Season: Advent

Speaker: Ben White

Location: 3800 Marlton Pike

About Talk: Miriam, the prophetess, sings to us now. Reminding us who God is and who we are. We are still in expectation of the deliverance God will bring now. We wait in wonder at the life Jesus is living among us now. Our savior is very near. How is he transforming your waiting now. How is he delivering you from the horses and riders that pursue you? What are those. Let’s spend the week asking that question, paying attention to our waiting.

Season: Things Jesus Never Said

Speaker: Rachel Sensenig:

Location: 2212 S. Broad St.

About Talk: People want to make meaning out of their circumstances, especially in hard times. We’ve discovered that a relationship with God makes meaning out of everything! But it looks more like relating and trusting than didactic answers. God is not controlling our choices, but Jesus implied that the glory of God can be revealed in all things. We’re looking to him for that kind of radical love and grace.

Season: Things Jesus Never Said

Speaker: Ben White

Location: 3800 Marlton Pike

Season: Things Jesus Never Said

Speaker: Julie Hoke

Location: 29 West Tulpehocken St.

About Talk: The fact that the Bible is diverse, ambiguous, and ancient prompts us to consider how the Bible behaves. The Bible leads us to gain wisdom. It is not meant to pick and choose verses to make into principles. It is an invitation to know God and God’s presence with us right now in our context—time and place. So rather than taking the Bible and making it into a principle (like Everything happens for a reason), we can explore scripture in the midst of our circumstances—over a lifetime—to ask the questions Who am I? What is God like? We can discern God’s way for our time—not by scripting that for us but by modeling for us a process that we now have to own for ourselves.

Season: Things Jesus Never Said

Speaker: Megan Jackson

Location: 2007 Frankford Ave

About Talk: People often make meaning of past pain, suffering, and grief by noting all the good that came out of that time in their lives. Sometimes our experience of suffering allows us to sympathize, to help someone else. Sometimes people see that the changes they were forced to make have helped them discover a new path, or facilitated some spiritual or emotional growth, for which we feel thankful. But mostly, I think that, when we look back at past suffering that was meaningful to us, it’s often because we felt the presence of God more dearly and more nearly than we do in our everyday lives. God is with us when we suffer, and God suffers with us. That’s the assurance we get—not a rationale for suffering, but a living God in the midst of pain and grief.

Season: Things Jesus Never Said

Speaker: Julie Hoke

Location: 29 West Tulpehocken

This all seems grandiose and hard to do on our own. But we’re not doing it on our own. We’re doing it together. We are creating a community where we are pursuing God’s kingdom and God’s justice right here.

Speaker: Rod White

Location: 2212 S. Broad St.

About Talk: We all have the Spirit of God given to us and we all have so much opportunity! We all need to build something to feel our true selves in action. It is not good enough to think faith or feel faith we need to do faith to be a human who lives by faith. We are God’s co-worker. We are God’s field, God’s building. Now that grace is at work in us, we also create. We build with care.

Season: Things Jesus Never Said

Speaker: Jonny Rashid

Location: 2007 Frankford Ave

About Talk: This all seems grandiose and hard to do on our own. But we’re not doing it on our own. We’re doing it together. We are creating a community where we are pursuing God’s kingdom and God’s justice right here. It was evident this last weekend when we were cleaning up neighborhoods, assembling furniture for those who needed it, walking through our watershed, listening to those seeking sanctuary. We are creating an alternative community where we can actually let go of our nets, at least to some extent, because we are interdependent. We have a new of doing things. And so far, it’s the best we have come up with in this time and place. We are still tethered to the ways of the world, and that’s OK for a number of reasons: both practical but also because we want to meet people and connect them to what we’ve got going on if that’s what they are looking for. We need everyone here in on the project, sharing what they can: time, money, talent, but most importantly their heart. Let’s keep doing it together.

Season: Things Jesus Never Said

Speaker: Gwen White

Location: 3800 Marlton Pike

About Talk: There is a problem with trying to ‘live our dreams’ The goal is to carry the weight of the longing/need we feel. And that is a heavy weight. Most of our dreams, for how things could or should be, are based on our perceptions of what’s good/best which have their roots in our earlier childhood experiences. Psychologically we’re unconsciously set up to repeat old situations and try to find a different ending. So we want to be invincible, to never lose, to be prettiest, smartest, most admired or most loved. We easily fall into sacrificing our very souls for these dreams in the attempt to repair our losses all by ourselves. But we can’t repair what’s past by the power of our belief or the sweat of our brow. Struggling with Jesus in the midst of these cycles is the only way.

Season: Things Jesus Never Said

Speaker: Julie Hoke

Location: 29 West Tulpehocken

About Talk: When a conversation gets heated enough, or loud enough or long enough (both personally or a societal level), we become so invested in defending ourselves that our choice becomes who we are. Our opinion about the available options becomes a central part of our identity because we don’t want to be wrong. This leads us into conversation wars where two opposing sides are fighting to win. Jesus frees us from this kind of entrenchment. In a love that binds us together, we become our true selves in Christ. We are not the essence of our opinions. We are being transformed, but the renewing of our minds, by the love that binds us together. We can agree to agree. Our opinions are not our identity. We are being made new and we keep working it out in a dialogue of love.