The best science fiction often takes the real world in which we live and then heightens, or stretches, some element of it as a way of looking at our actual world.  And while it can be entertaining, engrossing, or frightening, those kind of imaginary worlds can also be places for thought experiments that can stretch our faithful imagination, too.  So as our three conversation partners, Sarah, Erica, and Steve, continue this new series looking at pop culture and faith, this time Steve brings a novel that is unnerving but also fertile ground for deep thoughts.  In Octavia Butler's dystopian novel, "Parable of the Sower," we are introduced to a near-future America where institutions are crumbling, disasters are wreaking havoc, and community is hard to come by.  In a world like that--one that sometimes, only feels like a slight exaggeration of the stresses and strains of a pandemic year--where does one find hope... purpose... clarity... community?  And how does faith become even more vital in a time and place where many have left it behind as useless?  Maybe, as unsettling as dystopian science-fiction can be sometimes, there are lessons we can learn for living out our faith in difficult times.  Join us for this conversation on Crazy Faith Talk.

What would it look like for church to be known first of all as a place of radical acceptance--and also one where members of the community brought out the best in each other?  And what could help us imagine what that could look like?  In a new round of conversations, pastors and colleagues in ministry Erica, Sarah, and Steve take a dive into the waters of pop culture they've been interacting with, to learn more about where books, movies, tv shows, and music offer insights for our faith lives.  In each episode of this series, one of the friends around the table will share a piece of pop culture that has impacted their faith in some way, and then we'll see where the conversation goes from here.  In today's conversation, we'll look at the Netflix series "Queer Eye" and see what examples its approach to personal makeovers might offer for the church to be a place where unconditional love and powerful transformation can both be experienced.  We may just discover we have a lot to learn from some unexpected voices.

Almost everything in our lives has been affected in some way or another by the COVID-19 pandemic, including major changes to what church life and ministry looks like.  As our regularly gathering conversation partners, Sarah, Erica, and Steve, explore their own reflections on ministry during the time of coronavirus, they are joined by a fourth voice around the table--Russ, who is also a pastor and married to Pastor Sarah.  As we explore successes and failures, learnings and struggles, we also uncover the blessings of a moment like this to help give us clarity about what things we can let go of, what things we hold onto with all our strength, and what things are worth keeping but transforming in new ways. Join us for conversation as we all keep figuring out how to live faithfully as Jesus' followers in this new and challenging time.

As messy, conflicted, and complicated as families can somtimes be (as we've seen for sure over the course of this series!), the thing about family is that your belonging in it is entirely by grace.  You can't earn your family, merit your place in it, or decide to keep someone else out because of their bad behavior--in a sense, in a family, we are all blessedly "stuck" with each other.  And it turns out to be a really important thing that the early church didn't run away from that idea, but in fact delved into the metaphor of being a sort of "found family"--the people you choose to surround yourself with as family, even if you don't share biology.  And in doing so, the early community of Jesus' followers discovered a framework for sticking with each other through hurts and failures and disagreements, and they also found a way of expanding beyond a single nationality, ethnicity, culture, or language.  As they conclude their series on sibling rivalries and reversals in the Bible, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve explore the ways the first disciples acted like squabbling siblings, but also how that became a picture of grace that gives us hope all these centuries later.  Check out this important conversation

We live in an age of click-bait one-dimensional internet quizzes (like, "Answer three questions to find out what personality type you have," or "Click on a picture to find out which Disney princess you are,"), and it can be easy to do the same to biblical characters, too.  For a long time, the sisterhood between Mary and Martha in the Gospels has been one of those places church folk have done some armchair psychology, asking one another, "Are you a Mary... or a Martha?" and often have assumed that one personality is the "right" one for all situations, and that a person's whole character can be summed up in a single story or event.  But maybe these biblical figures are richer, more complex, and more nuanced that an Facebook questionnaire--and maybe exploring the stories of Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus can help us explore how Jesus will change and reorder our old assumptions about how family is "supposed to work."  Join us for this episode of "Crazy Faith Talk" as pastors Sarah, Erica, and Steve share conversation in their ongoing series on biblical siblings!

When a loving father gracious welcomed home his troubled son and extavagantly threw a party to celebrate his return, the older brother crosses his arms indignantly and asks his dad, "Don't ALL your sons matter?"  And of course, they do.  The father loves both of his sons, and both of his sons' needs are taken care of--but at the moment, it is the lost-but-now-found son who needs the focus.  That's the climax of Jesus' famous story about a lost son, which is the final of three parables about the finding of lost things, collected in Luke 15.  And the recurring idea in all them is the same: whether it's leaving behind ninety-nine sheep that are not in danger at the moment to go find one straggler, or searching the house for one coin when there are nine other coins that haven't been lost, or throwing a party for a son who had left everything, God is always specially focused on the ones who are most in trouble.  In this latest installment of their series about siblings in the Bible, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve now turn to this famous story Jesus tells, and how much Jesus' story draws on the the family stories we looked at earlier, from Abraham's sons, to Jacob and Esau, to the strains in David's family tree.  We'll also explore connections in this parable to the voices of protest and concern in our day about how Black lives are regarded, too, and see how Jesus' story speaks to this moment of contemporary history. We'll also discover that if Jesus' story makes us uncomfortable, that is exactly Jesus' design--to push us out of our comfort zones and make us squirm to see things a new way, while at the same time offering us the comfort of knowing we are always welcomed home.  Join us for a thought-provoking and grace-filled conversation here on Crazy Faith Talk!

On Crazy Faith Talk, we have always tried to be honest and real in our conversations, whether it's about our own struggles, quirks, and stories, or with the stories and issues we explore.  So as we continue our series looking at biblical brothers and sisters and how their family stories are often difficult and messy, we need to have some honest conversation about the man remembered as Israel's greatest king, David.  His own abuse of power and position to forcibly take advantage of Bathsheba, and then his not-so-virtuous attempts to cover up his tracks, show real flaws in this biblical hero, and then the tensions between his children boil over when at least one of his sons uses his position to do the same to another victim, repeating the pattern.  As you can imagine, the content of this episode is going to be a little more geared for older ears than most of our conversations, so you may want to make your own decisions about listening to the conversation with young ears in the room (or the car) at the same time, or about choosing if and when to listen.  But for those who do join us, we hope you'll find this conversation honest, real, and helpful as we look at the messes our family situations can hold.

As they continue their series on sibing rivalries and reversals in the Bible, pastors Sarah, Erica, and Steve (and a couple of unexpected comments from a dog in the background) turn to the story of young David--the kid who wasn't even considered an option for the crown by his own family, but whom God chose precisely in his smallness and lowliness.  When all the conventional wisdom said to choose a leader based on their appearances and the image of "greatness" they projected, God chose this shepherd boy.  And even though the older David would have plenty of troubles and character flaws of his own, David does model the ability to admit when he was wrong, to grieve over his mistakes, and to seek to try to improve.  That surprising honesty, humility, and capacity for change makes David different than so many of the power-hungry leaders since David, who would never admit their mistakes, and who used their supposed status as "anointed by God" as way of avoiding criticism.  Maybe David's story teaches us, too, that the moment we say that God can't use someone for divine purposes, God rolls up the old divine sleeves and says, "Oh really?  Just watch me."  Join us for this episode of Crazy Faith Talk.

One of the difficult but necessary lessons of life is that while good can come out of rotten choices or circumstances, we are not off the hook with responsibility for the rotten things we do.  Someone can intend to do evil, and yet God can use it for good, as well.  In this week's episode of Crazy Faith Talk, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve take a look at the way those tensions play out in the stories of Rachel and Leah, and then in the lives of their children (and the children Jacob has with their maidservants/concubines).  And through it all, through tricks and schemes and favoritism and tension, God is able to bring good even out of the roughest circumstances and rawest of raw materials.  Maybe there's hope for all of us, and what God can bring out of our complicated lives and messy families.

As they keep looking at stories of sibling rivalries in the Bible, and how God turns the tables on our expectations in those stories, pastors and friends Erica, Sarah, and Steve explore the saga of Jacob and Esau, a pair of twins in the book of Genesis, who are constantly fighting and whose story takes some surprising twists.  And so does the conversation today, too, since we'll explore this Bible story and what it means for our lives with some unexpected connections to Marvel comic characters, Norse mythology, U2 song lyrics, and the immortal question, "Do newborn babies kind of look like potatoes?"  Get ready for a fresh look at an ancient story in this week's episode of "Crazy Faith Talk.