Revolution Church

Today we have something a bit different, but it’s awesome and we’re excited to share it. Jay sits down with longtime friend Brian Yarbrough and together they discuss some questions people have submitted. Jay discusses his time in New York at the premier of the Tammy Faye Musical, and all of the people he met along the way. The people that influenced him, and that were influenced by his mom. It was a very special day for Jay and he gives us a real inside look. Together, Jay and Brian also discuss favorite music and bands, favorite comic book characters, how Elton John smells like acceptance and love, what Jay is reading these days, and if Jay could have Revolution anywhere in the world where would it be. They also go into depth on how to work with people we disagree with, people we don’t even particularly like, and how to focus on seeing past the binary thinking. Don’t be fooled by the more fun questions, this talk gets real. Like, real, real. It gets heavy at times—but like everything with Revolution, it’s full of grace, and humanity, and heart.

This talk was given on November 17, 2024 from Seattle, Washington.

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@jaybakker

@revolution1994

@revolution94

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It’s a crazy time with a lot of emotions after the election. A lot of wide-ranging and diverse emotions from everyone. Ranging from despair and quitting, to invigorated and inspired, to celebrating victory. Here at Revolution, we try to respect the entire spectrum of emotions, ideas, and people. Revolution will always fight for equality, on every level we can. If you are in despair, it’s not over—this is what Revolution trained for. If you are celebrating, please do so, while seeing the humanity and others and understanding why they might not be feeling the same way and help them, with love, understand where you are coming from. No more biting and devouring. Let’s all give of ourselves to each other in hopes that it will bring about a truth that is higher than politics and parties. Are we so devoted to politicians that it blinds us to the humanity of each other? Do we want a revolution but not want to have to endure a revolution? We have to all work together and see each other’s humanity—regardless of political leanings, this is the ONLY way forward. Seeing each other as humans. All of us. Because grace is anarchy. It doesn’t hold to one system or leaning. Grace is for everyone, no footnotes or exceptions. MLK says we will remember the silence of our friends. This is what we’re saying, we can’t be self-focused, we need to be others-focused, because we’re not alone in this. If we want change, we have to learn to take the higher ground. How do we live in such a divided world and still find a way to help mend this division? We don’t know, really, we don’t, but we don’t see any path forward, any hope in mending division if we can’t all come together and see each other’s humanity. See each other as human. This is the only way. We can do this!

This talk was given on November 10, 2024 from Seattle, Washington.

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@jaybakker

@revolution1994

@revolution94

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The election is here, tomorrow as a matter of fact, so we wanted to get Sunday’s talk out a little ahead of schedule to give people time to listen before everything gets…well, how it’s going to get. This talk isn’t about politics, sort of. It is, and it isn’t. It’s about radical acceptance, about knowing what we can and cannot change and learning to live life on life’s terms. It’s about the smallest things in life meaning the most and helping the most, especially in the darkest times. Are the Beatitudes a small thing that helps us the most? Is it Paul’s letter to the Galatians? Is it each other, and friendship and love? Is it all of the above? It’s uncertain times like this that really emphasize the importance of community. Because when we divide, we stay divided. A lot of us are nervous and on edge, so let’s be kind to others and ourselves. We’ll get through this, one way or another, and we can only do it by helping each other. No matter how this turns out we love you all, and we’ll see you on the other side—in every sense of the phrase.

This talk was given on November 3, 2024 from Seattle, Washington.

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@jaybakker

@revolution1994

@revolution94

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Jay is super under the weather, but he throws on a hoody to keep the chills away so he can deliver us a really interesting and thought-provoking talk on what it means to be a Christian. The talk came about after Jay received criticism and questioning on his beliefs and when he wasn’t able to be cleanly labeled and divided it gave him the idea for this talk. So in a sense this talk is your basic Revolution ‘grace and love’ talk, but it is needed. It’s a topic that always should be revisited because it is that important. Can the Bible become an idol if we’re not careful? What about grace is so scary to us? Why do we feel it needs to be earned and can be lost? Why do we treat a relationship with Jesus as sand falling through our hands? Making it almost impossible to maintain fully. In the end it comes down to this: Grace is a free gift and there is nothing we can do about it…except to just accept it.

This talk was given on October 27, 2024 from Seattle, Washington.

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@jaybakker

@revolution1994

@revolution94

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One of the perks of doing a pre-recorded talk is that sometimes you’re midway through a talk and you realize things just aren’t clicking how you’d like, and when that happens in a live talk you just have to try to power through and hope it all works out in the end—but when it’s pre-recorded you can just put a pin in that talk and revisit it later. That’s what happened this week. Jay’s original talk turned out to need a bit more tweaking and work, so he put it back on the shelf and recorded a new talk. In this new talk Jay dives into the topic of scapegoating, what it is and why we do it. He also discusses the idea of The Lack. What is The Lack? What does it mean to embrace The Lack? Is embracing The Lack at the core of Paul’s message to the Galatians? There is a lot going on in the world. A lot of suffering. It’s at times like this society tends to do the most scapegoating, because in a strange way it gives us comfort in uncomfortable times, but at what price? Here at Revolution, we discuss disagreeing well, because maybe confrontation is needed for growth. Maybe confrontation can help us? But we have to do it right, we have to do it in a way where we find common ground and a shared humanity. It’s harder to see each other’s shared humanity through a computer or phone screen but that is where we spend the bulk of our time, so we have to find a way to recognize the humanity in others through a screen. Because arguments aren’t the end of the world, and we shouldn’t fear them…we just have to learn how to both argue and disagree well.

This talk was given on October 13, 2024 from Seattle, Washington.

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@jaybakker

@revolution1994

@revolution94

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Big doings for Jay recently! He fills us in on his trip to NYC to meet with the folks who are producing and performing the Broadway musical about his mom, including Sir Elton John! Crazy! Today talk though is a bit of an audible. It’s a really great talk! It wasn’t, however, the original talk he had planned—that talk got derailed when his plane ride home from NYC lost power and had to make an emergency landing! Scary stuff, but everyone is okay and safe and sound! But with that talk being too much to tackle on no sleep and a nightmare of a plane ride, Jay switched his focus to Paul Tillich and really knocks the talk out of the park. Tillich is an absolute favorite here at Revolution. Jay discusses two of Tillich’s sermons and wow, do they get you thinking! Do non-Christians do a better job of showing love than Christians do? If we’re void of love, are we void of God? Is genuine love the presence of God? What is calculated justice? Are we living a life of passionate grace, and passionate love? Or are we just calculating justice? Does the Golden Rule have limits? Does love have a limit? And maybe the heaviest hitting question of the bunch…Where does God abide?

This talk was given on October 6, 2024 from Seattle, Washington.

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@jaybakker

@revolution1994

@revolution94

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The world is always suffering, always has been and always will be—so the world needs us to show love and grace to each other constantly, as much as we can. What’s today’s talk about? Jesus and Paul, of course. Two of Revolutions biggest staples! Throw in a touch of Martin Luther King, Jr., John Hume, and Tammy Faye and you can’t go wrong! The only hiccup with getting inspiration from all of these heavy hitters is that the lessons they teach are often easier said than done, and today’s talk is no different. It’s important, but we acknowledge that it is progress over perfection. These lessons are hard. Easy to teach, harder to practice. But we should always try. Doing good today is better than being perfect tomorrow. We need to love each other. Sometimes it’s easy, and sometimes we have to love from afar. Find a new, different way to love someone while still keeping our distance. Luckily loving someone doesn’t equal liking them. Is there a way to hate evil, but not hate the people that do evil? Are they one in the same? Is groupthink our biggest downfall? Do we need more rebels—people to go against the flow. Does that help us more, or is it too scary of an idea? Or is it both? Today Jay tries to tackle some of these hard questions by diving into both Luke and Paul’s letter to the Romans. What does it mean to think like Jesus? To think like Paul? When it comes down to the beliefs of Christianity what is the hardest part? Is it the rules? Or is it loving others?

This talk was given on Sept 29, 2024 from Seattle, Washington.

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@jaybakker

@revolution1994

@revolution94

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Why do we do things we don’t want to do? Why can’t we always do what we want to? These are topics that Paul brings up in his letter to the Romans. It is also a concept that Revolution favorite Paul Tillich dives into when he discusses the concept of sin. At Revolution we believe in grace and acceptance over all things, that’s why we put a lot of trust in our two Pauls! The Apostle, and Tillich. Together they make a great team in their exploration of grace, questioning the laws of religion, and what it means to truly feel accepted. At times probably almost everyone has felt that God hates them, or maybe God has left them. Where does this feeling come from? Is it possible that this feeling is also one of the closest ways to be connected to Jesus? Do the rules and laws of religion amplify these feelings? These feelings of a being sinful and useless and unloved, not accepted by God or the church or ourselves? Where does this roadblock come in? How can we get the breakthrough that’s needed to understand grace? What does it mean to have a life above ourselves? This talk doesn’t have all the answers, but it is a great, great, place to start as we try to figure out more about God and ourselves and others.

This talk was given on Sept 22, 2024 from Seattle, Washington.

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@jaybakker

@revolution1994

@revolution94

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Today Jay dives into some of the philosophy he’s been reading and shares a lot of the lessons and insights he’s picked up in his studies. In this talk Jay talks about community, but hand in hand with that Jay also discusses the idea of alienation. How the feeling of being alienated is an essential bond that unites all of us. It’s our common ground. Jay also ties that together with some thoughts he has on inclusion. On what true inclusion looks like. How true inclusion involves having different views and backgrounds, this can’t be avoided if we’re seeking to actively practice inclusivity. Jay asks us to look within ourselves and our groups and ask if we have any unseen asterisks next to the grace we show people. Do we see the shared alienated humanity in everyone? Or do we make exceptions on who gets love, grace, and inclusion. How does alienation affect us? How does oppression affect us? How does it affect others? And maybe most importantly, are we becoming all the things we hate by alienating others and forming close exclusive communities that aren’t as inclusive as they appear?

This talk was given on Sept 15, 2024 from Seattle, Washington.

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@jaybakker

@revolution1994

@revolution94

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In today’s talk Jay discussed the Good Samaritan. Like almost all of Jay’s talk, it’s about that…but really about so much more. It’s about the Samaritan, and the man beaten, it’s about Jesus and it’s about Paul and it’s about Gaza. It’s about Martin Luther King, and John Hume and Tammy Faye. It’s about forgiveness and grace! It is about Jay’s compulsion to forgive, or at least trying his hardest to. Today Jay also expands on a principle instilled in him by his mom, and that is we all have a shared common humanity that keeps use connected to each other. We can’t forget that or overlook it. Often, we struggle with the idea of forgiveness, but Jay poses the question that if we reframe forgiveness as mercy rather than sacrifice does it change things? If we see forgiveness as just more than all the adjustments we have to make and overcome, does that reframing help us? Is this how we can find ways to be kinder to everyone and build better bridges? What happens when we think like the Good Samaritan thought? If we see that all people are people and all people matter. What happens if we let grace do what grace does?

This talk was given on Sept 8, 2024 from Seattle, Washington.

www.facebook.com/revolutionchurchmn

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www.youtube.com/revolutionbroadcasting

@jaybakker

@revolution1994

@revolution94

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