Welcome to "Monday Musings," a new series where Pastor Don (that's me!) is going to (try to) come to you every week with a new/interesting topic for discussion about life in the Christian community. I'll try to explain it as best I can, and hope that you'll come on over to the Discord server to continue the conversation!

In today's episode, we continue our lenten mini-devotional theme with an exploration of both the Old Testament scripture from this past Sunday's worship (Genesis 15:1-8) along with Matthew 6:1-8. 

Clearly we're feeling the first 8 verses of things this week.

For today, we meditate a bit on what it means to be a faithful servant of God (rather than just having faith), and work on our awareness of those forms of piety we use to shield ourselves from feedback and criticism. We talk about how easy it is for us to become convinced that just because we think God has ordained a particular thing to happen, that we know how that thing must therefore happen and, by wrapping ourselves up in those forms of demonstrative piety, we can wind up convincing ourselves and others that we are following God when, in reality, we're just following our own messed up methodology instead. That's what we're talking about today but...if you want to know more, listen to the episode!

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Website: pastorkuma.wixsite.com/unfinished

Discord: https://discord.gg/mJxWv6c

Instagram/Twitter: @pastorkuma

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UnfinishedKIPC

Welcome to "Monday Musings," a new series where Pastor Don (that's me!) is going to (try to) come to you every week with a new/interesting topic for discussion about life in the Christian community. I'll try to explain it as best I can, and hope that you'll come on over to the Discord server to continue the conversation!

In today's episode, we start off with a bit of a lenten mini-series where I'm going to tackle certain problematic texts and other scriptural concepts that bear some deconstructing, particularly in light of how they have been abused by American Christians in the past few centuries. Today, we lead off with a discussion about 1 John 2:18-20, and the idea of "antichrist." No, it's not some future mega-hitler that we totally don't have to worry about today. Antichrists (it's a type of person, not one individual) are people from within the Christian community who bend the faith away from God, wearing the teachings of Christ like a costume while leading people away from self-reflection, repentance, and care for others. Like a mirror-universe Jesus (goatee optional) antichrists use Christian-sounding language and a missional mindset to direct people away from the inner work Spirit which moves us to openness, acceptance, love, and compassion for all. That's what we're talking about today but...if you want to know more, listen to the episode!

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Website: pastorkuma.wixsite.com/unfinished

Discord: https://discord.gg/mJxWv6c

Instagram/Twitter: @pastorkuma

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UnfinishedKIPC

Welcome to "Monday Musings," a new series where Pastor Don (that's me!) is going to (try to) come to you every week with a new/interesting topic for discussion about life in the Christian community. I'll try to explain it as best I can, and hope that you'll come on over to the Discord server to continue the conversation!

In today's episode, we follow up on a conversation that started with our Sunday afternoon worship service; a conversation about what it means to be deliberate in our actions as Christians, even when it would be so much easier to do literally anything else. On Sunday, we explored how choices of convenience can bear disastrous fruit, and result in the rise of corruption, and even evil among us. Today, we go a little further beyond that, and explore the fear that sits not only in our own hearts when we court convenience, but in the hearts of those corrupt and evil people we stand against as well. It can be tough to be compassionate in the face of evil but...spoiler warning...that's what it means to be deliberate! That's what we're talking about today but...if you want to know more, listen to the episode!

____________

Website: pastorkuma.wixsite.com/unfinished

Discord: https://discord.gg/mJxWv6c

Instagram/Twitter: @pastorkuma

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UnfinishedKIPC

Welcome to "Monday Musings," a new series where Pastor Don (that's me!) is going to (try to) come to you every week with a new/interesting topic for discussion about life in the Christian community. I'll try to explain it as best I can, and hope that you'll come on over to the Discord server to continue the conversation!

In today's episode, we talk about what it means to participate in church, both in worship and in general as part of the community. You may think that you need to prepare heavily, and through your contribution produce the best possible product of your efforts for God, but that isn't at all what God wants. Instead, God wants you to find ways to be present and active in worship of the Lord in ways that move you to joy, regardless of whether those actions look well and polished to others. That's what we're talking about today but...if you want to know more, listen to the episode!

____________

Website: pastorkuma.wixsite.com/unfinished

Discord: https://discord.gg/mJxWv6c

Instagram/Twitter: @pastorkuma

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UnfinishedKIPC

Welcome to "Monday Musings," a new series where Pastor Don (that's me!) is going to (try to) come to you every week with a new/interesting topic for discussion about life in the Christian community. I'll try to explain it as best I can, and hope that you'll come on over to the Discord server to continue the conversation!

In today's episode, we discuss the personal and spiritual importance of taking the "L." In our lives, we all too often focus on "winning" in a particular situation, allowing our sense of righteousness to motivate us to keep fighting loosing battles especially when the cause we're fighting for seems just. But, when we do that, we wind up failing to accurately discern what the call of the Holy Spirit actually is on our lives, and blind ourselves to different options to do justice, and love kindness, which only ask us to sacrifice our sense of victory in service of God's good work.  That's what we're talking about today but...if you want to know more, listen to the episode!

____________

Website: pastorkuma.wixsite.com/unfinished

Discord: https://discord.gg/mJxWv6c

Instagram/Twitter: @pastorkuma

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UnfinishedKIPC

Welcome to "Monday Musings," a new series where Pastor Don (that's me!) is going to (try to) come to you every week with a new/interesting topic for discussion about life in the Christian community. I'll try to explain it as best I can, and hope that you'll come on over to the Discord server to continue the conversation!

Today's episode is about an issue we all have in our faith lives; the development of fixed perspectives, and committing to the momentum those perspectives carry instead of learning, adapting, growing and maturing. There's a LOT of things in our faith tradition that we stick to because reasons, but which are not loving, not caring, and often not even biblical...but we stick to them, even to the extent that it hurts other people, because momentum is a powerful thing. That's what we're talking about today but...if you want to know more, listen to the episode!

____________

Website: pastorkuma.wixsite.com/unfinished

Discord: https://discord.gg/mJxWv6c

Instagram/Twitter: @pastorkuma

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UnfinishedKIPC

Welcome to "Monday Musings," a new series where Pastor Don (that's me!) is going to (try to) come to you every week with a new/interesting topic for discussion about life in the Christian community. I'll try to explain it as best I can, and hope that you'll come on over to the Discord server to continue the conversation!

Today's episode is about Social Contracts and the Paradox of Tolerance, that unfortunate paradox where we try too hard to be a tolerant community and wind up actually giving rise to more intolerance instead, and hastening the end of our church community as a whole. This is a tough one to struggle with, because it requires us to confront not only how people in power can abuse it to seize control (which DEFINITELY happens), but how terrifyingly easy it is for us to overcompensate in either direction when dealing with the issue. But...if you want to know more, listen to the episode!

____________

Website: pastorkuma.wixsite.com/unfinished

Discord: https://discord.gg/mJxWv6c

Instagram/Twitter: @pastorkuma

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UnfinishedKIPC

Since technical difficulties are currently keeping us from putting out our usual audio/video stuff, Pastor Don is trying something new; "Monday Musings!" 

In this new series, Pastor Don (that's me!) is going to (try to) come to you every week with a new/interesting topic for discussion about life in the Christian community. I'll try to explain it as best I can, and hope that you'll come on over to the Discord server to continue the conversation!

Today's episode is about the "Church Death Spiral;" a process by which an otherwise well-intentioned church which has begun to decline winds up accelerating the process, and absolutely craters itself into the ground at a high rate of speed. This is a very common cause of church death, and the solution as is as counterintuitive as it is biblically-based. But...if you want to know more, listen to the episode!

Website: pastorkuma.wixsite.com/unfinished

Discord: https://discord.gg/mJxWv6c

Instagram/Twitter: @pastorkuma

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UnfinishedKIPC 

Though most of the Unfinished Community media is still offline, we've still managed to get a little bit of interesting content out!

Today we have Part 1 of a 5-part miniseries based on the 5-part article series "5 Signs Your Church Might Be Headed Off the Rails." 

With Rev. Emmie Arnold of the PCUSA, join Pastor Don as we do a deep-dive discussion into how some of the more common challenges in a church can turn deadly, when human insecurities and desire for power run a church into the ground. In Part 1, we're discussing the difference between having difficulty attracting volunteers, and having difficulty retaining volunteers; one is a sign of a healthy church ready for growth, and the other can be a sign of something much worse at work. 

Read the article at https://medium.com/@kipc.pastor.don/5-signs-your-church-might-be-headed-off-the-rails-part-1-274bad36b044, and join us over the next few weeks as we dig deep into some of the ways to spot 

Welcome to Episode 4 our new series on the Gospel, "Back to Basics." Featuring Lindsey Peacock and Pastor Don, this series takes a different approach to the Gospel message, working line-by-line through the text and discussing just what exactly is going on with this sometimes confusing, often-misinterpreted story.  

This week, we continue our deep dive into the back half of Mark 1, talking about the language and translation in the text, exploring some of the words and phrases that may have lost some nuance, or been flat-out mistranslated, in the move from Ancient Greek through to Modern English. Strap in for a fun ride (if you're a linguist, or generally interested in Biblical translation, that is!) 

Of course, the video is just the start of the conversation; let's keep it going over on our Discord server, where we have a specific thread just for talking about what we've learned from "Back to Basics." Join us there to dig even deeper into the text, as we walk together through this wonderful, and occasionally frustrating, text!   

Links to the Discord server and more can be found on our website: http://pastorkuma.wixsite.com/unfinished