Season: Everything Has Become New

Speaker: Ben White

Location: 3800 Marlton Pike

About Talk: What is personhood? Persons have a purpose. They are newly made for revealing the righteousness of God in themselves and in the world. We are not static—our personalities are not the end of our journey; we are dynamic—we can be transformed, especially by obedience to Jesus. There are so many ways we can do this. But we must do, not just be. We must accept that we are sent, we cannot stay. Our enjoyment of our new selves in Christ cannot be done alone, in isolation from each other, or from those who need to know our message of reconciliation for which we are sent—and they will know it by experiencing our doing with God. The old has gone, the new is here.

Season: Everything Has Become New

Speaker: Ben White

Location: 3800 Marlton Pike

About Talk: Salvador Dali and subatomic particles inspired Ben this week. Also Wegman's and Target. His idea was that community is like the three dimensional version of communion which could be imagined as four dimensional. There is something happening in a church that doesn't happen in other communities. They are similar but not the same. Communion is not dependent upon the capacity of the individuals; it is the reality that Jesus has created among us. It is new creation. Everyone is designed for communion with God and with the rest of humanity, and they seek it in various ways, but we cannot create it and community itself cannot achieve it. Jesus at the center of community is required for the communion we all desire.

Season: Everything Has Become New

Speaker: Julie Hoke

Location: 29 West Tulpehocken St

About Talk: Julie Hoke talks about our need for connection and community, and how that connection is related to our communion with God.

Season: Everything Has Become New

Speaker: Jonny Rashid

Location: 2007 Frankford Ave.

About Talk: Our communion with one another and with God isn’t just an aid to make us feel better in our present circumstances. It is the fuel that we use to change our circumstances. The church needs to be a transforming agent, flipping the whole world upside down, and our little expression of it in Philadelphia is a part of that. We’re building it together. Let’s keep going.

Season: Everything Has Become New

Speaker: Bethany Stewart

Location: 2212 S. Broad St.

About Talk: Bethany talks about how the transformative love and power of Jesus brings newness to the communities that we form, and takes us to an expanded communion centered on Christ Jesus.

Season: Everything Has Become New

Speaker: Ben White

Location: 3800 Marlton Pike

About Talk: Go to the corner of your life, the place you always pass, and see something new. We are practicing revealing the New Creation—seeing the new things that are often ignored. The chief power against the unity of humanity is dehumanization. It is hard for a human being to treat another human poorly or support systems that treat them poorly if they know the other and see them for who they are. Because when they see the other, more often than not, they will love. Only when the other is papered over with dehumanization can a human hate another human. Dr. King knew this and set about removing the paper—helping more people see the humanity of black people in the United States. Our work as ministers of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5) is very similar. We must help people see the new creation and the new humanity for what it is. We are beacons, shining on the newness of what is often ignored.

Season: Everything Has Become New

Speaker: Rachel Sensenig

Location: 2212 S. Broad St.

About Talk: It’s a divided country and Jesus calls us to the ministry of reconciliation. The sin of racism is still so pronounced, and we cannot make things right on our own. Wokeness cannot replace the constructs of whiteness; we are called to move in the grace and mercy of God.

Season: Everything Has Become New

Speaker: Julie Hoke

Location: 29 West Tulpehocken

About Talk: Luke 7:36-50 - Jesus anointed by the sinful woman

Living as the new creation is a dynamic process; not static state. There is movement involved for it to be revealed. We are moving from our own rightness to the righteousness of God.

In this story of the woman washing Jesus’ feet, Simon is content with his rightness and he doesn’t learn to love deeply as one whose great debt is forgiven. The woman believed it was possible and came to Jesus with all that she had to express her faith and love. The forgiveness she received is the heart of living as a new creation.

Season: Everything Has Become New

Speaker: Gwen White

Location: 2007 Frankford Ave

About Talk: Teaching Pastor Gwen White talks about sin. It’s a very misunderstood concept in current Christian thinking and she thinks a better understanding of it is freeing. Sin has its beginnings not just in bad behavior, but deeply buried in unconscious processes. Being able to name it or catching it consciously means we can release it and find new ways of being in the world. We are promised that we will be made new in Christ. This openness to seeing my sin is the way of living into my place within the New Humanity. God still likes co-working or partnership, not dominance with us. Even though, of course, God is infinite and we are finite, God, creator, we the creature—still God wants this loving exchange and insists on it—so God does not overpower us, but waits for our meeting, our understanding, our true presence as our true self.

Season: Everything Has Become New

Speaker: Rod White

Location: 29 West Tulpehocken St

About Talk: Julie Hoke talks about the holiness of God working within her, and how we can posture ourselves toward our new humanity in Christ.