Friends Church Calgary Weekly Message

Speaker: Vince Klassen

We are just entering the holiday season. A time of festivities and gatherings (safely of course). And, often, family.

And there is nothing that can make us more crazy than our families. Love them (or not), a friend of mine says:

“Your family knows how to push your buttons, they put them there after all.”

So how do we ready ourselves for the inevitable stress of the holiday season? And maybe even further than that? How do we become healthy, whole human beings that are not triggered by life’s events?

This is the first week of the series entitled ‘Cracks in the Foundation’ where we will look at where these issues came from and start to understand how to be free of them. Our goal is to ready us all for the holiday season in a way that allows us to avoid those awkward family moments but also avoid them in all of life.

To donate to this podcast and support the making of more of these please visit www.friendschurch.ca/podcast

Speaker: Vince Klassen

We are living in a more and more complex world. Much of what is going on around us is frankly, beyond our understanding. I know how to check my email on my phone but I have very little knowledge of how my phone works. And more and more of our lives seems to be at a level of complexity that only a few understand. We call these people ‘the experts’.

But this is also a time when trust in expertise seems at an all time low. Scandals in the news. Conflicting experts. What are we supposed to do?

Our spiritual ancestors have been wrestling with this question for thousands of years. We are going to explore their thoughts in this last message on our Ten Commandments revisited series. We want to invite you out to close off this series well. Bring a friend or have a listening party. Your choice. But we are going to end with a bang.

This Sunday, I’m exploring our interactions with the tribal councils of our lives.  Invite a friend and join us at the gym, in person or online.

To donate to this podcast and support the making of more of these please visit www.friendschurch.ca/podcast

Speaker: Jeff Jarvis

So I’m not a huge “Survivor” fan but I will admit I watched my fair share in the early days. There was something fascinating about the concept of the game. A group of people dropped in a remote tropical location, trying to survive against the natural elements and an increasingly hostile tribe.

Inevitably, at some point, someone in the tribe will make a poor decision, or he/she will upset their tribe, or they will pose a threat to the others. With careful collusion, the tribe will speak and vote the member off the island.

Though it’s just Reality TV, we all likely realize this kind of thing happens everyday and has been happening all throughout human history. Only, the consequences in real life can be much more dire.

This Sunday, I’m exploring our interactions with the tribal councils of our lives.  Invite a friend and join us at the gym, in person or online.

To donate to this podcast and support the making of more of these please visit www.friendschurch.ca/podcast.

Speaker: Jeff Jarvis

Many of us who grew up in religious circles were forbidden to swear. Thankfully, there were substitute words you were allowed to use. Rather than saying “shit” you could say “shoot” and rather than dropping the F bomb you could say “frick”.

But whatever we said, we were NEVER to say “Jesus Christ” (though technically you could say “Cheese and Rice!” – lol) and especially “Oh my God!”. These phrases would have put us in very dangerous spiritual territory! The understanding was that by saying them you were in violation of the 2nd commandment: Thou shall not take the Lord’s name in vain.

Is it true that by saying “Oh My God!” or “Jesus Christ!” in a moment of panic or anger, you offend a divine being that then pins that violation on some personal spiritual rap sheet of yours?

I’m not convinced it is.

This Sunday, I want to explore another way of understanding this commandment. A way that stirs up a lot of questions and reveals a much more relevant issue for you and I in 2021. I hope you’ll join us in person or online.

To donate to this podcast and support the making of more of these please visit www.friendschurch.ca/podcast.

Speaker: Vince Klassen

There is nothing quite so frustrating than showing up with some big news, only to be upstaged by someone close to us: “Guess what? I was accepted to law school!” only to hear “That’s great, I got into law school at Harvard.” Really? What does one actually say to that? Suddenly my news is dying on the side of the conversation about you getting into Harvard.

But this doesn’t just happen around what school you got into.  Think of all the places where someone is one step ahead of us:

* What we have: our houses, our families, our possessions

* What we can do: our skills, our talents, our abilities

* What “hand we were dealt”: what we were born into, what our early experiences were, what group we were a part of.

Any one of those can spark a moment where someone else, is, well, better than us.

And that feeling, of someone being better than us, has been widely examined — including by our spiritual ancestors in the 10 Commandments through this language that says “Don’t Covet”. What do you mean Don’t Covet? What if they got my dream job, or the perfect chin, or grew up with money? How am I supposed to not want those things if I feel like I don’t have them?

Is it wrong to long for something we don’t have? Our spiritual ancestors said it is but, as we have seen in this series, it might not be that black and white.

To donate to this podcast and support the making of more of these please visit www.friendschurch.ca/podcast.

Speaker: Jeff Jarvis

In a day and age when Sundays are no longer closed for business and weekends can feel as busy as most weekdays, the 4th Commandment to “remember the Sabbath” seems somewhat unrealistic and outdated. I mean, how many are actually able to shut down everything and do nothing for 24 hours once every week? And for what purpose? Even back in Jesus’ day, there were continual arguments breaking out over Sabbath violations. It seems the point of it all has always been a bit murky.

But as we’ll explore on Sunday, the underlying concept of Sabbath may have less to do with sitting still for 24 hours every Sunday and more to do with how to process the short and long term chapters and seasons of our lives. After I’m done, I’m hopeful you’ll agree that the concept of keeping the Sabbath is as relevant and needed in 2021 as ever.

To donate to this podcast and support the making of more of these please visit www.friendschurch.ca/podcast.

Speaker: Vince Klassen

This week we are starting the 10 Commandments series. 10 rules for life. 10 foundational pillars of the Christian tradition. Or are they?

More and more we are feeling our society pulled towards black and white lists. Clear Do’s and Don’ts. Rules for life that are sacred.

But what happens when life doesn’t fit those rules? Or the list doesn’t apply to us? What happens when your unique situation comes across a series of rules that don’t make any sense anymore? Do we throw the rules out? We don’t think so. We believe there is a way to navigate these commandments in a way that can help us in our everyday life, as long as we see them through a new lens. That’s the key part – the new lens.

Join us this week as we explore a new lens to deal with ancient wisdom so that the world around us is made better. Sounds like a perfect day at the Spiritual Gym!

Credit to AwakenWithJP for “Why Life Jackets Should Be Mandatory!” See it at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GukIoZ8d3Ew

To donate to this podcast and support the making of more of these please visit www.friendschurch.ca/podcast.

Speaker: Jeff Jarvis

Our spiritual ancestors spoke often of experiencing divine moments. Moments when unexplainable things would happen causing the hair on the back of one’s neck to stand up and everyone watching at a loss for words.

Many have asked me if I still believe in these kinds of moments. To some people’s surprise, my answer is still “yes”. They may look nothing like the stories in the bible but I believe they are happening all around us…more than we realize. These moments seem to happen in the most unlikely places with the most unlikely people in the most unlikely ways.

We’re wrapping up this series “Reimagining the Spiritual Journey” by talking about transcendent WE moments this Sunday. I hope you will invite a friend and join us either in person or online.

To donate to this podcast and support the making of more of these please visit www.friendschurch.ca/podcast.

Speaker: Jeff Jarvis

It can be a really healthy thing to take a step back sometimes to get clarity around what it is we’re doing and why we’re doing it. This is especially true of the spiritual journey.

Over the last few weeks we’ve explored three foundational areas of growth that the spiritual journey seems to require of all of us: Awareness, a “They” orientation, and an “I” orientation. In this last week of the series, we’re going to talk about what life can look like when you do the work and begin to experience these three vital pieces of the journey all coming together.

This is what we call “We” moments.

When someone asks me what it is that I’m hoping to experience on the spiritual journey, I talk about the magic of “We” moments. Experiences that we believe are the pinnacle of the journey!

Many have experienced these moments in their lives and just didn’t know what was happening. If you have, you’ll agree that these moments are amazing. On Sunday, I’m going to explore two different kinds that hopefully we’ll all have the joy of experiencing in our lifetime.

To donate to this podcast and support the making of more of these please visit www.friendschurch.ca/podcast.

Speaker: Vince Klassen

Where do we all fit in our spiritual journeys?  Some traditions tell us that we are bad.  Everything we want is bad.  Some go so far as to say we are nothing but Worms and Dirt.

This week we want to explore how each and every person, our “I”, fits into our spiritual journeys.  Is our “I” something to be overcome like some traditions?  Is our desires and wants somehow bad?  Is the goal of the spiritual journey a monastic or cloistered life – like a nun or a monk?

Or is there something More going on here even as we relate to our “I” in the world?

We’ve been thinking about a model of our Spiritual Journey that has some surprising insights when it comes to how we see our “I” in our worlds.

Join us this week as we explore the second last week on our series Our Spiritual Journey Reimagined.  This one could literally change your life!:)

Come on out, bring a friend, and lets get some energy going in our spiritual journeys.

To donate to this podcast and support the making of more of these please visit www.friendschurch.ca/podcast.