Prayer from the New Zealand Prayer Book.Lord,it is night.The night is for stillness.Let us be still in the presence of God.It is night after a long day.What has been done has been done;what has not been done has not been done;let it be.The night is dark.Let our fears of the darkness of the world and of our own livesrest in you.The night is quiet.Let the quietness of your peace enfold us,all dear to us,and all who have no peace.The night heralds the dawn.Let us look expectantly to a new day,new joys,new possibilities.in your name we pray.Amen.Lord it is night: Lord It Is Night is a beautiful 'close of the day' chant. The text is drawn from the New Zealand Book of Common Prayer and the musical setting was written by Ginny Wilder. Fran McKendree (vocal and guitar) joined here by Joanna Hyde (violin and vocal).https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2011-12/remember-sabbath Letting God Run Things without my help by Barbara Brown Taylor - Christian Century
Today, I'm sharing a conversation I had a while back with Mark Scandrette about his book, The Ninefold Path of Jesus. In it, he shares his experience of seeking to live more deeply and faithfully into the nine beatitudes that begin what some call Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. In his book, Mark shares a beautiful vision of what it might look like if we practiced the beatitudes as a way of following Jesus more closely and faithfully. I love how Mark casts a vision for the kind of life Jesus considers blessed. So often, the culture around us suggests that the good life is in achieving more, or acquiring more, or impressing more people. But Jesus seems to say that a life of abundant goodness is found somehow in being more like him. He lived an abundant life. His way of treating people was remarkable. He was full of love, of joy, of peace, of all the things we seek. It's good when we let Jesus define what a good life for us would be like. We invite you to connect with Mark on social media on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter.
Mark Scandrette is an internationally recognized expert in practical spiritual formation. He is the founding director of ReIMAGINE: A Center for Integral Christian Practice, where he leads an annual series of retreats, workshops and projects designed to help participants apply spiritual wisdom to everyday life. His multidisciplinary studies in applied psychology, family health and theology have shaped his approach to learning and transformation. He is on the creative team for the 9 Beats Collective, a project exploring the beatitudes as a 21st vocabulary for the living way of Jesus. A sought after voice for creative, radical and embodied faith practices, he frequently speaks at universities, churches and conferences nationally and internationally and also serves as adjunct faculty in the doctoral program at Fuller Theological Seminary. His most recent books include The Ninefold Path of Jesus, FREE, Practicing the Way of Jesus and Belonging and Becoming: Creating A Thriving Family Culture. Mark lives with his wife Lisa and their three young adult children in an old Victorian in San Francisco's Mission District. He loves walking city streets and discovering beauty in unexpected places. He is passionately engaged in sustainability practices and efforts to create safe neighborhoods for all people. www.markscandrette.com
"Makarios is the Greek word Jesus uses, which means something like incredibly fortunate, favored or godlike. It's a term we might use to describe the most privileged and admired star athlete, celebrity or billionaire."--Mark Scandrette, The Ninefold Path of JesusClick HERE to download my free online course, "Leading Your Church Through Change." Or go to markuswatson.com/leadchange.
We are beginning this year walking through the five key values of The Practice Church. This week, Mark Scandrette invited us to consider the invitation to be formed by Jesus, and see our time in church as a "Jesus dojo." You can find a simple guide to our practice today here. A tax-deductible gift can be given to The Practice Church here. If you are committed to being a part of the local community that is The Practice Church, would you take a moment to join the Plant Team?
Mark Scandrette makes a return visit to Faith Conversations where we focus on Jesus' words in the Beatitudes. Scandrette calls it The Ninefold Path of Jesus: Hidden Wisdom of the Beatitudes. We all know many are currently living in fear. Scandrette posits that the Beatitudes invite us into nine new... The post Mark Scandrette – episode 305 appeared first on Anita Lustrea.
This Wayfarer Weekend (WW) podcast is my interview with Mark Scandrette, author of The Ninefold Path of Jesus. Find out more about Mark at http://markscandrette.com and http://ninefoldpath.org. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/wayfarer-tom-vander-well/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/wayfarer-tom-vander-well/support
Mark Scandrette joins Aaron to talk about the Beatitudes and how Christ's words lead us back into reality. Speaking from his book “The Ninefold Path of Jesus: Hidden Wisdom of the Beatitudes”, Mark invites us into new ways of hearing, and new tangible practices. Compelling and practical.
I absolutely love Mark Scandrette. Not only do I find his invitation to life in the way of Jesus personally compelling in deep ways, but he is a friend, mentor, and the new generation of 'deconstructors' thoughts on the emerging church movement his neighborhood experience of police violence the way the Beatitudes of Jesus invite us to a vision of reality adult confirmation online spiritual formation the 'Great Resignation' pandemic spirituality learning to love the enemies that are close to you karaoke discipleship Mark Scandrette is an internationally recognized expert in practical Christian spirituality. He is the founding director of ReIMAGINE: A Center for Integral Christian Practice, where he leads an annual series of retreats, workshops and projects designed to help participants apply spiritual wisdom to everyday life. His multidisciplinary studies in applied psychology, family health and theology have shaped his approach to learning and transformation. He is on the creative team for NINE BEATS collective, a project exploring the beatitudes as a 21st vocabulary for the living way of Jesus. A sought after voice for creative, radical and embodied faith practices, he frequently speaks at universities, churches and conferences nationally and internationally and also serves as adjunct faculty in the doctoral program at Fuller Theological Seminary. His most recent books include The Ninefold Path of Jesus, FREE, Practicing the Way of Jesus and Belonging and Becoming (with Lisa Scandrette). Follow the podcast, drop a review, or become a member of the HBC Community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
I absolutely love Mark Scandrette. Not only do I find his invitation to life in the way of Jesus personally compelling in deep ways, but he is a friend, mentor, and the new generation of ‘deconstructors’ thoughts on the emerging church movement his neighborhood experience of police violence the way the Beatitudes of Jesus invite… Read more about Mark Scandrette: Religion & Spirituality in the Way of Jesus
Sponsors: The Center for Congregational Health, Baptist Seminary of Kentucky, and McAfee School of Theology's Doctor of Ministry program. Join the listener community at https://www.classy.org/campaign/podcast-listener-support/c251116. Music from HookSounds.com
In a society fixated on anxiety, competition, and comparison Jesus Christ offers another path. He has told his followers that instead of living in constant striving and competition that each of us has equal dignity and worth. It's often assumed that the good life is only for the most wealthy, attractive, and powerful. Poor, sad, and suffering people are left out. But Jesus offers a ninefold path in the Beatitudes that is for everyone. Whatever your story, whatever your struggle, wherever you find yourself, Jesus says that you are blessed in Him. Mark Scandrette's latest book is The Ninefold Path of Jesus: Hidden Wisdom of the Beatitudes (IVP, 2021). In this book, Mark explores the nine sayings in the opening verses of Matthew chapter five, helping readers move beyond their first instincts to instead embrace the deeper reality of the kingdom of God. He invites us into nine new postures for life. Instead of living in fear, we can choose radical love. Mark Scandrette is the founding director of ReIMAGINE: A Center for Integral Christian Practice, where he leads retreats, workshops, and projects that help participants apply spiritual wisdom to everyday life. His multidisciplinary studies in applied psychology, family health, and theology have shaped his approach to learning and transformation. He is on the creative team for NINE BEATS collective, a project exploring the beatitudes as a 21st-century vocabulary for the living way of Jesus. Check out ninefoldpath.org for more information. __ Buy this book from Byron and Beth Borger at Hearts & Minds Bookstore. You can order online through their secure server or call 717-246-333. Mention that you heard about these books on the Reintegrate Podcast and get 20% off! >> Thanks for listening! Your hosts are Brendan Romigh and Dr. Bob Robinson, the Executive Director of Reintegrate. Go to re-integrate.org for the latest articles on reintegrating your callings with God's mission and online resources for further learning. There is a Bible study book that you can use in your small group or individual devotions: Reintegrate Your Vocation with God's Mission by Bob Robinson. On Reintegrate's podcast page, you'll find more episodes and ways to email us to comment on this podcast.
Mark Scandrette is the author of The Ninefold Path Jesus: Hidden Wisdom of the Beatitudes. In this episode, Mark does a fantastic job, not only unpacking what the Beatitudes are all about, but also showing us how living into the reality of the Beatitudes can help us be healthier and more lifegiving leaders.THIS EPISODE'S HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:Mark Scandrette is the executive director of ReImagine: A Center for Integral Christian Practice and the author of The Ninefold Path of Jesus: Hidden Wisdom of the Beatitudes.The Beatitudes suggest that the blessed life can come to the most unlikely people.The Beatitudes are not a new set of rules given to us by Jesus.In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tries to get us to rethink our assumptions about life.Mark Scandrette suggests the Beatitudes name some of our first instincts that take us away from God's reality and presence and then invite us to reengage those realities on a deeper level.When we experience poverty, our first instinct is to grasp. But the Beatitudes invite us to move from closed-handedness to open-handedness.In The Ninefold Path of Jesus, Mark Scandrette offers physical postures for us to take in order to better experience the reality of the Beatitudes with our bodies.Mark Scandrette thinks of the Beatitudes as the psychology of the Kingdom of God.Because of a tendency toward competition and comparison, leaders often have a hard time with the Beatitude that says, “Blessed are the meek.”Mark Scandrette describes the “Ninefold Path Leader Labs” that he leads and how they have helped leaders experience the reality of the Beatitudes.In the “Ninefold Path Leader Labs,” participants are asked, “Who do you tend to label, stereotype, or judge?”Participants are invited to pray for strangers with this prayer: “Child of God, may you be well.”Mark Scandrette shares an incredible story of how the Beatitudes helped him defuse a situation in which a man brandished a gun at a convenience store.RELEVANT RESOURCES AND LINKS:Books mentioned:The Ninefold Path of Jesus, by Mark ScandretteThe Divine Conspiracy, by Dallas WillardWebsites:Markscandrette.comninefoldpath.orgReimagine.orgThe Online Adaptive Capacity Cohort, an 18-month process in which you and your team will learn how to lead adaptively in a changing world and you'll learn how to discern God's unique calling for you and your church. Find out more HERE.When you apply, be sure to mention Spiritual Life and Leadership to receive a $500 scholarship. Click HERE to join the Spiritual Life and Leadership Facebook Group.
Rick, and Dan talk with the author of The NIne Fold Path of Jesus Mark Scandrette. Support the show: https://faithtalk590.com/ministryaudio See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark Scandrette joins us to chat about his new book The Ninefold Path of Jesus: Hidden Wisdom of the Beatitudes, a modern contextualization of Jesus’s beatitudes in Matthew 5. Mark is the executive director of Reimagine: A Center for Integral Christian Practice and has created resources for churches to use his new book in groups. […] The post Mark Scandrette: The Beatitudes For Today appeared first on Gravity Leadership.
Mark Scandrette discusses his new book The Ninefold Path of Jesus. We take a deep dive into spiritual transformation through intentional practices, journaling, and community. If you love mission, spiritual formation, and kingdom ministry, you'll enjoy this conversation! Buy the The Ninefold Path of Jesus: Hidden Wisdom of the Beatitudes (IVP, 2021): https://amzn.to/3jCC9FD Bio: Mark Scandrette is an internationally recognized expert in practical Christian spirituality. He is the founding director of ReIMAGINE: A Center for Integral Christian Practice, where he leads an annual series of retreats, workshops and projects designed to help participants apply spiritual wisdom to everyday life. His multidisciplinary studies in applied psychology, family health and theology have shaped his approach to learning and transformation. He also teaches in the D.Min. program at Fuller Theological Seminary. He and his family live in San Francisco. Other resources by Mark: Practicing the Way of Jesus: Life Together in the Kingdom of Love, https://amzn.to/3AjI6hg Free: Spending Your Time and Money on What Matters Most https://amzn.to/2VCImcp Belonging and Becoming: Creating a Thriving Family Culture (w/ Lisa Scandrette) https://amzn.to/3fFhhfw Soul Graffiti: Making a Life in the Way of Jesus https://amzn.to/3CpykvZ Books Recommended by Mark: Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines https://amzn.to/3fJHREe ------- The Divine Conspiracy https://amzn.to/37qMPkL James Clear, Atomic Habits https://amzn.to/3xwFoD6 Bell Hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom https://amzn.to/2X7MVfm Ken Wilbur No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth https://amzn.to/3jEIrVg Dan Siegel https://amzn.to/3yya3S7 Connecting with Mark: http://www.markscandrette.com/ http://www.reimagine.org/ Twitter: @markscandrette Connect with Brian Russell: Information about Brian's Fall 2021 book Centering Prayer: How Sitting Quietly in God's Presence Can Change Your Life www.centeringprayerbook.com or preorder: https://amzn.to/3pDpN2E Twitter: @briandrussell Instagram: @yourprofessorforlife Coaching for Pastors: www.deepdivespirituality.com Business and Life Coaching: www.drbrianrussellcoaching.com Brian Russell's Book on the Missional Interpretation of Scripture: (Re)Aligning with God: Reading Scripture for Church and World https://amzn.to/3qln258 Links to Amazon are affiliate links. Dr. Russell receives a small payment if you order resources through these links. There is no additional cost to you. Thank you for supporting the podcast through your purchases.
Mark Scandrette is an author, pastor, theologian, and gifted teacher. During this conversation, we talk about his newest book, The Ninefold Path of Jesus: Hidden Wisdom of the Beatitudes. When we read the “blessed are the….” in the Beatitudes it can sometimes feel overwhelming. We ask ourselves how we can do or be all of … Continue reading Episode 104 – Mark Scandrette
In this episode, I am joined by Mark Scandrette- author, teacher, speaker, leader and more. Mark’s work has deeply impacted my formation as a follower of Jesus for more than a decade and I guarantee it can do the same for you. In this episode, we explore some of his work around actually living out […]
What does it look like to follow Jesus on a day to day basis? On this episode I interview Mark Scandrette who has a new book out titled "The Ninefold Path of Jesus: Hidden Wisdom of the Beatitudes." In this conversation we discuss his new book at what the Ninefold Path of Jesus looks like. Check out Mark's new book here!You can find more of Mark's resources at http://www.markscandrette.com
We all know discipleship is important, but do are we really teaching our people to PRACTICE the way of Jesus or just learn about it? This episode with Mark Scandrette will encourage you and challenge the way you think about discipleship, and it might even require some unlearning. You can learn more about Mark's great work at www.reimagine.org and his personal website, www.markscandrette.com Check out his fantastic book, Practicing the Way of Jesus: Life Together in the Kingdom of Love. We HIGHLY recommend it.
Mark Scandrette talks with Nathan Foster about seeing the world the way Jesus did, the hidden wisdom in the Beatitudes, and applying the Sermon on the Mount to everyday life.
Mark Scandrette is an author, teacher and coach for leaders and teams who want to create a better world from the inside out. He is the founding director of ReIMAGINE: A Center for Integral Christian Practice, where he leads an annual series of retreats, workshops and projects designed to help participants apply spiritual wisdom to everyday life. His most recent books include FREE, Practicing the Way of Jesus, Belonging and Becoming and The Ninefold Path Notebook.Mark and I discuss his growing up, spiritual formation, practicing the way of Jesus, and even the future of the church post cover-19 and 2020. This conversation was super helpful and enlightening to me and I feel it will be the same for you also. Below is a link to some of Mark's books that he has written and his website. Books: https://www.amazon.com/Mark-Scandrette/e/B001JSBV2S?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_2&qid=1609208226&sr=8-2 Website: http://www.markscandrette.com
Author, teacher, activist, coach and spiritual director, Mark Scandrette, talks about how the Enneagram can be a helpful tool for self-awareness and growth for leaders.
What do spiritual practices do; what do they not do? Nathan Foster helps us explore the very simple and profound purpose of spiritual practices. For additional resources, check out: The Making of an Ordinary Saint by Nathan Foster https://amzn.to/3i2lg5u Wisdom Chaser by Nathan Foster https://amzn.to/2Vfegbt Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster https://amzn.to/31fCxC9 Practicing the Way of Jesus by Mark Scandrette https://amzn.to/2ZahzSI
A Change Journey In Ideology & Theology w/ Mark Scandrette by The Non-Partisan Evangelical
This podcast is made possible by the NIV Bible and the support of listeners like you. If you like what you hear and want to support the show, visit https://www.patreon.com/BSWthepodcast, and become a Patron today! For as little as a $1 an episode, you can get access to patron-only contents such as the patron-only feed, bloopers, and never before aired clips and conversations. As always, thank you for listening, sharing, and supporting the show. Please send all of your questions, hate mail, and guest suggestions to bswthepodcast@gmail.com. While you're there, don't forget to hit that subscribe button, so you don't miss out on the next episode. Until then, would you kindly pick up your bibles and read them. Other ways to tune in: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7FrIcfAfHHRr9ZkKSR11BQ/featured?app=desktop iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bible-says-what/id1383942979?mt=2 Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/listen#/ps/Iizrha4gh56jgb3s5d2cx6hwejm Follow the show on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/BSWthepodcast/ Where to find today's guest: http://www.markscandrette.com/
Mark Scandrette is an internationally respected teacher, leadership coach, and author of many books including Practicing the Way of Jesus. In this conversation, he and Jill talk about one of the biggest challenges in discipleship – how do we help people actually integrate Jesus' teaching into their daily lifestyles? How do we help bridge the gap between information and transformation?
Mark Scandrette is an author and globally recognized expert on practical spiritual formation. Today, Mark shares the story of his traditional Evangelical upbringing by sincere parents, his multifaceted and many conversions, and pursuing the way of Jesus. Mark has a very grounded approach to following Jesus that speaks loudly. He opens up about wrestling his life in Christ away from “shame and should” into the freedom that Christ offers. These days, he writes and travels to speak around the world while his obvious love for the Lord spills out everywhere. His story shows us what happens when you stay on the journey. If it's possible for him, it's possible for you, too. Listen to Mark's story now! Stories Mark shared: Growing up as a military kid moving all over His family's healthy spirituality and vitality Praying “the prayer” as a young boy to avoid hell Being the “God kid” at school who always had his Bible Multiple “conversions” he experienced as he grew in faith Committing to voluntary poverty and moving to the city Finding that he was still motivated by shame Discovering silent retreats during seminary Moving to San Francisco to plant a church Being confronted by the realities of church history Discovering Dallas Willard and his writing The practices he found that helped him Founding an organization to practice the teachings of Jesus Great quotes from Mark: Christianity as it's practiced in America is not that attractive to me but I couldn't walk away from the vitality I saw in my family. I might not be a conventional Christian anymore but I really want to follow Jesus. Shame and should can only get you so far; eventually you have to find a different motivation. Resources we mentioned: Ninefold Path Mark's website Practicing the Way of Jesus: Life Together in the Kingdom of Love by Mark Scandrette Belonging and Becoming: Creating a Thriving Family Culture by Mark Scandrette Thin Places: Six Postures for Creating and Practicing Missional Community by Mark Scandrette Related episodes: Phileena Heuertz and Christian Contemplation Matt Rhodes Blends Spiritual Formation and Creativity Cari Jenkins and Who You Really Are The post Mark A. Scandrette and Unconventional Christianity appeared first on Eric Nevins.
Mark Scandrette is an author and globally recognized expert on practical spiritual formation. Today, Mark shares the story of his traditional Evangelical upbringing by sincere parents, his multifaceted and many conversions, and pursuing the way of Jesus. Mark has a very grounded approach to following Jesus that speaks loudly. He opens up about wrestling his […] The post Mark A. Scandrette and Unconventional Christianity appeared first on Eric Nevins.
This week on Life Conversations Scott sits around the table with our very special guest Mark Scandrette and our very own Braddon Wheeler to chat further about Marks mission and his heart for Practicing the Way of Jesus. For more info email us at media@grlc.org.au
We were very fortunate to hear from our special guest Mark Scandrette at both our 10am and 5pm services on Sunday. Mark took us deeper into Practicing the Way of Jesus.
Mark is an author, teacher, activist and coach who has written five books on practical spirituality that seek to apply spiritual wisdom to everyday life. He teaches a doctoral course on spiritual formation at Fuller Theological seminary in the USA and speaks with the goal of awakening imagination and inviting audiences to take new steps into life and wholeness.
Mark and Lisa Scandrette are the authors of the two books, Free: Spending Your Time and Money on What Matters Most and Belonging and Becoming: Creating a Thriving Family Culture. Through their work and writing, they help parents intentionally approach family life from a place of soulfulness and gratitude. Today we discuss how to talk about money with your kids. I’ve long wanted to do a show on parenting and money. I am so grateful to Mark and Lisa Scandrette for sharing not only their own family story but tons of rich wisdom on the subject from the workshops they do around the world to help families live more purposeful lives. Show Highlights: How to address issues of shame and money in parenting. How to be mindful of money and how this manifests in one’s values. Responding to your children if or when they begin to compare one family’s finances with another’s. Redefining the rich vs. poor conversation with our kids. A gratitude practice to help you cultivate a mentality of gratitude and abundance. Prosperity gospel and asking the question, “How is your financial life spiritual?” Talking about money is vulnerable and why this is okay. What to do when your children become aware of homelessness and how to respond. Links (affiliates included): Mark Scandrette: https://www.markscandrette.com Free: Spending your time and money on what matters most -https://amzn.to/2RXOoym Belonging and Becoming: Creating a thriving family culture -https://amzn.to/2U3xelY The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger -https://amzn.to/3aK2jkh The Brand New Parenting Forward Conference -https://www.parentingforwardconference.com Join us at the Parenting Forward Patreon Team -https://www.patreon.com/cindywangbrandt Parenting Forward, the Book - https://amzn.to/2GB6eDB *** EPISODE CREDITS: If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment. He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com
In this week's show Sam Hailes sits down with the San Francisco-based author and activist Mark Scandrette to talk about a whole host of issues which centre around spiritual formation, the gospel and whether we need to re-think the way we do Church. Mark's own process of theological deconstruction began when his best friend fell asleep part-way through one of Mark's sermons! Today, this prophetic teacher's great passion is to move Christians away from an information-based way of thinking about faith, to a much more practical expression which involves not just assenting to correct doctrinal beliefs, but modelling their day to day life on Jesus himself. Mark believes this way of living, which takes the Sermon on the Mount seriously, can radically change a person's life, and free them from worry and anxiety. The Profile is brought to you in association with Premier Christianity magazine. For a free sample copy of the latest issue visit premierchristianity.com/freesample
Mark Scandrette has been leading practice-based experiments in San Francisco and around the world for over twenty years. In this episode, he shares stories from that experience that will fire our imagination for what practicing the way of Jesus can look like WITH OTHERS. And beyond inspiration, Mark offers a series of tools, resources, and practical next steps. We don't have to do this alone.
Mark Scandrette March 24th PM
Mark Scandrette March 24 AM
Our desire to live life with God is deeply connected to living a right way with others. How can we more fully pay attention to the needs of others around us so that we might accept Jesus' invitation to a life of justice; a life of fullness in Him.
What does it look like to live out of deep meaning and vitality? How can we leverage our lives towards meaningful things? What is a right-sized life? Tune in as guest speaker Mark Scandrette shares powerful insights and stories from his own life.
Candice and Matt talk with Mark Scandrette about the many complexities of city life and how they can make dating relationships challenging — but not impossible! Mark has been doing Christian ministry in San Francisco for 22 years, so this an episode full of wisdom and opportunities for reflection. Mark Scandrette is an author, teacher, activist, and coach, and you can find all his books and other resources at https://www.markscandrette.com. Support us on Patreon! To see the tiers of support and perks for each one, visit https://www.patreon.com/dateology. To learn more about the show and to connect with Matt or Candice, visit https://www.dateology.org/.
An interview with Mark Scandrette about personal growth, the role of the enneagram in understanding ourselves and how through the beatitudes Jesus calls us back to what is real and true. Meanwhile, Joe recommends lighting a candle in the darkness, and Nick wants to ‘bless’ the person who invented comments in Microsoft Word. The Beatitudes… Read More »Episode 57: Back to Reality with Mark Scandrette
In last week's episode, Mark Scandrette shared some simple steps to help you begin using the Enneagram to move from unconscious to conscious living. In part two, Mark and Ian continue their conversation by discussing the importance of doing work within a community and asking the right questions. Mark Scandrette has written five books on practical spirituality that seek to apply spiritual wisdom to everyday life: FREE, Practicing The Way of Jesus, Soul Graffiti, Belonging and Becoming (Co-authored with Lisa Scandrette) and The Ninefold Path Notebook (with Danielle Welch). He regularly teaches and offers workshops and training events based on themes from these books. Before each book is published he usually spends several years piloting the concepts and processes explored with groups in multiple contexts. He is currently working on his 6th book on self-awareness, personality and transformation. He also speaks nationally and internationally at universities, conferences and churches and offers training to leaders and organizations through workshops, retreats and group intensives. Mark teaches a doctoral course on spiritual formation at Fuller Theological seminary and has taught courses at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and Church Divinity School of the Pacific. Wherever Mark travels he speaks with the goal of awakening imagination and inviting audiences to take new steps into life and wholeness. For more about Mark, visit www.markscandrette.com.
Every day listeners email asking, “I know my type, now what?” Well, the truth is that simply knowing your Enneagram type doesn’t change anything in and of itself other than to arm you with a little bit of self-knowledge. Understanding where you go in points of stress and where you go in growth helps explain a lot about why each of us has particular struggles. But to really begin to heal and experience true transformation, we have to be willing to face our shadows because that’s where the distortions of our reality live and multiply. It’s tough to start doing the work but we’re simply not going to grow unless we’re willing to look in the places that are going to create moments of shame and self-reflection that are uncomfortable. But that’s one of the many gifts of the Enneagram. The Enneagram provides us with an opportunity to compassionately look into our shadow…to hold up a mirror to those behaviors that we can change. In today’s episode, Mark Scandrette joins Ian and shares some simple steps you can start using today to help you begin to move from unconscious to conscious living. This episode was so full of great insights that we split it into two parts to help you really absorb the content. Mark Scandrette has written five books on practical spirituality that seek to apply spiritual wisdom to everyday life: FREE, Practicing The Way of Jesus, Soul Graffiti, Belonging and Becoming (Co-authored with Lisa Scandrette) and The Ninefold Path Notebook (with Danielle Welch). He regularly teaches and offers workshops and training events based on themes from these books. Before each book is published he usually spends several years piloting the concepts and processes explored with groups in multiple contexts. He is currently working on a 6th book on self-awareness, personality and transformation. He also speaks nationally and internationally at universities, conferences and churches and offers training to leaders and organizations through workshops, retreats and group intensives. Mark teaches a doctoral course on spiritual formation at Fuller Theological seminary and has taught courses at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and Church Divinity School of the Pacific. Wherever Mark travels he speaks with the goal of awakening imagination and inviting audiences to take new steps into life and wholeness. For more about Mark, visit www.markscandrette.com.
Discussion Questions: What resonated most with you about this passage and teaching? Considering the relationship between Jews and Romans during this miracle of Jesus, what are ways, if any, that we tend to put people on the other side of “us and...
Following the recent launch of 9Beats, Youthscape's Alex Drew catches up with Mark Scandrette about the spiritual experiments aspect of the project and why it's important for young people to experience spirituality.
Our theme this month is practical spirituality – faith addressing the concrete realities of everyday life. We talk to Mark Scandrette from the USA, who encourages people to align their time and money with what matters most – and also has an intriguing perspective on the church in the UK – as art museum. We’ll also be digging in to some of the financial freedom training offered by our sister society CMS-Africa, seeing how it fits into their big vision. That's through the experience of CMS gap year participant Ed Hutton. But first we hear from Dennis Tongoi, executive director of CMS-Africa, who have an astonishing vision to reach 50 million families by 2050 – yes, you heard right, 50 million.
Mark Scandrette (ReImagine) and I sat down in a San Francisco coffee shop to explore his increased activism in issues of privilege, racism and police violence, and how it has taken on a spiritual dimension for him. We had just come from a press event that honored the lives of the ten individuals killed by SFPD in the last two years, with a particular focus on Amilcar Perez-Lopez.
In part two of our Nine Beats conversation we talk with Matt Valler and Mark Scandrette from the Nine Beats collective about some of the ways they are helping to interpret the Beatitudes in a new way. “Somewhere between a story and a dream, there is a whisper of another world, a different rhythm rising… An international collective of amazing troubadours, poets, rebels, provocateurs, sages & activists on the trail of the ancient sayings known as ‘the beatitudes’ A haunting. A cry. A new beat.”
Mark Scandrette stopped by my kitchen table to talk about something he and his wife Lisa have written about and are passionate about—and that is, how to create a thriving family culture. In their new book, Belonging and Becoming, Mark and Lisa cast a compelling vision for all that a family can... The post Episode 59-Mark Scandrette appeared first on Anita Lustrea.
On 11.6.16 Mark Scandrette led us in the sixth beat, "Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God." We are told to wear masks; to hide things we think and feel inside. But Jesus promises we were created as unique and beautiful people, and he invites us to live with undivided and pure hearts.
Doug talks with Mark Scandrette on his Book Belonging & Becoming. And, a real treat with co-host and poet Michael Toy joining us.
Doug talks with Mark Scandrette on his Book Belonging & Becoming. And, a real treat with co-host and poet Michael Toy joining us.
In this episode we interview Mark Scandrette about his newest book, “Belonging and Becoming: Creating a Thriving Family Culture.” Belonging and Becoming centers on the core relationship of family, whatever shape and size that might take, and how we can live together well with meaning. The new book was co-written by Mark and his wife Lisa, and also features pieces written by their daughter Hailey Scandrette (who we interviewed in Episode 27.) Find more about Mark at MarkScandrette.com @markscandrette.
On 09.11.16, our friend Mark Scandrette returned to cast a big vision and invitation into The Beatitudes. He offered four insights to why these nine statements of Christ are a path of healing and recovery, and he invited us on a "journey back to reality" over the next three months.
Our dear friend Mark Scandrette is back to help us discern what practices might help us personally create space for God to lead us into a deeper engagement with the season of Lent. Mark invites each of us to craft a personalized plan for lent that meets us in our deepest needs as we prepare for Easter together.
Lakeside Unleashed Part 1Support the show (https://www.lakesidechurch.com/give1/)
Mark and Dani explore what it means to believe you have enough. The fifth episode in an 8-episode series exploring themes from Mark's new book FREE: Spending Your Time and Money on What Matters Most.
Mark and Dani explore what it means to believe you have enough. The fifth episode in an 8-episode series exploring themes from Mark's new book FREE: Spending Your Time and Money on What Matters Most.
Mark and Dani explore practices of gratitude and trust. The fourth episode in an 8-episode series exploring themes from Mark's new book FREE: Spending Your Time and Money on What Matters Most.
Mark and Dani explore practices of gratitude and trust. The fourth episode in an 8-episode series exploring themes from Mark's new book FREE: Spending Your Time and Money on What Matters Most.
Daniel Kirk is on the podcast. The most sensational Theo-Blogger, Homebrewing, Fuller Professor of New Testament, and fellow Wake Forest Demon Deacon [he also went to Duke and UNC Chapel Hill but I forgive him for that... Go Deacs!] is on the podcast with a bunch of topics he's looking to settle with me. We had an amazing local for this conversation... only Orange County's greatest brewery... the Bruery. Not only is the Bruery in my Top 10 list of Craft Breweries but Deacon Brian White is one of their master of the taps. Kirk's previous visits to the podcast include this LIVE one from Mark Scandrette's house party in San Fran with Philip Clayton and a sweet discussion of Easter recorded during Holy Week. Go check out his blog & follow him on twitter. Follow the podcast, drop a review, send feedback/questions or become a member of the HBC Community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mark and Dani explore practices that align time and deeper values. The third episode in an 8-episode series exploring themes from Mark's new book FREE: Spending Your Time and Money on What Matters Most.
Mark and Dani explore practices that align time and deeper values. The third episode in an 8-episode series exploring themes from Mark's new book FREE: Spending Your Time and Money on What Matters Most.
Mark and Dani discuss 4 questions to help you identify what matters most to you. The second episode in an 8-episode series exploring themes from Mark's new book FREE: Spending Your Time and Money on What Matters Most.
Mark and Dani discuss 4 questions to help you identify what matters most to you. The second episode in an 8-episode series exploring themes from Mark's new book FREE: Spending Your Time and Money on What Matters Most.
Mark and Dani discuss 4 questions to help you identify what matters most to you. The second episode in an 8-episode series exploring themes from Mark's new book FREE: Spending Your Time and Money on What Matters Most.
Mark and Dani discuss 4 questions to help you identify what matters most to you. The second episode in an 8-episode series exploring themes from Mark's new book FREE: Spending Your Time and Money on What Matters Most.
Robb and Vanessa kickoff the new Fundamorphosis podcast by talking about Phyllis Tickle and feminism, interviewing Mark Scandrette, and answering listeners’ questions. The post Episode 1: Tickle and Women and Mark, oh my appeared first on Robb Ryerse.
What one change could you make that would change your life forever? What would it look like to take a vow with friends and make it an experiment this lent? During those 40 days leading up to Easter our deepest need for change won't be addressed by eating fish on Fridays instead of cow flesh or giving up chocolate until Easter. Perhaps what we need is something like the watchfulness Jesus encouraged — or what Gandhi called Experiments in Truth: practices that respect the bodily nature of human spirituality and transformation. (Check out his freshest book for more details) In this special episode you will hear Mark Scandrette lay down the challenge. It was recorded live at my home in preparation for some Lenten experiments with some friends and my high schoolers in confirmation. Just among my friends there are some taking a fast from all critical speaking (including self-directed criticism), meat & alcohol (I'm one of these), gossiping (I would have linked to them but...), and all media (which means they will be behind in the podcast episodes come Easter). Just this past week's time of sharing was pretty powerful example of how much one can learn and change in the right type of community. Any way, I'm sure you can imagine when you hear the conversation. Be sure to check out some VIDEO from Mark's visit here. For more audiological Scandrette check out his first and second visit to the podcast. Then there is the Homebrewed 3D event with Philip Clayton and Daniel Kirk we recorded in Mark's house. Here's the PODCAST! Follow the podcast, drop a review, send feedback/questions or become a member of the HBC Community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mark Scandrette and Nate Millheim sit down with students for a candid discussion
Mark Scandrette shows students how to dream big and make those dreams a reality
From childhood, Mark Scandrette was taught a highly intentional form of putting the teachings of Jesus into practice in everyday life. In the ensuing years this practical intentionality has grown into a lifelong habit of sensitive discernment and active response to Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom, in dialog with the personal, social, and global realities […]
Mark Scandrette is a minister, noted spiritual teacher, and author of Soul Graffiti: Making a Life in the Way of Jesus. He is the cofounder and Executive Director of ReIMAGINE, a center for life integration based in San Francisco — offering a series of workshops and retreats that integrate Christian spiritual formation, the arts, community-building and social action. Mark addresses changes in our society and the resulting consciousness that raises new questions about what it means to be faithful to the way of Jesus — and how to understand the unfolding story of Scripture. He addresses the church's need, along with every other social institution, to grapple with how to thrive in a rapidly changing, always-connected, mobile and global culture.
Mark Scandrette joins us to chat about his new book The Ninefold Path of Jesus: Hidden Wisdom of the Beatitudes, a modern contextualization of Jesus's beatitudes in Matthew 5. Mark is the executive director of Reimagine: A Center for Integral Christian Practice and has created resources for churches to use his new book in groups. […] The post Mark Scandrette: The Beatitudes For Today appeared first on Gravity Leadership.