The VUE Church Podcast: Recent Episodes
George Stull
VUE Church is based in the Bellevue community of Nashville, TN. It’s pastored by George Stull. Find us online at www.vuechurch.org
Long Story Short isa series of conversations and snapshot clips of defining moments (struggle, growth, healing, discernment, direction, or purpose) shaping people's lives and faith. We all experience and love God in a diversity of beautiful ways. Everyone’s faith is enriched when we can trust our unique path and experiences of God while recognizing the truth and beauty of another’s.
Long Story Short isa series of conversations and snapshot clips of defining moments (struggle, growth, healing, discernment, direction, or purpose) shaping people's lives and faith. We all experience and love God in a diversity of beautiful ways. Everyone’s faith is enriched when we can trust our unique path and experiences of God while recognizing the truth and beauty of another’s.
Sarah Huffman is theHealing Arts Coordinator at Monthaven Arts and Cultural Center.
She is an expressive therapist and clinical chaplain who has worked in the environments of residential addiction treatment, inpatient psychiatric treatment, medical hospitalization, and hospice care. Sarah strongly believes that creativity helps the process of mental, emotional, and spiritual recovery.
Long Story Short isa series of conversations and snapshot clips of defining moments (struggle, growth, healing, discernment, direction, or purpose) shaping people's lives and faith. We all experience and love God in a diversity of beautiful ways. Everyone’s faith is enriched when we can trust our unique path and experiences of God while recognizing the truth and beauty of another’s.
What is a church? It is a community of people held together not by power but by love. Simply put, any notion of a church must be a fully practical church that is concerned about getting the job of love done—and done better and better.
A church is made up of genuinely good people who are, from the deepest levels of their understanding and motivation, committed to promoting the good of everyone.
What is a church? Jarrod Morris-How can you talk about the beauty of the church without talking about the women of the church? For Mother's Day, Jarrod did just that, talked to us about the role of women in the church.
What is a church? The book of Acts is the very first story of the church. What is the big story of these texts and how do they still matter to us in the modern world?
SLIDES GEORGE READ IN OUR GATHERING
“When we claim and constantly reclaim the truth of being the chosen ones, we soon discover within ourselves a deep desire to reveal to others their own chosen-ness. Instead of making us feel that we are better, more precious or valuable than others, our awareness of being chosen opens our eyes to the chosen-ness of others. That is the great joy of being chosen: the discovery that others are chosen as well. There is a place for everyone – a unique, special place. Once we deeply trust that we ourselves are precious in God’s eyes, we are able to recognize the preciousness of others and their unique places in God’s heart.”
-Henri Nouwen, Life of the Beloved
What is a church? The book of Acts is the very first story of the church. What is the big story of these texts and how do they still matter to us in the modern world?
SLIDES GEORGE READ IN OUR GATHERING
The great gift of Christianity is to be united while remaining oneself. - Teilhard De Chardin
The Eucharist invites us to gather as family.
Nothing is an island, not even a molecule or an atom. Everything is meant to be in relationship. The Eucharist honors that. The Eucharist is meant to form us into one body in a way that takes us beyond the differences of personality, ideology, theology, gender, ethnicity, history, social status, preoccupation, privatized agenda, and jealousy. Often, it alone has the power to do this. God gives us something we couldn’t give to ourselves: a common heart and spirit. The Eucharist is, therefore, both the sacrament that celebrates unity and the sacrament that cleanses us for it.
—Ronald Rolheiser, Our One Great Act of Fidelity
What is a church? The book of Acts is the very first story of the church. What is the big story of these texts and how do they still matter to us in the modern world?
SLIDES GEORGE READ IN OUR GATHERING
How much I must criticize you, my church and yet how much I love you! How you have made me suffer much and yet owe much to you. I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence. Never in this world have I seen anything more obscurantist, more compromised, more false, and yet never in this world have I touched anything more pure, more generous, and more beautiful.
Carlo Caretto, An Ode to the Church
“I will put together my church, a church so expansive with love and energy that nothing can stop it.” Jesus
The task of the Church is "to be the irrefutable demonstration and proof of the fact that God is love,” Steve Chalke
'As St. John of the Cross said: "Mission is putting love where love is not.”
What is a church? It is people who are sensitive to the idols in their world…
-the ones we bow down to
-and the ones destroying the people we love
And it is people who are discerning…
-where in the midst of all the idolatry is there an earnest seeking for God?
-where in the midst of those misplaced trusts, is there something we can celebrate and affirm to help people reach out to the God who made them and loves them?
What is a church? The book of Acts is the very first story of the church. What is the big story of these texts and how do they still matter to us in the modern world?
SLIDES GEORGE READ IN OUR GATHERING
The gift of gathering: it inspires us, delightfully, to be more hopeful, more joyful, more thoughtful; in a word, more alive.A church is a group of people who are learning—imperfectly and with lots of grace—to live in the way of Jesus together; embracing his spirit and his work in the world.From science to technology, psychology to theology, we are “breaking through” many of the things we thought we knew. Our call as Christians is to make sure that our primary “breakthroughs” are becoming more loving. -Sebastian Moore, The Contagion of Jesus
Waiting in hope is open-ended. Much of our waiting is filled with wishes; we want the future to go in a very specific direction. Hope is something very different. Waiting open-endedly is an enormously radical attitude toward life. It is giving up control over our future and letting God define our life, trusting that God molds us according to God's love and not according to our fear. —Henri Nouwen, Seeds of Hope
To say “we believe” is to say you are part of a community learning to trust and carry this story together. It’s people saying we are becoming a family of people who root our lives and hope in the reality that after evil has done everything it can, love has more to say.
Palm Sunday- Where do we find God's physical presence in the world? In the historical Jesus, the body of Christ (his church and people), and in the Eucharist.
SLIDES GEORGE READ IN THE GATHERING
Christianity is without doubt the earthiest of all religions. It doesn't call you out of the physical, out of the body, or out of the world. Rather it tells you that God enters the physical, becomes one with it, blesses it, redeems it, and that there is no reason to escape from it. —Ronald Rolheiser, Our One Great Act Of Fidelity
How separate and divided is our world! We look around us, watch the world news, watch the local news, look at our places of work, our social circles, and even our churches, and we see tension and division everywhere. We are far from being one…
We cannot heal ourselves and find the key to overcome our wounds and divisions all on our own. So we must turn our helplessness into silence, a Eucharistic prayer that asks God to come and do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
—Ronald Rolheiser, Our One Great Act Of Fidelity
We must keep eating and drinking the Mystery, until one day it dawns on us, “My God, I really am what I eat! I also am the Body of Christ.” —Richard Rohr
When we forget the rhythm of work and rest, things in our lives can begin to slowly unravel and break down. Are you honoring the rhythms built into the fabric of creation and your life? SLIDES GEORGE READ IN THE GATHERINGfields not factoriesGenesis 2Leviticus 25Hebrews 4
We used to sing the hymn "Take Time to Be Holy." But perhaps we should be singing, "Take time to be human." Or finally, "Take time." Rest is taking time ... time to be holy ... time to be human.
Walter BrueggemannOur work becomes the entire context in which we define our lives. We lose God-consciousness, God-awareness, sightings of resurrection. We lose the capacity to sing “This is my Father’s world” and end up chirping little self-centered ditties about what we are doing.
Eugene Peterson
Matthew 17-Jesus' Transfirguration
SLIDES GEORGE READ IN THE GATHERING
Love is not just something that happens to you. It is a certain, special way of being alive.
—Thomas Merton
There are two utterly different forms of religion: one believes that God will love me if I change; the other believes that God loves me so that I can change! Ideas inform us, but love forms us—in an intrinsic and lasting way. God is always willing to wait for the lasting transformations brought about by love.
—Richard Rohr
The Lenten season is a time of thoughtfulness and reflection, a call to remember who we are, and a time to get back in touch with our souls; our guide to the more of life. And Jesus' life renews all of this in every one of us.
SLIDES GEORGE READ IN OUR GATHERING
Our stories are all stories of searching. We search for a good self to be and for good work to do. We search to become human in a world that tempts us always to be less than human. We search to love and to be loved. And in a world where it is often hard to believe in much of anything, we search to believe in something holy and beautiful and life-transcending that will give meaning and purpose to the lives we live.
Frederick Buechner, The Longing For Home
God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him.
Romans 8:29, The Message
Jesus was able to listen to each of these voices and knew he was rooted in the strength and peace of divine love that was deeper than any other aim or attempt at significance, meaning, or strength. It is the genius of Jesus. And of us, too.
Jesus began His ministry by stating a set of paradoxes that we call the Beatitudes found in Matthew 5. George focused on the first two (poor in spirit, mourning) and their relationship in our everyday lives to help us keep living from an open heart.
SLIDES GEORGE'S READ IN OUR GATHERING
When we describe God, we can only use similes, analogies, and metaphors. All theological language is an approximation offered tentatively in holy awe. That’s the best human language can achieve.
-Richard Rohr, The Divine Dance
We’ve substituted theological ideas for the experience of life; we are full of religious notions, but our great weakness is that for our hearts, there is no one there.
-A. W. Tozer, The Divine Conquest (1950)
We've lost our capacity for enchantment, our ability to see and experience God as a living, vital presence in our lives.
-Richard Beck, Recovering An Enchanted Faith In A Skeptical World
Opening your heart is moving to a place of understanding a deeper, wider, stronger, more enduring nature to life that is good. To open your heart is to get better and better at receiving the goodness of life as it flows toward you.
-Rob Bell
Can we discover strength in our weakness? Sounds absurd, but unique to Christianity is the idea that someone is strongest in their lowest moments.
Most of us who call ourselves Christians do so on the basis of belief more than experience. We’ve substituted theological ideas for the experience of life; we are full of religious notions, but our great weakness is that for our hearts, there is no one there.
-A. W. Tozer, The Divine Conquest (1950)
The universal way to experience God “with us:” is by acting in love in the manner that you see in Jesus Christ.
-Dallas Willard
May Christ live in your hearts through faith, and as a result of having strong roots in love, may you have the power to grasp love’s width and length, height and depth. And may we all knowthe loveof Christ that is beyond knowledge so that we will be filled entirely with the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:17-19
What a facinating way to articulate how to really live!?Jesus: "whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it." (Matthew 16:25)
SLIDE GEORGE READ
The cross says, "The pain stops here.” The way of the cross is a way of absorbing pain, not passing it on, a way that transforms pain from destructive impulse into creative power. When Jesus accepted the cross, his death opened up a channel for the redeeming power of love. When we accept the crosses and contradictions in our lives, we allow that same power to flow.
Parker Palmer, The Promise of Paradox
When we describe God, we can only use similes, analogies, and metaphors. All theological language is an approximation offered tentatively in holy awe. That’s the best human language can achieve. We can say, “It’s like . . .” or “It’s similar to . . .”; but we can never say with absolute certainty, “It is . . .” We absolutely must maintain a fundamental humility before the Great Mystery; otherwise, religion worships itself and its formulations instead of God.
-Richard Rohr
Anyone who loves their life [psyche] will lose it, while anyone who hates their life [psyche] in this world will keep it for eternal life [zoe]. John 12:25
It’s a matter of sequence
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Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement…get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed. Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.
-Abraham Joshua Heschel
Tensions are largely considered a negative thing. In this teaching, George explores the vitality and necessity of some dynamic tensions that, when held together, are good and reveal to us a new and larger truth.SLIDES GEORGE READ“Any time you take a dynamic tension at the heart of human vitality and ask people to pick one or the other, you are going to have absolute madness.” —Rob Bell, Congressively ProservativeWe are encouraged to hold the tension of apparently contradictory viewpoints-and we often find ourselves happily surprised at the new and larger truth that emerges as a result. That is the promise of paradox. Community can remind us that we are called to love, for community is a product of love in action and not of simple self-interest. For in community, one learns that the solitary self is not an adequate measure of reality, that we can begin to know the fullness of truth only through multiple visions. Community can teach us that our grip on truth is fragile and incomplete, that we need many ears to hear the fullness of God's word for our lives. —Parker Palmer, The Promise of Paradox
As we began a new year, George read to us Psalm 139 which reminds us we are wonderfully made and everyone is worthy of love.
SLIDE GEORGE READ
I want to feel that I am thoroughly and completely understood so that now and then, I can take my guard down, and look out around me, and not feel that I will be destroyed with my defenses down. I want to feel completely vulnerable and absolutely secure that I can run the risk of radical exposure and know that the eye that beholds my vulnerability will not step on me.
There is in every person that which waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in himself. There is in every person that which waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in other people. And when these two sounds come together, this is the music God heard when he said, "Let us make them in our image.”
—Howard Thurman, 1980 speech at Spelman College
It’s no easy task to walk this earth and find peace. Inside of us, something is at odds with the very rhythm of things.
An unquenchable fire lies at the center of the human experience. Sometimes it hits us as pain— restlessness, dissatisfaction, frustration, and aching.
At other times it’s felt as a deep energy, as something beautiful, as an inescapable pull, more important than anything else inside us, toward love, beauty, creativity, and a future beyond our limited present.
Desire can show itself as aching pain or delicious hope. What we do with our longings, both the pain and the hope they bring us, that is our spirituality.
-Ronald Rolheiser, The Holy Longing
The liturgical year is an adventure in bringing the Christian life to fullness, the heart to alert, the soul to focus. It does not concern itself with the questions of how to make a living. It concerns itself with the questions of how to make a life. -Joan Chittister
George-Advent is about waiting and hoping with room for many different experiences like hope & joy, longing & aching, lament & peace, woundedness & healing, darkness & light. Join us as we explore why the practice of Advent can tune our lives to the greater things to come that our hearts long for.
SLIDES READ IN OUR GATHERING
Those who learn to wait are uneasy about their way of life, but yet have seen a vision of greatness in the world of the future and are patiently expecting its fulfillment. The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come.Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Advent Sermons
I leave home every time I lose faith in the voice that calls me the Beloved. But there are many other voices, voices that are loud…These voices say, "Go out and prove that you are worth something. Henri Nouwen, The Return of The Prodigal Son
George - In some ways, we all may undervalue the depth of friendship as a vital aspect of growth and learning in the spiritual life. But understanding the deeper meaning of true friendship can have incredible healing possibilities for our lives. For me, often, poetry helps me understand the underlying, deeper meaning of words. The essay below, by one of my favorite poets, David Whyte, opened my heart and understanding to what Jesus may have actually meant when he called us "friends" in John 15.
FRIENDSHIP not only helps us see ourselves through another's eyes, but can be sustained over the years only with someone who has repeatedly forgiven us for our trespasses, as we must find it in ourselves to forgive them in turn.
A friend knows our difficulties and shadows and remains in sight, a companion to our vulnerabilities more than our triumphs, even when we are under the strange illusion we do not need them.
Real friendship is a blessing exactly because its elemental form is rediscovered again and again through understanding and mercy. All friendships of any length are based on a continued, mutual forgiveness. Without tolerance and mercy all friendships die.
The ultimate touchstone of friendship is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.
A close friendship will always reveal the shadow in the other as much as ourselves, to remain friends, we must know the other and their difficulties and encourage the best in them, not through critique but through addressing the better part of them, thus subtly discouraging what makes them smaller, less generous, less of themselves.
Through the eyes of a real friendship an individual is larger than their everyday actions, and through the eyes of another we receive a greater sense of our own personhood, one we can aspire to, the one in whom they have most faith.
—David Whyte, Consolations
Seeing someone well is a powerfully creative act. No one can fully appreciate their own beauty and strengths unless those things are mirrored back to them. There is something in being seen that brings forth growth. If you beam the light of your attention on me, I blossom. If you see great potential in me, I will probably come to see great potential in myself. If you can understand my frailties and sympathize with me when life treats me harshly, then I am more likely to have the strength to weather the storms of life. In how you see me, I will learn to see myself. -David Brooks, How To Know A Person"Work and look hard for ways and opportunities to make little moves against destructiveness” -Andre Trocme
George-when the world is breaking all around us we can often feel helpless. But the reality is we can make a difference in the social fabric nearest us by leaning into the relationships that make up our everyday lives. In this series, we are looking at how seeing one another and being seen by others makes a bigger difference than we might initially think.SLIDES George Read In Our Gathering:"We have learned to distinguish between parts but have failed to go on to reunite them. Our individuality has been undermined because we have forgotten what it truly rests on…that all things are interwoven and that each strand in the tapestry is holy." John Phillip Newell, A New Harmony"Remain true to yourself, but move ever upward toward greater love! At the summit, you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge.” -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin*Song Credit: Here's My Heart, written by Jason Ingram, Louie Giglio, Chris Tomlin
Jesus in John 15 says, "My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you." What's the invitation here: to change, fix, convert, or to love? As one theologian says: "Love is a transforming power when we are poised to promote the good of those in range."
SLIDES GEORGE READ
We are created for love. There is no other energy that can truly bring together what has been torn apart by fear and hatred.
John Philip Newell
“So this is my prayer: that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much but well. Learn to love appropriately. You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush. Live a lover’s life, circumspect and exemplary, a life Jesus will be proud of: bountiful in fruits from the soul, making Jesus Christ attractive to all, getting everyone involved in the glory and praise of God.”
Philippians 1:9-11 MSG
Adam Buzard from Operation Andrew Group shared with us research done with the Barna Group about the "State of Nashville" concerning how both the churched and the unchurched feel about faith in our city.About Operation Andrew Group: UNITE. PARTNER. LOVE.We seek to unite the Body of Christ as we partner with the local church to love God and our neighbors.Operation Andrew Group, in partnership with the Charis Foundation and Barna Group, generated the State of Nashville, a demographically representative study of Nashville residents. This comprehensive study can be found here.https://operationandrew.org/the-state-of-nashville/
So what happens when you worship the creator God whose plan to rescue the world and put it to rights has been accomplished in Jesus? Because you were made in God’s image, worship makes you more truly human. When you gaze in love and gratitude at the God in whose image you were made, you do indeed grow. You discover more of what it means to be fully alive. -N.T. Wright, Simply Christian
Neuroscientific evidence of the best ways to maintain a healthy brain:-smile-stay intellectually curious & active-consciously relax-yawn-meditation & prayer-dialogue with others-faith
Book George Referenced in this Sermon:
How God Changes Your Brain, Andrew Newberg, M.D.
In this teaching, George reflected on the practice of communion and the thought that the grape & grain in the elements, remind us of why all human labor necessary for human flourishing is SACRED.
In Luke 24 Jesus is recognized by his disciples only after having a meal with them at a table. Thousands of years later we are still realizing Christ's presence at our communion tables. Who's invited? Everyone!“If Jesus died for this kind of inclusion at the table, why would we constrict it after his death instead of expanding it? It’s like saying: Only well people are allowed to receive God’s medicine. We want everyone to come get the medicine except the sick—only whole people can receive the meal that mends all our brokenness.” David FitchSONG CREDIT: Christ is Lower Still | Sanctuary Songs, The Porter's Gate
George explored the question: What are we doing here? Worship is so much more than what we do on Sunday mornings for an hour. Nonetheless, what we do in that hour is vital and significant to what it means to worship with our lives. Romans 12 says that we are more than offering our individual selves to God when we gather to worship. We are actually creating some larger together. Singing matters, but that isn't even the point--the shared experience is!
WORSHIP IN EVERY DIRECTION
We pursue lives of joy, hope, gratitude, appreciation, creativity, wonder, and awe. We worship with our lives in these ways.
We are learning to serve one another and love others. We share, sacrifice, and give, living for more than just ourselves.
We are compelled that honesty, generosity, simplicity, humility, forgiveness, compassion, and kindness are all a better way to live.
In 2 Corinthians 6, Paul lists several hardships he's faced, yet after a whole passage of naming them, it doesn't end in despair. Somehow, accepting hardship was a pathway forward to peace which helped him see life in its wider perspective.
SLIDES GEORGE READ
"Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly.” -Matthew 11:28, The Message
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time; accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; taking the world as it is, trusting that You will make all things right.
Reinhold Niebuhr, Serenity Prayer
In this teaching, George talks about the lack of margin many of us live with leading to chronic overload and exhaustion. The American Psychological Association says 7 out of 10 U.S. adults feelcompletely overwhelmed with life. Jesus says we can learn the unforced rhythms of grace to live more lightly and freely.
SLIDES GEORGE READ IN OUR GATHERING
In emotionally healthy churches, people understand the limits God has given them. They joyfully receive them as a gift. As a result, they are not frenzied or covetous, trying to live a life God never intended. They are marked by contentment and joy. Emotionally healthy churches also embrace their limits with the same joy and contentment. Not attempting to be like another church. Exhaustion, anxiety, burnout, superficial spirituality. These are usually signs that we are living outside of our God-given limitations. Pete Scarzero, Emotionally Healthy Church
Jesus wants us to know that we don’t need all the things or experiences we think we do. Simplicity creates margins and spaces and openness in our lives. Simplicity asks us to let go of the tangle of wants so we can receive the simple gifts of life that cannot be taken away. Simplicity invites us into daily pleasures that can open us to God, who is present in them all.
Adele Ahlberg Calhoun, Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practice That Transform Us
SONG CREDIT “Take It Easy”* by Matt Maher
Justin and Trisha Davis share vulnerably and honestly about the failure of their marriage. What followed was a 4-year journey of pain, grief, and ultimately the restoration of their relationship.
LEARN MORE ABOUT JUSTIN & TRISHA HERE
Refine Us Ministries
What a special Sunday gathering to start a new school year! We created some sacred space for prayer: for our schools, teachers, administrators, counselors, support staff, coaches, SRO’s, custodians, bus drivers, parents, & students. Some members of our community lead us in some beautiful ‘prayers of the people.’
SLIDE GEORGE READ IN THE GATHERING
I have come to think that much public prayer in the church is careless and slovenly, and that what passes for spontaneity is in fact lack of preparation. Thus, I believe that public prayers must be "well-said" in an artful way, not to call attention to the artistry itself but to mobilize and sustain the attention of the praying community.
Awed To Heaven, Rooted in Earth, Walter Brueggemann
- SONG CREDIT
Mark Hummon, Prayer of the People (feat. Bittersweet)
One of the mantras of our modern world is DO more, BE more, HAVE more which can lead us to live a hurried life. In this sermon, George talked about how hurry is incompatible with the love, joy, and peacethat are right at the center of Jesus’ vision of life.
God walks “slowly” because he is love. If he is not love he would have gone much faster. Love has its speed. It is an inner speed. It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. It is “slow” yet it is lord over all other speeds since it is the speed of love.
-Kosuke Koyama, Japanese theologian
Let's talk about our phones and the 2nd book of the Bible and a story that's thousands of years old and how they're related. Is your phone the first thing you reach for in the morning and the last thing you touch before bed? Do you frequently pick it up "just to check it?” Today, just over a decade since smartphones entered our lives, we're beginning to suspect that their impact on our lives might not be entirely good.
Want to explore this further?Check out the Netflix Orignal
The Social Dilemma
SLIDE GEORGE READ IN GATHERING
"Instead of turning to our devices, we can lift our eyes to see where we are, who we are in proximity with, and we can begin to wonder at being wholly present and prayerfully open to the unexpected. May something so small as lifting our eyes up from our devices be our first act of faith, trusting that our human presence has been ordained, in any given moment and place, to be meaningfully purposed as the hands and feet of God's profound love for humanity and all of creation."
-Felicia Wu Song, Restless Devices
The Bible’s first idea of what it means to be human is that we've been given a calling to participate with God in the ongoing work of creation, to bring it forward, and to make something of the world we live in.
SLIDES GEORGE READ IN THE GATHERING:
Once upon a time men took into your temple the first fruits of their harvests, the flower of their flocks. But the offering you really want, the offering you mysteriously need every day to appease your hunger, to slake your thirst is nothing less than the growth of the world born ever onwards…
-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Mass On The World
And our task, as image-bearing, God-loving, Christ shaped, Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to proclaim love and trust to the world that knows only exploitation, fear and suspicion. The gospel of Jesus points us and indeed urges us to be at the leading edge of the whole culture, articulating in story a worldview leading the way with joy and humor and gentleness and good judgment and true wisdom.
-N.T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus
Do not be dismayed by the brokenness in the world. All things break. And all things can be mended. Not with time, as they say, but with intention. So go. Love intentionally, extravagantly, and unconditionally. The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is you.
-L.R. Knost
Part 10 of the Apostles' Creed. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints,the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.
SLIDES GEORGE READ IN OUR GATHERING
There is an expanded sense of sin as anything we do to damage the world. It’s like air pollution—all of us contribute to it, all of us suffer from it.
-Frederica Mathewes-Green
“Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.”
-Henri Nouwen
Part 9 of The Apostles Creed
SLIDES GEORGE READ IN OUR GATHERING
The church is God’s answer to our existential need for belonging, community, acceptance, support, and love. You don’t ever have to be alone. If you are part of a church, you are to take this seriously. It means looking around to see who is alone, who may need a friend, who needs encouragement. It means inviting people to sit by you, or asking if you can sit by them. It means checking on and caring for those who need someone.
-Adam Hamilton, Exploring The Apostles’ Creed
Any hope that you can know yourself without accepting the things about you that you wish were not true is an illusion. Until we are willing to accept the unpleasant truths of our existence, we rationalize or deny responsibility for our behavior. Only after we genuinely know and accept everything we find within ourselves can we begin to develop the discernment to know what should be crucified and what should be embraced as an important part of self. It is in the depths of your self that God waits to meet you with transforming love.”
-David Benner, The Gift of Being Yourself
The word "catholic" in the Apostles' Creed is not a name brand for the Roman Catholic Church--although it may include it. It means the universal Church, from across all times and places, throughout history, which includes us in the 21st century. Any particular Christian community can realize only a fragment of the catholic whole.
SLIDES READ IN THIS GATHERING:
But Christian unity does not mean the obliteration of all differences; it means the harmonizing of all differences in a larger unity; it means concentration on the Christ who unites rather than on the systems and the theologies which divide. There is the tolerance which comes from the certainty that God fulfills himself in many ways, the tolerance which refuses to be arrogant enough to believe that any man has an exclusive grasp of the whole truth, the tolerance which is quite sure that a great many things on the circumference of the faith can be left fluid so long as the center - which is Christ - is right.
William Barclay, The Apostles’ Creed
We are moving along on our journey through the Apostles' Creed to the line: "We believe in the Holy Spirit." We started with the understanding that something holy and sacred begins with the breath of life breathed into us by God at creation that animates our lives. The Christian tradition calls this Creative Power the Holy Spirit.
SLIDES READ IN OUR GATHERING:
When we speak about the Holy Spirit, we are speaking of God's active work in our lives; of God's way of leading us, guiding us, forming and shaping us. And in listening to this voice and being shaped by this power, we find that we become most fully and authentically human.
-Adam Hamilton
To trust life means having faith that the flow of life will always bring us what we need, though not always what we want. If we really trust in life, we will not waste our energy on resentment, on wishing that our life's circumstances were different from what they are; rather, we will use all our energy for responding appropriately to the given situation-to bloom where we are planted.
-David Steindl-Rast
This Sunday we were all immersed in God's love, and some by water in baptism. Water is symbolic of our trusting in the “buoyancy of God” to hold our lives upward so God’s life can be lived in us. Water is also sacramental; not just something we do but also something God does in and through the water.
SLIDE GEORGE READ IN OUR GATHERING ABOUT BAPTISM:
It certainly doesn’t mean “Now you’ve got all your Christian understanding together, so we can baptize you.” In the New Testament, baptism often happens very early in somebody’s life, like the Ethiopian eunuch who had been a believer for only five minutes before he was baptized by Philip.
It takes a lifetime to figure out what your baptism means.
—N.T. Wright
SONG: Baptized*, Mac Powell & Matt Maher
The Apostles' Creed says that Jesus was "crucified, died, and was buried." This is a world-altering moment in the Jesus story that has captured the imagination of Christians for two millennia now. There have been different ways we have made sense of Jesus' death through what historically has been called atonement theory. In this teaching, George explores a few of the ways people think about this.
Easter is an opportunity to celebrate being alive. The whole physical and biological universe affirms resurrection all the time, everywhere. This is not a one-time miracle. It's a statement about how reality works with Jesus as a trusted guide for the journey.
SLIDES GEORGE READ IN OUR GATHERING
“It is absolutely gorgeous. You see the Earth as it exists with the whole universe in the background. You see the thin blue line of the atmosphere. And what you realize is every single person you know is sustained inside of that. You don't see borders. You don't see religious lines. You don't see political boundaries. And you see that we're way more alike than we are different.”
Artemis II Astronaut, Christina Koch
“Real despair is the belief that nothing new can happen to us. We are in deep tombs, behind a wall of stone. Worst of all, in the end, we have given up hope. The resurrection tells us it is never too late. We must believe that the stone will be rolled back to begin breathing resurrection air.”
Ronald Rolheiser, Our Deepest Longing
Miraculous births were common in the ancient world. Is the virgin birth mentioned in the Apostles' Creed any different? Must we believe in a literal virgin birth to be biblical? Must we reject it to be reasonable?
SLIDE GEORGE READ IN THE GATHERING
Mary is not an icon to be reverenced, but the pattern for how the incarnation is to continue, for how God continues to take on flesh in this world. And that pattern is perennially the same: we must say “yes” to the Holy Spirit giving birth in us love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
—Fr. Ronald Rolheiser
What makes a better world? Jesus gives us a new way of understanding power to make a better world. The Apostles' Creed says: "We believe in Jesus Christ, God's only son, our LORD." The title of Lord, is the title of the God whose power is love.
SLIDES GEORGE READ IN OUR GATHERING
To call Jesus “Christ” is to say that human categories are too small to contain him, and to affirm our faith that nothing less will do than to say that God was in Christ. It is to affirm that we believe that in Jesus we are in the presence of God, that through him alone we fully know God.
The Apostles’ Creed (William Barclay, 1967, 1998)
Faith in Jesus as OUR LORD finds expression in one's commitment to the ultimate authority of Love to which he bears witness in the world. Without this commitment, Lord is an empty title, but to make this faith commitment has vast practical implications. If divine love embodied in Jesus is our ultimate authority, we will have to question the claims of all other authorities.
Living The Apostles’ Creed (David Steindl-Rast)
If "God Is Love" why is the word love not written in the Apostles' Creed? Because it might just already be assumed by the writers. When it says, "We Believe In Jesus," it is saying "We Believe In Love."
Jesus is love revealed. Love here is not abstract or theoretical. It is not a feeling or a concept. It is love embodied.
SLIDE GEORGE READ IN OUR GATHERING
As Jesus expressed it, we’re created with two overriding aims in life: to love God with all that is within us and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. So sin is anything we do in thought, word, or deed that is inconsistent with loving God or neighbor or ourselves.
—Adam Hamilton, Creed
In this teaching, we explored the second line of the Apostles' Creed "creator of heaven and earth." George talked about the biological process of creation and the theological story of creation given to us in Genesis.
The creed is an ancient way of narrating a particular story about reality that Christians have trusted for a millennium and a half. We want to root our community in this story and simultaneously ask new questions about it for our modern world.
SLIDES GEORGE USED IN THIS GATHERING
James Webb Space Telescope
We have come to see that these chapters are poetry and not science, that they are religious symbolism and not history. They do not tell us anything of God's method of creation; they do lay down the one supreme fact that life came into being through the power of, and by the will of, God. Whatever the method of creation, God remains the Creator without whom life is possible.
William Barclay
In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received.
Augustine of Hippo
Read About The "Babylonian Genesis" Story Here
George-the Apostles’ Creed's first line begins with “I believe in God, the father…” Credo “I believe” in Latin means "I give my heart.” The word has the same linguistic root as love. May we all find our hearts drawn not just in ideas or beliefs but in trust and love of the God the Creed calls “Father.”
SLIDES GEORGE READ IN OUR GATHERING
The Creed is a statement of faith, not of beliefs. There are many beliefs, but there is ultimately only one faith: faith in God. May the Creed help you find new meaning in the words and—deeper than words that divide—the faith that unites all human beings. -David Steindl-Rast
Stacia Freeman-Our actions of love make the invisible visible. God's love not only unites us with God but with all of humanity. God who comes in human form teaches us that we must search for God's love in flesh and weakness. Love is the epiphany of God in our poverty.
John 2 - Jesus changes water to wine. The story of this wedding is actually about transformation. Yes, the water is transformed into wine, and we are transformed into people made in God's image and who reflect his glory by being fully alive.
SLIDES GEORGE READ IN OUR GATHERING:
So John is saying: you are here in a trinitarian universe not just for survival but for thriving. There is an overflow to everything, and this is about how to live with that overflow so new life is spilling over. It’s about joy, vitality, creativity, radiance, your heart bursting forth in love and service to self and other and for the world. -Alexander John Shaia
The glory of God is every person fully alive! -Saint Irenaeus
GRACE: “It’s the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person— having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful heart will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping.” - Unknown
Matthew 17:1 (the transfiguration)-Jesus is being revealed for what and who he already is, but his friends now realize it and see him in a whole new way.
Like Peter, James, & John; we need moments of transfiguration in our lives when Jesus shows us who he really is and what is really good. And we can also see transfiguration in others, where we realize something new about who they are or what they mean to us.
SLIDES READ BY GEORGE
Belief in Jesus is seeing him as the gateway to an endless journey into God's love.-Richard Beck
God saves humanity not by punishing it but by restoring it! There are two utterly different forms of religion: one believes that God will love me if I change; the other believes that God loves me so that I can change! Ideas inform us, but love forms us—in an intrinsic and lasting way. God is always willing to wait for the lasting transformations brought about by love. —Richard Rohr
Epiphany is about the surprise of finding God's light and love in Jesus. In this teaching, George talked about Jesus' baptism (Matthew 3:13-17).
Jesus, too, was someone on a spiritual journey from which we can learn. What changes us? The sacred voice that calls us beloved. And being beloved expresses the core truth of our existence.
SLIDES READ BY GEORGE
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
—C.S. Lewis
“You can’t start a spiritual journey on a negative journey foundation. If you seek God out of fear, shame, or guilt—you don’t go very far. But if we remember the voice that spoke those powerful words of love we will find a new way of living and being.”
—Richard Rohr
George & Scott Reall in a part 2 conversation about transformation in our lives for a new year and this season of Epiphany.
SLIDES READ BY GEORGE
Epiphany is a wonderful celebration for those who are committing themselves more deeply to the process of spiritual transformation, for it contains themes of journeying from the known to the unknown with only a mysterious light to guide us. It has to do with seeing something new on the horizon that stirs something new in us. We don’t just talk about our desire; we walk toward it with great intention, making concrete choices along the way.
-Ruth Haley Barton
To love is to change. And to love perfectly is to change many times.
-John Henry Newman
Name your deaths. Claim your births. Grieve and adjust. Do not cling. Receive new life. Nature follows this pattern. Jesus Christ followed this pattern. Our lives follow this pattern—unless we fight it!
-Fr. Ronald Rolheiser
George & Scott Reall talk in this gathering about transformation in our lives for a new year and this season of Epiphany. An epiphany isa moment of sudden insight, discovery, or realization of the essential nature or meaning of something. A one-word summary of the gospel might be “BELOVED.” It’s the realization that you are dearly loved, a much-loved person. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the beloved. Being the beloved expresses the core truth of our existence.
BOOKS George READ FROM in this gathering...
-The Power of Neuroplasticity for Pastoral & Spiritual Care, Kirk Bingham
-How God Changes The Brain, Andrew Newberg, M.D.
This Christmas we asked the question: what story or stories do we trust to navigate our lives and the world? The Christian storybegan on Christmas day with a baby and a joyous announcement that God is light and love. And this story isn’t over. Christmas is still happening through people like us, who with faithful hearts, trust in the story of faith, hope, and love.
SLIDES George read in our gathering:
OUR STORIES ARE ALL STORIES OF SEARCHING
We search for a good self to be and for good work to do. We search to become human in a world that tempts us always to be less than human. We search to love and to be loved. And in a world where it is often hard to believe in much of anything, we search to believe in something holy and beautiful and life-transcending that will give meaning and purpose to the lives we live.
Frederick Buechner, The Longing For Home
CHRIST CANDLE PRAYER
Come to us, Lord Jesus,
Be born in us this night, in our hearts, our minds, our lives.
May the light of your life be kindled in us,
And lead us to the enduring truth,
of God with us, God for us, God in us.
Stacia Freeman taught us on this Sunday the Advent of Love. You can download Gary Culley's song 'Good Morning Sweet, Sweet Child' at the web link below and you'll find it under music. Enjoy and share it with someone else!
garyculleyguitar.com
Visit us online at vuechurch.org
Christmas happened and is happening. And it's not automatic.Advent is about the arrival of God in our lives by preparing our hearts for Christmas and consenting to God's presence. You can visit us online at vuechurch.org
SLIDES George read in our gathering:
Image Displayed on Screen
From artist Scott Erickson's book Honest Advent (Chapter 15, Mighty)
Mary is a Model for All of Us
We need to let the word take such root in us. Our task too is to give birth to Christ. It began with Mary, but each of us is asked to make our own contribution to giving flesh to faith in the world. -Ronald Rolheiser
Tension of Pain + Joy in Childbirth
In childbirth, we see the tension of pain and joy so vividly. There is intense pain that comes in waves and at times you don’t know if you can make it through, but it is the hope of the joy to come that keeps you moving forward. You can’t ignore the pain. Instead, you find that it is the pain that leads you. Rather than fighting against it, you push into the pain, and that is what eventually leads you into the moment of overwhelming joy. Similarly, we don’t have to ignore the pain in our lives. We can choose to push into it. Just as a woman doesn’t give birth alone, it’s important to know that we need other safe people (family, friends, therapists, etc.) around us to support us as we explore our pain. But when we allow the pain to lead us into God’s presence, it is there that we will experience new life and find joy. -Advent Reflections, Vanessa Stricker
Matthew 7:21-29 - Jesus' sermon finale offers us foundational words to build a life on. Jesus essentially says, I've told you about the things that bring you flourishing and a good life, now go do it. This 19-week series through the Sermon on the Mount ended this Sunday, but living into it is just beginning for us as individuals and as a community!
TECHNICAL NOTE: the introduction of this teaching is missing because the power went out-so it picks up right when the power was restored!
Matthew 7:13-20 "narrow is the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." George shared how he thinks the "narrow road" is not doctrinal correctness, but rather the practice of what Jesus has been teaching in these few chapters of the Sermon on the Mount [being merciful, peace-making, enemy-loving, dealing with anger + reconciliation, meaning what you say, worrying + judging less; just to name a few.]
At the end of the gathering, George also leads us in a short reflection on Jesus' words "by their fruit you will recognize them." What did Jesus mean by "good fruit?" Perhaps it was the practice of love.
We'd love for you to join us in person at one of our Sunday gatherings--10a at Gower Elementary. You can visit us online at vuechurch.org
SLIDES/QUOTES George read in our gathering:
love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, & self-control
- The Fruit of the Spirit, Galatians 5:22-23
Don’t look for shortcuts to God. The market is flooded with surefire, easygoing formulas for a successful life that can be practiced in your spare time. Don’t fall for that stuff, even though crowds of people do. The way to life—to God!—is vigorous and requires total attention.
Be wary of false preachers who smile a lot, dripping with practiced sincerity. Chances are they are out to rip you off some way or other. Don’t be impressed with charisma; look for character. Who preachers are is the main thing, not what they say. A genuine leader will never exploit your emotions or your pocketbook. These diseased trees with their bad apples are going to be chopped down and burned.
-Eugene Peterson, The Message Bible [Matthew 7:13-20]
Matthew 7:7-12 “Ask…seek…and knock.” We learned in this teaching from George/Dallas Willard how this text may first apply to our approach to others, and, then, in prayer to God. God’s gift to us in prayer is the Holy Spirit (Luke 11:13) which is the “divine energy of life!”
We'd love for you to join us in person at one of our Sunday gatherings--10a at Gower Elementary. You can visit us online at vuechurch.org
SLIDES/QUOTES George read in our gathering:
A request by its very nature unites. A demand, by contrast, immediately separates. How beautiful it is to see relationships in which asking and receiving are a joyful and loving way of life. —Dallas Williard, The Divine Conspiracy
If whatever God has made and loves is holy, then life is holy in itself, and to live life with love and joy means sanctifying it. How else could 'life in the Spirit' be understood, if the Spirit were not the space ‘in’ which this life can grow and unfurl? We explore the depths of this space through the trust of the heart. —Jurgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life
PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE
Loving God, I name my desire for___________________I ask that you help me trust in your goodness and care for me.
Matthew 7:1-5 says, “Do not judge…” What does Jesus mean by that? Is it ever right to call out something wrong in another? Ultimately, Jesus gives us a big generous gift of truth-telling with love for us to practice here.
We'd love for you to join us in person at one of our Sunday gatherings--10a at Gower Elementary. You can visit us online at vuechurch.org
SLIDES/QUOTES George read in our gathering:
“Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are. The Word of God is so weak that it suffers to be despised and rejected by people. The Word accepts the resistance it encounters and bears it.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
"Perhaps the greatest blessing that religious inheritance can bestow is an open mind, one that can listen without judging. Such people do not have a closed-off air or a boastful demeanor. In them, it is clear, their wounds have opened the way to compassion for others. And compassion is the strength and soul of religion."
— Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, Kathleen Norris
In Matthew 6:25-34, Jesus addresses worry asking if it actually helps us in any way. He then invites us to look at the living things around us in nature, like birds & wildflowers, reminding us that God knows our needs and will certainly care for us as he does them.
At the end of this teaching, George guided us in a short meditation & reflection to practice what Jesus invited us to do in this passage.
We'd love for you to join us in person at one of our Sunday gatherings--10a at Gower Elementary. You can visit us online at vuechurch.org
SLIDES/QUOTES George read in our gathering:
Worrying is carrying tomorrow’s load with today’s strength-carrying two days at once. It is moving into tomorrow ahead of time. Worrying doesn’t empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.
-Corrie Ten Boom, Dutch writer
...all the beauty of the world, the beauty that calls our admiration, our gratitude is meant as a set of hints, of conspiratorial whispers, of clues and suggestions and flickers of light, all nudging us into believing that behind the beautiful world is not random chance but the loving God.
-N.T. Wright, For All God’s Worth
In Matthew 6:19-24, Jesus addresses our hearts about our relationship with money and heaven. George continued this journey through the Sermon On The Mount and talked about how "storing up treasures in heaven" was an invitation to live our lives right here, right now with length, breadth, depth & substance.
We also heard from Scott Reall, of Restore Small Groups and the author of Journey To Freedom, about healing communities that are happening in places around the world including Scotland and Tanzania. You can find out more about Restore HERE
We'd love for you to join us in person at one of our Sunday gatherings--10a at Gower Elementary.
You can visit us online at vuechurch.org
SLIDES/QUOTES George read in our gathering:
“Heaven is a place where God’s purposes for the future are stored up. It isn’t where they are meant to stay so that one would need to go to heaven to enjoy them; it is where they are kept safe for the day when they will become a reality on earth.”
-N.T. Wright, Surprised By Hope
Jesus wants us to know that we don’t need all the things or experiences we think we do. Simplicity creates margins and spaces and openness in our lives. Simplicity asks us to let go of the tangle of wants so we can receive the simple gifts of life that cannot be taken away. Simplicity invites us into daily pleasures that can open us to God, who is present in them all.
-Adele Ahlberg Calhoun
At the center of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:9-13), Jesus turns to a prayer that can guide us in what it means to be human.
"Just imagine how different your life would be if moment by moment you were constantly open to God…if you were continuously attuned to the loving presence of God and allowed the life of God to flow into and through you with each breath. Such a life would itself be prayer."
David Benner - Opening to God
We'd love for you to join us in person at one of our Sunday gatherings--10a at Gower Elementary.
You can visit us online at vuechurch.org
At the center of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:5-13), Jesus turns to a prayer that can guide us in what it means to be human.
George talked about why prayer matters to our lives, and why it's much deeper than just "talking with God," but rather an experience of God's loving presence that is always near and accessible. It is the heart which experiences God...this then is faith; God felt by the heart, not by reason (Blaise Paschal).
We'd love for you to join us in person at one of our Sunday gatherings--10a at Gower Elementary.
You can visit us online at vuechurch.org
Continuing with Jesus' words from the Sermon On The Mount in the gospel of Matthew, George moved into chapter 6 (verses 1-4) to explore what Jesus might have meant when he said: "be careful not to practice your righteous to be seen by others."
We'd love for you to join us in person at one of our Sunday gatherings--10a at Gower Elementary.
You can visit us online at vuechurch.org
What does Jesus mean when he says: "do not resist an evil person, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you?" He is not saying that we should be passive and just take more abuse. He means something else which invites us to transcend both passivity and violence.
George from Matthew 5:38-48 teaches us that Jesus offers us something surprising in these passages - a creative, healing, subversive, and redemptive way forward - bringing us to admire Jesus even more.
In this teaching, George shared from Matthew 5:33-37 where Jesus talks about the importance of our words. Our words have the tremendous creative power to: heal or wound, help or hinder, build up or tear down.
How many of us have said, "I'm only human!" like it's a deficit to be human? We are continuing to learn that Jesus has a profound belief in the possibilities of being human. Jesus is raising us up in what could be called "asset framing," defining people by their inherent worth and potential.
Could being human be the description of the best version of ourselves instead of the worst? Seems that Jesus might be trying to show us that it is.
The end of a marriage is one of the most emotionally painful human experiences. In this teaching, George focuses on Jesus' words from the Sermon on the Mount about lust + divorce [Matthew 5:27-32 ]. Ultimately, people who are learning to see the image of God in others, are people who are learning to live out the image of God in themselves.
George spoke to us from Matthew 5:17-20, in which Jesus talks about not coming to abolish the law but to fulfill it. In these 3 verses, we learn from Jesus to put the past and the present, a rooted faith and a changing world, sacred memory & holy imagination together. This is the question of every church in every generation: what are we going to do with these two things side by side?
In this episode, Stacia Freeman guides us in part 2 of being the salt of the earth and the light of the world [Matthew 5:13-16].
In this episode, George takes us a little further on our journey through The Sermon on the Mount [Matthew 5:13-16], talking about how Salt & Light are about being a certain kind of gift to the world and others. People who take this seriously are bearers of redeeming love and creative stewardship, joining Jesus in his work of blessing people who don't think they deserve it.
On Sunday we created some sacred space in our gathering to reflect on Memorial Day as well as to mourn and pray and sing and respond with our hearts to the tragic shooting last week in Uvalde, TX.
Sometimes to mourn is the only thing that makes sense. But we’re also learning and trusting that in these moments of crying out, God’s loving and guiding us forward with grace and wisdom and hope and comfort.
On this Memorial Day, as we all remember the sacrifices of so many, may we also be reminded of the words of Jesus from the beatitudes: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
In this episode, we take another step on our journey through The Sermon on the Mount and work through the first four blessings of the Beatitudes [Matthew 5:1-6]. There is an order, progression, and brilliant flow here in which Jesus teaches us to imagine the more beautiful world and life our hearts know is possible.
An Imaginarium is a place devoted to imagining + practicing how to actually live in the kingdom of heaven on earth. In this sermon series George invites us on a journey through the Sermon on the Mount from the book of Matthew. Many scholars believe these three chapters (5, 6, & 7) are the best summary of Jesus' teaching and seem to be the heart of it all. Jesus’ words gathered here forever changed human imagination about what life and community can look like.
Life coming through death is a gift and reality we’ve learned from Jesus. We can also see this pattern of renewal and resurrection happening all around us, and in us, everyday, from seasons to salsa. The whole physical and biological universe affirms this everywhere.
Prayer was central to Jesus and to the early church in the book of Acts. Prayer is important for us too, and it can also bring conflicted and complicated feelings to us about how it works and what it accomplishes. In this teaching, George explores this to discover, as Eugene Peterson says: "prayers are tools not for doing or getting but for being and becoming."
https://vuechurch.org
This is a live recording of our Sunday gathering. What is a Church? It’s a group of people with eyes to see the work of God’s spirit in others who may be different than them. Which sometimes takes us to confusing places where we pray together, discern together, care for each other, and with gentleness and sensitivity, keep moving forward together in Christ.
www.vuechurch.org
This is a live recording of our Sunday gathering. What is a Church? It’s a group of people with eyes to see the work of God’s spirit in others who may be different than them. Which sometimes takes us to confusing places where we pray together, discern together, care for each other, and with gentleness and sensitivity, keep moving forward together in Christ.
www.vuechurch.org
Listen along as George continues our series on What Is A Church?
We hope you find this meaningful and inspirational as we all navigate the joys and challenges of our daily lives.
Peace & joy to you all.
We love you.
Why do we sing? In this episode, we sit down with our Worship Leader Nick Diamond as he discusses his own personal background and why he still believes worship matters now more than ever.
We have often called our gathering space a 'holy living room' whether we are in an ice center, cafeteria, or gym. It's also been important to us that no matter where you sit, you see the faces of the other half of the community and not just the people leading on a stage. And we try to play and sing in such a way that both leads and gets out of the way of it just being a performance.
We think worship is an activity of the heart for everyone; a communal journey we can go on together that invites each of us to participate. Sometimes we sing upward in celebration of the greatness and infinite love of God. Other times it's more personal and reflective and inward. But the goal is always for our entire community to become a worship choir as our many voices become one voice.
Welcome to our first gathering of 2022! In this live recording of our service, we begin our series on What is a Church?
Some of us were taught we should go to church.
Others were not raised in a traditional church environment, but very few of us were ever taught what IS a Church?
Why does the church matter? And can the church have any impact on our personal lives as well as extending help to our community?
We believe it can and it matters now more than ever.
We still believe that the church can be a loving place of community, bringing light and goodness into our lives and world. What is a church but a community held together not by power but by love?
That's what we are being invited into and that's what we're pursuing as we move into 2022.
Peace & love to you!
Listen along as we discuss 2022 at Vue Church. We are excited to start 2022 together as a community of peace and joy. We know that as we gather together we can live lighter and with more joy no matter what we may be facing in our lives. You are loved!
Listen to our live teaching of our first ever Christmas Eve Service. We hope no matter when you may listen to this episode the hope and joy of the light of Christ will light your heart so that you may extend that light to others.
Peace and joy and blessings to you and your loved ones.
Listen along as Stacia Freeman finishes up our journey through the advent series.
We were so overjoyed to have her speak and excited to release this live recording of this Preview Service.
Peace and love to you through this wonderful season!
What if waiting could be seen as a gift? Often times we experience periods of waiting as anything but a gift. But what if periods of waiting truly are, a gift?
Listen to this Circle Sunday conversation between George Stull and Jake Brown as they discuss the gift of waiting and how having others around you supporting you through this season is the truest gift and blessing of all.
peace and love to you all!
Join us in this live recording as we begin our Journey into Advent.
If you are finding yourself waiting in any area of your life, this is a wonderful place to learn and grow in that waiting season.
Advent teaches us these deep truths as we prepare our hearts for Christmas.
We hope you enjoy
Are you tired? Do you feel like there is too much to do but too little time? This isn't a new phenomenon, in fact, Jesus spoke into this very feeling. As the holidays can be a busy time it's also a wonderful time for reflection. A time where we can listen to our life. If you could listen to your life, what would it say? We hope this teaching inspires you to listen to your life and allow God to show you the areas that need rest, healing, and rejuvenation. Peace & Love to you.
Listen to this live Circle Sunday talk from Scott Reall. He discusses the power of self-forgiveness. It can often be the hardest part of forgiveness yet the place where we can experience the most freedom and joy.
We hope you enjoy.
Listen along to our live Sunday Teaching from November 7th, 2021. This is Part 4 of our Rhythms of Grace series titled Forgiveness.
We hope you enjoy and feel God's peace and love as you practice this rhythm of forgiveness.
This is a live recording of our Sunday teaching on 10.24. Part 3 of our Rhythms of Grace series.
grace and peace!
What is the nature of God? Often times we don't ask this question, but what we deeply believe about God is vital for our spiritual growth.
Is God demanding, punishing, and condemning? The Prodigal Son gives us a glimpse into the very nature and heart of God.
As we see the true nature of God, we are allowed to relax and trust that not only is God perfect love, but we can find our own individuated expression of that love in our own life.
Relationships are often the most life-giving aspect of our spiritual lives. Yet at times they seem to be a place of struggle and conflict.
We desire to have healthy and loving relationships yet often wonder what we can practice in order to experience them more in our daily lives.
George and Debbie have been together for 35 years and sit down to talk about what they’ve learned via experience that has helped them learn to love.
Learning to love each other, themselves, and how God plays a pivotal role in mirroring the Divine Love we all desire in our life.
We hope you find your own story in this podcast and can take away something for building a beautiful relationship with others and learning to love.
One of the most difficult human emotions is shame.
How do Jesus and our Spiritual life handle this intense inner experience?
Jesus meets us in our shame so that we can begin to heal apart from shame.
The first thing Christ's presence does in our lives is lifting that heavy cloak of shame.
Jesus reminds us again and again that as we release our shame in exchange for his gentle healing, we only become what we have always been.
We can trust Jesus's gentle healing in all areas of our lives and know that it is through this gentleness and grace that true change will happen.
To find out more about Vue Church and upcoming preview services find us online at www.vuechurch.org
When we think of heaven, we often think of it being an eventual destination in our spiritual journey. This world and our experience of it are often seen to be something to "bare through" until we reach heaven.
Yet when you listen to the words of Jesus, you see a different way of understanding heaven in the present.
Jesus calls us to bring heaven to earth. He calls us to know that the Kingdom of Heaven is within us now.
In this episode, we talk about how we can focus our spiritual lives on bringing heaven to earth now.
As we learn to yearn to see God's love in our brothers and sisters and the creation that He blessed when He created it, we begin to see that heaven is indeed a place on Earth.
We hope you enjoy this episode. To find out more about us and upcoming service times please go to www.vuechurch.org
In this episode, we talk about allowing Joy to come into our lives even during periods of trial and conflict.
Is it possible to live life with joy, even when not every struggle or difficulty can be eliminated?
How can we open up to more daily joy that we can experience—so that we don't spend our whole lives attempting to resolve our problems and unconsciously miss out on enjoying life in the process?
Have you ever wondered what Holiness really means?
Holiness means Joy. Holiness is about finding joy even when our lives give us every reason not to feel it. How is this possible when have problems mounting up in our lives?
We discuss this and more in this episode.
To find out more about us and our upcoming service times, please visit us online at www.vuechurch.org
Wouldn't it be nice to know, that there was one thing in our life we could depend on without fail?
A North Star we could point our lives towards to find peace, joy, and meaning?
Join us in this conversation on how we can trust Love to be our guiding North Star for everything going on in our life.
In a world that is changing at a rapid rate, feeling chaotic at times, wisdom is here for us now more than ever. We are not asked, nor meant to do life alone. Wisdom is the gift God gives us that shows up in our lives in so many beautiful ways.
Wisdom connects us to the things that have always been true.
Wisdom is a current of vitality that was vital 1000 years ago, it’s vital today and it will be vital in the years to come.
Listen along as we talk about the power of wisdom.
How it's given to us as the Holy Spirit within, and by giving our lives over to this eternal current we find peace, joy, and a way to live life that is more natural, life-giving, and meaningful.
Peace, joy, and love to you as we learn together how we all can live in this deep eternal current that can be trusted time and time again.
One of the values we hold as a church is seeing ourselves in a long line of generations taking part in the endless conversation between God and people. The integration of our Christian tradition with all the wonderful developments of our modern culture to become a “living tradition” matters to us.
In this episode, Jake & George talk about how there is a beautiful dance of joining the old and the new, and how each can serve the other instead of being at odds and against each other.
We hope you enjoy this episode and know that no matter where you find yourself on your spiritual journey, you have a safe home at Vue Church to explore and experience God's love and joy for your life.
To know where we're going, it’s very helpful to know where we've been.
Vue Church
www.vuechurch.org
"Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it." PROVERBS 4
This is ancient wisdom that has never been truer. We all know how vital the heart is in our physical health and wellness.
But what about the spiritual heart? By tuning our hearts to God, we are then in tune with how to live our lives.
It’s from this spiritual center that life flows out.
Peace, Joy, Freedom, and Love.
All of these are expressions of a heart that is tuned to God. Listen along as we talk about the new science and research proving not only the value of our spiritual heart, but the fact that it is the very place we should turn for decisions and living our best life.
We love you and can't wait to see you in our next in-person service this Sunday at 9 & 10:30 am at the Ford Ice Center.
Is it possible to find joy through pain?
Are joy and pain exclusive or can they both be experienced at the same time? In this episode, we discuss the power joy has in our spiritual lives and that it can not only be experienced through painful life experiences but oftentimes by leaning into our pain, joy naturally arises.
Here is one of our favorite quotes that best sums up this episode.
“Discovering more joy does not, save us from the inevitability of hardship and heartbreak. In fact, we may cry more easily, but we will laugh more easily too. Perhaps we are just more alive. Yet as we discover more joy, we can face suffering in a way that ennobles rather than embitters. We have hardship without becoming hard. We have heartbreaks without being broken.” ― Desmond Tutu
Some of our emotions are typically seen as “bad” or “negative" emotions.
Some of us were brought up in a church environment, or household environment where the major goal of your faith was to be well….nice.
But what about anger? What do we do with our anger? You feel it, I feel it, we all feel it. And if it’s part of our human experience, then it must be part of our spiritual life.
Anger is spiritual? Really? And it's healthy to not ignore it?
Learn how we can be "faithfully angry" in this episode and much more.
Thanks for your support.
We Love You
As we continue to explore through the Psalms, we are reminded of the importance of our imagination.
Our imagination is illuminated by beautiful poetry that often understanding can't grasp.
The Psalms, being poems, are a beautiful exploration of what it looks like to experience God in a new way that doesn't involve understanding everything that is going on in our lives.
Jesus speaks often of the kingdom of God belonging to children, and who other than children can we relearn and regain our beautiful imagination and wonder from.
We hope you enjoy this episode, and that it ignites your own imagination to find peace and joy in God that is truly beyond understanding but felt and experienced in our Spirit.
Our most difficult emotions are often seen as something to push away or avoid.
Yet through the life of Jesus, we are shown a way of bringing all of our emotions and thoughts to God. Knowing we are safe and cared for and also that all of our experience as human beings is part of our spiritual journey is empowering.
Jesus shows us his own knowledge of the Psalms and how he both spoke about them and lived his life through them.
We hope you enjoy this episode and know that no matter what you are going through, it is welcome and cared for by God.
Jesus shows us the way, we only need to follow.
The Psalms, like listening to your favorite music, are meant to be experienced.
When we allow ourselves to move into experience versus just reading and understanding the Psalms, we find them alive in a new way.
The Psalms are meant to enrapture you, there are meant to do something in your heart.
Thinking about the Psalms this way allows us to experience them in a new and beautiful way.
The human experience is meant to be shared, and we can find our own hearts and our stories within the Psalms.
It’s a wonderful guide into our own hearts and interior worlds. Allowing God to see all of us, and to just be with Him, without needing definite answers and a way to move forward.
Sometimes the greatest barrier to God is our need to understand everything.
The Psalms teach us to trust, live and breathe in each moment of our life, unafraid to be with God through all of it.
find us online at www.vuechurch.org
What do we do with all our anger, frustrations, and other emotions that we might see as negative, in our spiritual life?
Some of us were taught to distance ourselves from these emotions. Some of us were taught to ignore them completely
Yet the writers of the Psalms seemingly embraced these emotions and the laments of these emotions as apart of their spiritual practice.
Is it possible that lamenting and embracing all the aspects of our thoughts and emotions is a sign of spiritual health and well being?
We discuss this and more in this week's episode of the Vue Church Podcast. .
Find us online at www.vuechurch.org.
For centuries the Bible has been at the centerpiece of Christianity.
Yet in our modern age, where does The Bible fit in our spiritual lives? Especially when it seems to do more dividing than uniting.
More confusing than illuminating.
And what if we disagree with certain parts of it? What if there are aspects of it that don't seem to resonate with our real life?
In this episode, Jeff walks us through how we can approach The Bible so that it holds an appropriate place in our own spiritual lives.
He also talks about how it is okay to disagree about certain aspects of The Bible and still go to church together and love each other.
This and more in this week's episode.
Please reach out with any prayer needs or pastoral care, that's what we are here for.
You can find everything you need and more online at www.vuechurch.org
2020 will be a year you will always remember.
If you are wary of moving into 2021 you are not alone. In fact, this may be the perfect time to reach out for pastoral support.
Though you may be isolated you are not alone.
In this year-end episode, Jeff walks through his own gratitude for starting this special place and what he hopes to see in 2021.
To reach out for pastoral support or request prayer, please find us online at www.vuechurch.org
You are not alone, we are here specifically to bring love and support into your life without you feeling the pressure to have it all together.
With a year that has been difficult for us all, where do we turn for hope?
In this episode Jeff & George walk us through what the incarnation means to us in the here and now.
How we can move into this Christmas season with a spirit of hope and renewed joy even if our exterior world seems far from it.
The good news is God is always present, pursues us, and will never give up on us, even if we give up on ourselves.
We hope you have a wonderful Christmas and we appreciate you being apart of Vue Church.
Peacemaking is more active than most of us are taught.
Peacemaking is where justice and mercy combine to bring hope and healing to our world.
To be a peacemaker is to be an active peacemaker. Find out more about this wonderful Beatitude and how we can align our lives more truly towards this eternal truth no matter what you are facing in your life.
God sees something more pure and loving than what we can see by ourselves alone.
God helps us see the goodness that has always been present, everywhere, and in everyone.
It is this kind of love, past our shortcomings and judgments that allows us to transcend far beyond these things, living out a purity of heart for a better life and a better world.
The spiritual life is to see within us, and all around us, the goodness God has seen all along.
www.vuechurch.org
What does it mean to experience gratitude in a year where a lot of us may have reasons not to be?
George walks us through some scripture and guidance on how we can find contentment and gratitude in our everyday life, regardless of what is occurring in our outer worlds.
By finding gratitude, we become more fully alive and able to see God in all things.
We hope you enjoy this episode and have a wonderful Thanksgiving. We love you!
In this episode we discuss the word righteousness as meaning justice. There was two kinds of justice in the Bible: retributive and restorative. Jesus is never shown as avenging or using retributive justice. He didn’t do things to scare people into being good. He didn’t repay the evil done to him. His kind of justice was always restorative.
In this episode we discuss meekness as strength under control. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the flexible. Blessed are those whose strength is brought under control. Blessed are those who are strong enough to bend, and who have softened what is rigid within.
You can find us online at www.vuechurch.org
Our conversation around The Beautitudes continue with looking into Blessed are those who mourn.
When is it appropriate to mourn and why is it important for both our spiritual and emotional health.
We hope you enjoy this episode.
If you're enjoying this podcast, we would love for you to subscribe and review our show.
You can find everything you'll need about Vue church online at www.vuechurch.org
In this episode Jeff and George give us some important details about what to expect at VUE Church's upcoming preview service on Sunday, October 25, 9 + 10:30 at the Ford Ice Center. You can visit www.vuechurch.org to RSVP and learn more!
This episode is the follow up to the previous episode of our discussion with Scott Reall & Sara Hamill of Restore Small Groups. Restore is teaching us, and we are continually discovering, the way of Jesus cannot be lived alone. How can we fully know God's love if we don't first know God's love through one another.
In this episode, we sit down with Scott Reall & Sara Hamill of Restore Small Groups to talk about the deep impact groups have in our spiritual lives, and how Vue church hopes to embody and mirror the safety and love of Restore as a way of spiritual transformation and growth within church community.
Visit us online: Restore Small Groups VUE Church
In this episode, Jeff & George introduce the Beatitudes as living words that speak to us today.
We hope you enjoy this episode and as always you can find us online at www.vuechurch.org
In this episode, we discuss Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5, 6 & 7), imagining the backdrop of the culture Jesus was speaking within and how that translates to where we find ourselves today.
We hope you enjoy this episode
To find out more about Vue Church you can visit us online at www.vuechurch.org
Welcome to the Vue Church Podcast.
In this episode, Jeff & George discuss their passion for the church being something beautiful that God works in and through.
They also talk about people in their own lives who have been The Face of Love and how it shaped them both as individuals and the pastors they aspire to be.
Thanks for the listening
Find us online at www.vuechurch.org
In this episode, the Co-Pastors of Vue Church talk about what this Pandemic has been like for them personally as well how The Lord's Prayer has brought life and wisdom to them in this modern crisis.
We hope wherever you are you feel loved.
To find out more about Vue Church you can reach us online at www.vuechurch.org
If you are needing pastoral guidance or just someone to talk to, please feel free to reach out to Jeff or George.
Their contact information is on the website.
Meet the Elders of Vue Church.
In this episode, we sit down and talk with the Elders of Vue Church.
They discuss their vision and passion for this church as well as personal stories of their relationship with the lead pastors Jeff Franks & George Stull.
We hope you enjoy this episode and please feel free to share with friends.
To find out more about Vue Church and to get recent updates, visit us online at www.vuechurch.org
In this first episode, we sit down and talk about the journey that brought this new church to the community of Bellevue in a personal conversation with both Jeff and George. We cover some of their background, their excitement and passion for the church and much more. We hope you enjoy