Deeper and Wider

In this weeks episode we speak with Ched Myers on Sabbath economics. Not sure what Sabbath economics is? This is what this episode is about, as we seek to figure out an economics of the Kingdom of God.

Ched Myers is an activist theologian who has worked in social change movements for more than 40 years. With a degree in New Testament from the Graduate Theological Union, he is a popular educator, animating scripture and building literacy in and engagement with historic and current movements for peace and justice. His books include Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (Orbis, 1988/2008); Watershed Discipleship: Reinhabiting Bioregional Faith and Practice (Cascade, 2016); and the forthcoming Healing Haunted Histories: A Settler Discipleship of Decolonization (with Enns, Elaine, Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2021). Ched’s publications can be found at http://www.ChedMyers.org. He and his partner Elaine Enns, a restorative justice practitioner, live in the Ventura River watershed in southern California, where they co-direct Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries http://www.bcm-net.org.

In this weeks episode we speak with Professor Ellen Davis on how scripture speaks of the connection between our relationship with God and our relationship with the land, and the implications that has for today- especially in light of our current ecological crisis.

Professor Ellen Davis is Amos Ragan Kearns Professor of Bible and Practical Theology at Duke Divinity School. She’s the author of 11 books and many articles. Her books include Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible, Biblical Prophecy: Perspectives for Christian Theology, Discipleship, and Ministry, and Wondrous Depth: Old Testament Preaching.

If you want to listen to her talk more on this topic then I encourage you to search her name on YouTube and watch her lectures. Also, her book Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible speaks a lot into today’s topic.

In this weeks episode we will be speaking with Aaron Niequist on having A Practiced Based Faith.

Aaron is a liturgist, writer, and pastor currently living in NYC. After leading worship at Mars Hill Church and Willow Creek Church, he created A New Liturgy- a collection of modern liturgical worship recordings. Shortly after, Aaron started a discipleship-focused, formational, ecumenical, practice-based community at Willow Creek called The Practice. In 2018, he released a book about a practice-based faith called The Eternal Current: How a Practice-Based Faith Can Save Us from Drowning, and he continues to create resources to help us all flesh it out, including his podcast The Eternal Current Podcast.

To find out more about his work, follow Aaron on Facebook or on Twitter or Instagram @aaronieq. Also, check out his podcast The Eternal Current Podcast, as well as his liturgies at https://www.anewliturgy.com/

In this week episode we are speaking with Lisa Sharon Harper on decolonising the gospel in order to get back to the true gospel proclamation message, or what Lisa calls- and is also the name of her bestselling book- “The Very Good Gospel”. For some of our listeners, words such as “decolonising” might be new to you, or might even be something that sounds worrisome- and for other listeners this might sound like liberation. Regardless of your reaction, may I ask you to breathe deeply and trust me as we go into this episode and talk about The Very Good Gospel with Lisa Sharon Harper.

Lisa Sharon Harper is the founder and president of Freedom Road, a ground breaking consulting group that crafts experiences that bring common understanding and common commitments that lead to common action toward a more just world. Lisa is a public theologian whose writing, speaking, activism and training has sparked and fed the fires of re-formation in the church from Ferguson and Charlottesville to South Africa, Brazil, Australia and Ireland. Lisa’s book, ​The Very Good Gospel​ was named 2016 “Book of the Year” and the Huffington Post identified Lisa as one of 50 Women Religious Leaders to Celebrate on International Women’s Day.

, or Instagram and Twitter @lisasharper. Also find her at her website at www.lisasharonharper.com. Also, check out the work of freedom road at https://freedomroad.us/.To find out more about Lisa, follow her on either Facebook athttps://www.facebook.com/lisasharonharper.page

#TheVeryGoodGospel #TheGospel #DeclonizingChristianity

In this weeks episode we are going to be talking about a sensitive topic: we are talking about Domestic family violence. Within this topic, we will address how the church has sometimes got their response wrong, and also where the church has done the right thing, and also how the church can do better. We will also be exploring how to navigate domestic family violence in light of faith in God. I do also talk about how things like forgiveness and verses like “turn the other cheek” have been weaponised, and how we might understand such topics and verses in light of Domestic Family Violence. In exploring these questions, I had this conversation with Erica Hamence.

Erica initially trained to be a human rights lawyer, with a BA/LLB from The University of Melbourne. But she found herself drawn to express the same desire for justice within the church. This eventually led her to ministry in Sydney. She is a senior assistant minister at St. Barnabas Anglican Church, Broadway (Barneys to everyone), where she mostly works to support and raise up leaders. She is also the spokesperson for Common Grace's Domestic and Family Violence Justice Team. The team works to highlight and address the problem of domestic and family violence within the church and within Australian society, and to provide resources and support to people who have experienced domestic and family violence, and those who love them. Common Grace is a movement of about 47,000 who love Jesus and justice.

To learn more about what Common Grace does in relation to seeking domestic and family violence justice, visit https://www.commongrace.org.au/domestic_violence. Also, check out https://www.saferresource.org.au/, which is a resource to help Australian churches understand, identify, and respond to domestic and family violence.

If today’s episode has prompted you to seek help in response todays episode topic, please call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or call the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service on 1800 737 732.

In this weeks episode will be talking about a more beautiful Pentecostalism with Jonathan Martin. Some people have had a complicated relationship with Pentecostalism, and yet, on the far side of these Pentecostal experiences the question is: is there a Pentecostalism that’s healthy & beautiful?

Jonathan Martin is the author of two critically acclaimed books, Prototype and How to Survive a Shipwreck, with a third book on the way. He has a podcast called The Zeitcast, where he has interviewed a wide variety of guests. Jonathan’s work and words have been featured in places like the New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, Newsweek, Vox, Sojourners, The Huffington Post, and Relevant Magazine, and he has published in scholarly journals, like The Journal of Pentecostal Theology. Currently, he lives in Oklahoma City, where he serves as the Lead Pastor of The Table. Finding God at the intersections, He moves fluidly between secular and religious contexts, between the academy and the Church, and between local churches with pipe organs, B-3 organs, and electric guitars. Wherever he goes- whether it be at church’s like Elevation Church, Willow Creek Community Church, or universities like Princeton Theological Seminary- the message is always the same: no matter who you are, where you’ve been, or what you’ve done—God is at work, to bring beauty out of your brokenness.

To follow the work of Jonathan Martin follow him on either Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/jonathanmartinonline), Instagram @jonathanamartin, or Twitter @theboyonthebike. Also check out the church he pastors at https://www.thetableokc.com/ and follow his podcast “The Zeitcast”.

What does it mean to be lead by the Holy Spirit? How can we know it’s God speaking to us? How can we become aware of the Holy Spirit in us and all around us? These questions are more will be discussed today as we talk with Mark Godfrey.

Mark, alongside his wife, Belinda, are the Directors & Founders of BEYOND, A missional and prophetic ministry organisation that impacts communities both locally and overseas. BEYOND is called to be an inspirational voice to empower leaders, organisations and everyday people to live out their God designed story.

Mark holds a bachelors degree in social science, majoring in applied counselling. speaking personally, he is one of the most down to earth people I know. From what I have seen, Mark has a passion for seeing the Kingdom of God come in a holistic way- ways that include social justice, breaking down church walls, yet also seeing deeply personal transformations in people. Mark marries the two spheres of public faith and personal faith into his deep belief in the Holy Spirits intentional leading in our life and in the life of the church.

To follow Marks work, follow him on Insagram at mark.godfrey.75 and to follow the work of the ministry known as beyond, follow Beyond on either Facebook or Instagram with the handle at beyond.empower.

Despite sexuality being part of our human makeup, we don’t talk about it, and instead there is often shame around sex & sexuality. However, God made sex, God made sex good, and there is a whole erotic love poem in the Bible. And as we will come to see, the connection between sex & spirituality is deeply interwoven in the scriptures. To do this, we are going to talk with a sexologist who is also a Christian: Sandra Basham.

Sandra is a Christian, and an accredited pastor for the Foursquare Church of Western Australia. A practising counsellor, and is also a qualified forensic sexologist. She is currently undertaking Phd to further her research into sexology. She has a private practice where she specialises in sexual trauma and abuse, and relational sexual problems. Previously, she has been a senior lecturer in humanities and social science, and was previously on the board for the Western Australian sexology society. She also knows quite a bit of Hebrew, and you’ll hear her incorporate Hebrew into the topic as it pertains today.

In honour of National Reconciliation Week, I had the absolute pleasure to have a conversation with Brooke Prentis; hearing her story, and learning about both reconciliation, and also what it means to be both Aboriginal and Christian.

As we go through todays episode, we’ll be covering questions like:

-What is it like to be aboriginal in the Australian church context?

-What does reconciliation look like?

-How has your Aboriginal identity shaped the ways Aboriginal people see the gospel?

-How do we read the Bible with Aboriginal eyes?

-What can non-indigenous Christians learn from our indigenous brothers & sisters?

And so so much more, from questions on reconciliation, forgiveness, theology, cultural engagement and even stories about how God has been working in these lands well and truly before white people came along.

Brooke Prentis is an Aboriginal Christian Leader from the Wakka Wakka peoples. Brooke is the CEO of Common Grace, a growing movement of over 47,000 Australian Christians passionate about Jesus and Justice. Brooke is also the Coordinator of the Grasstree Gathering a growing network of over 200 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Christian Leaders. Brooke is a founding Board Member in Australia of NAIITS: a Global Indigenous Learning Community of Theologians. Brooke works ecumenically speaking on issues of Justice affecting Australia and sharing a message of Reconciliation as friendship.

To learn more about Reconciliation Week, visit https://www.commongrace.org.au/reconciliation_week_2020. Here you can sign up here for their series which includes daily devotions and creative ways to engage with National Reconciliation Week. Also, please sign up for church resources for Sunday 31 May.

To learn more about Grasstree Gathering, visit www.grasstreegathering.org.au.

Also, follow Brooke Prentis on Facebook and Instagram @brookeprentisgrasstree and Twitter @bprentis.

Part 2 of 2 of our conversation with Jarrod McKenna as we continue to tackle some of the big questions of the nonviolence of Jesus and its implications for us.

Pastor & Author Brian Zahnd says of Jarrod that “has the keen mind of a theologian, the warm heart of a pastor, and the dauntless courage of an activist. And as a skilled communicator all three of these attributes are evident as he seeks to form people in Christlike peacemaking. I have the highest respect for Jarrod McKenna and his work.“ Jarrod’s nonviolent activism has twice been awarded the Quaker’s Donald Groom Peace Fellowship. He is the Founding CEO of CommonGrace (Which is a movement of over 45,000+ Christians in Australia working for ‘beauty, generosity and justice’ in the public square), the co-initiator of #LoveMakesAWay for refugees which has become the largest faith based civil-disobedience movement in Australia’s history, is the former National Advisor for Faith and Activism for World Vision Australia, and for over 15 years has shared his home with refugees, people returning from prison and those doing it tough in the context of two neo-monastic communities including “First Home Project” which assists refugees and asylum seekers to find housing and employment.

You can follow Jarrod on facebook by finding him under his name, or on Twitter and Instagram at jarrodmckenna (all one word). Also listening to his podcast Inverse podcast- where him and his mate Drew Hart explores ways the Bible can turn the world upside down (https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/inverse-podcast/id1358332600).