Season: Things Jesus Never Said

Speaker: Ben White

Location: 3800 Marlton Pike

About Talk: What if your opinion doesn’t matter that much? What do we gain by being right, after all? What do we gain other than division and isolation? In John 17:20-26, Jesus prays for us that we may be one as he and the father are one. “I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.” We can rely on Jesus, especially in the church to make God known to us. We are not eternally responsible, but we do have eternity to come to an agreement. Let’s hold our opinions loosely and creatively maintain the dialogue, trusting that Jesus is bringing us together completely in the end.

Season: Things Jesus Never Said

Speaker: Jonny Rashid

Location: 2007 Frankford Ave.

About Talk: We might correct a Senator's saying this way: everyone is entitled to their own opinion because we are working together to discern the truth. Your right to express your opinion isn’t enough, nor is your opinion being subject to the “facts,” which are not reliable anyway. We are working on discerning direction and vision together. You matter to that process and so does your opinion. Again, this is not just a right you have, and you have a responsibility to share. And it’s risky. You might get hurt, there could be a conflict, but it’s worth it. Your opinion isn’t inscrutable, but it’s invaluable.

Season: Things Jesus Never Said

Speaker: Rachel Sensenig

Location: 2212 S. Broad St.

About Talk: Free speech is a good thing, but obsession with our autonomy leaves us lonely. We are more designed for togetherness, reconciliation, and unity. Jesus makes a way for that across the most impossible borders.

Season: Things Jesus Never Said

Speaker: Rachel Sensenig

Location 29 West Tulpehocken St.

About Talk: Jesus is inviting us to expand our vision for what’s “best” and who is our family. He is calling us out of fear of scarcity. Now we embody what’s best by being a big inclusive family together. Read Matthew 10:37-39, Matthew 12:46-50

Season: Things Jesus Never Said

Speaker: Julie Hoke

Location: 2007 Frankford Ave.

About Talk: On one hand, of course we take care of ourselves or our families as best we can. But we have to keep examining what we think is best because our assessment of what is best is not always based on something that we want to honor or obey. We are complex human beings so it is important to keep paying attention to what is driving our processes and our hearts. Jesus is freeing us from our individual orientation to a collective one, from being bound to save your life to being willing to lose it.

Season: Things Jesus Never Said

Speaker: Ben White

Location: 2212 S. Broad St.

About Talk: We all know that the love of our family is not enough but we keep believing that it should be. The cultural narrative and our own desires conspire to keep us believing that somehow if we love better we can undo the lack we all feel. Jesus actually said something in Matthew 10 that makes it clear that "family first" is in conflict with "Jesus first." If your primary source of satisfaction is him, everything else goes much better, especially your family. It's counterintuitive, but letting go is one of the keys. One way to let go is to expand your sense of family beyond your blood relations. The village we create in Circle of Hope is living proof of the possibility. Read Matthew 12:46-50.

Season: Things Jesus Never Said

Speaker: Jonny Rashid

Location 3800 Marlton Pike

About Talk: Because we redefine how we do family, we don’t have to juxtapose our service in the church, which is the village, with our care for our family. They work together, and ideally, with some seamlessness. This doesn’t solve all the problems of our family, but it does mean we don’t have to solve them on our own, and it gives us freedom to fail, because we’re doing it together. It also means that when we reenter our old family systems, we don’t have to act in the same way either. We can be new people.

Season: Things Jesus Never Said

Speaker: Julie Hoke

Location: 29 West Tulpehocken

About Talk: God doesn’t hate. God loves. And God’s love transformed us so God no longer regards us from a worldly point of view. The old is past, the new is here. Let’s keep bringing about our fullness in love, not in judgment.

Season: Things Jesus Never Said

Speaker: Rachel Sensenig

Location: 2212 S. Broad St.

About Talk: We can’t fully separate the action from the person without some kind of disembodiment, which Jesus isn’t doing. So love the sinner, hate the sin isn’t really possible. We need a whole new theology, more than a corrective band-aid. God gives that to us in Christ, who remakes us completely through love. He doesn’t hate at all; He loves all of us, and all parts of us into our fullness. Even our sin was aiming at something good. Our systems of justice and punishment are so tiny compared to the grace and forgiveness of God. We don’t need to separate our sin from ourselves because God has redeemed it all and in some wild way making good of it all. (Romans 8:28) There is no condemnation in Christ.

Season: Things Jesus Never Said

Speaker: Jonny Rashid

Location: 2007 Frankford Ave

About Talk: Why is “love the sinner, hate the sin” a bad saying? God doesn’t hate. God loves. And God’s love transformed us so God no longer regards us from a worldly point of view. The old is past, the new is here. Let’s keep bringing about our fullness in love, not in judgment, taking the logs out of our own eyes, before we take the specks out of each other. That means we don’t call each other out for the sake of moral superiority, but we gently address one another in truth and love, knowing that love, not violence, is the best way to bring about the new creation, which Jesus is reconciling himself unto.