Season: Everything Has Become New

Speaker: Rod White

Location: 3800 Marlton Pike

About Talk: Meditation is not just mindfulness, which is basically being in charge of your own relaxation. It is thinking and feeling with God. You might be thinking and feeling about God, and that’s meditation too. But the goal of meditation in Christ is oneness, communion, integration, love. Meditation is turning toward God who is with us. A lot of meditation is taught as turning away from anxiety as the main role of the practice. But Christians turn away in order to turn toward. Our meditation has an object: our loving God and our true selves.

Season: Everything Has Become New

Speaker: Rachel Sensenig

Location: 2212 S. Broad St.

About Talk: Jesus’s baptism reveals some foundational truth for all of us: we are God’s beloved, too. Experiencing and resting in this identity happens through presence and prayer, and it might be the most important spiritual discipline of our lives. Being the beloved of God means that you are chosen, blessed, broken, and meant to be shared. Understanding who we really are enables us to bless the world like Jesus, too.

Season: Everything Has Become New

Speaker: Jonny Rashid

Location: 2007 Frankford Ave

About Talk: "It took me a long time of rewriting that script to really believe that God was pleased with me. It took me a long time to believe I could be someone else. I still think back at being a jackass in college and I still am embarrassed about it and who I am today." -Jonny Rashid What are you facing? What can’t you let go of? What’s making it hard for you to make a shift? It could be any number of things, personal, relational, political.

Season: Epiphany

Speaker: Julie Hoke

Location: 29 West Tulpehocken St

About Talk: The Magi show us that the long-awaited Messiah is no longer just a Jewish matter. A star in the east led these Gentile magi from their distant land to come worship the baby too. Jesus was born king of the Jews but He came for the whole world. And this revelation of God to the Gentiles began with these travelers who came to worship him as their king.

Season: Epiphany

Speaker: Rachel Sensenig

Location: 2212 S. Broad St.

About Talk: Epiphany calls us to bow down and worship the new king. Herod would not do it because he had organized his life to be worshiped, and he would not change. Epiphany calls us to change. The new king is here, and the whole universe is conspiring to expand the reach of his love. Let’s move toward him in worship in 2020.

Season: Epiphany

Speaker: Ben White

Location: 3800 Marlton Pike

About Talk: We are namers. This is the story of Epiphany. How many beautiful things happen in the world unnoticed and unnamed? How many beautiful people are in the world, in the United States and in Iran? How many might not know who they are, really? Epiphany means revelation. Something that is, is named for what it is. An epiphany means seeing and naming. That’s what the Magi did. They saw Jesus, they were overjoyed, and they worshiped him. They named him. Who he really is was revealed to them and they responded appropriately. So much and so many people need to be named in this world of woe.

Season: Epiphany

Speaker: Jonny Rashid

Location: 2007 Frankford Ave.

About Talk: The Magi needed a supernatural occurrence, a dream, to tell them to go home another way. Matthew is being gracious with his audience—if you are not changed, that’s OK, you might need a little extra push. It’s hard to see the world differently. It’s hard to change. It’s hard to grow.

Season: Advent

Speaker: Julie Hoke

Location: 29 West Tulpehocken St.

About Talk: Entering into the story with the shepherds reminds us that nothing about our lives is separate from God—our work, the details of our circumstances, our particular bodies and experiences. In the midst of our responsibilities and tasks, a Savior is born. In the midst of the morning commute, there is good news for all people. Let the message of the angels get to you in those mundane places. The glorious, joy-filled news breaks through the darkness to reach us. Into the humble circumstances of our lives, Jesus comes.

Season: Advent

Speaker: Rod White

Location: 2007 Frankford Ave.

About Talk: Advent can be irritating because you want to do it because you don't. But the season still calls us to look up into the sky and around the next corner for angels.

Season: Advent

Speaker: Ben White

Location: 3800 Marlton Pike

About Talk: The angel's message to the shepherds stands them up. They have a purpose. They know who they are.. They bow from their fullness not just humility. And this message stands us up too. Jesus comes to bring our humanity into its fullness. By becoming human, God elevates all humanity. God elevates you. Stand up! Something new has happened and now we can do something new.