Q York: Recent Episodes
QYork
An unconventional church in York, UK. On a quest for Spirituality, Joy, Relationship, Justice, Beauty and a New World.
Rob explores order, disorder and non-order and how words, language and conversation are at the heart of what it means to be human.
Kelly explores the theme of joy, and how our choices, comparisons and the things we hold onto can have an impact on that.Inspired by the BBC series "Pilgrimage", Kelly and Clare offer some ideas about how to free ourselves and move on from what might be limiting us.You can watch Pilgrimage here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001vvdq/pilgrimage-the-road-through-north-wales-episode-3
Danny explores the idea of independent thinking and the promise of not interrupting, inspired by the book "The Promise That Changes Everything" by Nancy Kline.
Technologist, Rob Hornby, explores the origins, limitations and potential of Artificial Intelligence.
Who was Jesus? Joel explores this question, diving into the origins of the views that have become orthodox Christian doctrines.
Kev explores the history of the word "Church" and asks what relevance it holds nowadays?
Danny invites us to explore Imposter Syndrome and how it can hinder us or be harnessed to empower our growth.
Clare helps us consider the endings we face in life and how we might navigate them well.
For thousands of years people have been predicting an imminent apocalypse and today, Joel and Kev invite us to take a closer look at this apocalyptic thinking and how important it is for us to be aware of it in the world around us.
Rob brings part 2 of a Quest revisited, exploring our relationship with knowledge and encouraging us to be curiouser and curiouser!
This morning we focused our curiosity on the shoulds we have, where they come from and whether they're helpful or harmful.
Rob explores how we come to the beliefs we hold and why we may struggle to change them.
Joel, Jenny, Beth, Clare and Danny share their perspectives on Christmas this festive season!
Rob invites us to explore what makes a human. The implications are wide ranging and increasingly relevant.Check out the blog at QYork.co.uk for the full picture.
Kev asks some questions inspired by our recent talks and references a powerful story about the man who invented fire.All of Kev's slides from this morning can be seen here: https://shooglebox.link/f5sGy5m
With help from Nick Cave, C.S.Lewis and Yoda, Rob leads us in exploring the many ways of understanding the huge topic of suffering.
🦎Jenny uses chameleons, closets and the banking crisis to explore the ways people may hide themselves in plain sight.😶🌫️ Get the full picture on the blog: https://www.qyork.co.uk/post/hiding-in-plain-sight
With the help of Rob Bell, The Calendar Girls and Tauren Wells, Jenny, Danny and Clare reflect on what we've heard at Q over the past 2 months. Get the full picture on the blog at QYork.co.uk
How free are we? Why are we here? Is everything inevitable or can we choose to bring about change?
With Rob explores the nature of God, the connectedness of the Universe and his thoughts could change...well...everything!
A textbook answer means that something is exactly how it would be described in a textbook. It is predictable and as expected. Using clips from the film Mona Lisa Smile and the TV show The Newsroom, Jenny shares her thoughts on a ‘textbook’ approach and how this links to the idea of standards.
Drawing on inspiration from Plato, Alice in Wonderland and Quantum Physics, Rob led us in a morning, discussing the essence and expression of our community.
Joel shares a thought provoking welcome and Rob invites us to explore which elements of religion we want to get rid of and asks "Are there any parts that are worth keeping?" With a little help from Elvis Presley!
Jenny explores the differences between our generations and the wisdom that might help us adapt for a new age.
Clare explores the role of emotions in our lives, especially those we might consider negative.
Minority Reports are unpopular perspectives that disagree with the majority. Rob explores how we need to welcome minority reports if we are to avoid getting stuck in orthodoxy.
Rob explores how, for many of us, our perspectives of Jesus are like protected walled gardens, but we're being invited to leave the garden and explore who this man really was and what he stood for.
Are people born evil? Joel explores the subject of Original Sin, and questions whether this was really the good news of the original message of Christ.
It can be easily observed that the pursuit and expression of our faith may take on different forms at various stages in our lives. Can these stages be observed and understood in ways that help us take on new dimensions to our faith, in the same way that a tree adds rings over time? This message draws on thinking from writers such as Brian McLaren and Richard Rohr to question the earlier structures to our faith that may support us well for a time, but then fall short. This message will challenge you, if you let it, but there is great beauty to be found within and beyond any perplexity, when we keep walking.Catch the whole picture on the blog at QYork.co.uk
This week we revisited a significant message from our journey that is as important as ever.
Catch the full message including videos on the blog at QYork.co.uk
Do we have walls in our heads? Where do they come from? Do we need them and if not can we live without them?
Check out the blog at QYork.co.uk for the full picture
This morning, five members of our Qmunity help us consider consciousness, the corkscrew of life and the lenses through which we see the world.
Is the Christian story defined by and limited to one collection of books or is it bigger than that? One of the New Testament writers wrote that we are living epistles and as we approach life and faith with intelligence and critical thinking we may find that The Bible is still on the move...
In this week’s inspiring message you will hear about Christ, the vision of the whole; fear as a motivating ingredient that stops us embracing more than one string to our fiddle; and the unromanticised life of a pioneer spirit, which must empty the wagon of old identities and beliefs in order to truly live a Christ-following life with people, not just from a briefcase of facts.
The famous White Paintings of the Minimalist Artists demonstrate how the same thing can hold a different meaning for each of us. How do we find meaning in the world and in our faith? Are we seeing as we're told or can we embrace the philosophy "What you see, is what you see"?
Revisiting the message about Echoes from 2019. Get the full message on the blog at QYork.co.uk
Join our Easter Sunday get together as we explore the origins of Easter and why resurrection is still relevant.
Catch the full message on the blog here: https://www.qyork.co.uk/post/easter-sun-day-what-s-your-story
Catch the full message on the blog here, with movie clips and videos of talks: https://www.qyork.co.uk/post/is-safetyism-stifling-your-spring
Get the full message on the blog here: https://www.qyork.co.uk/post/cut-print-moving-on-thanks-for-believing
Get the full picture on the blog here: https://www.qyork.co.uk/post/status-quo-or-status-quest
Catch the full message with video clips and songs here: https://www.qyork.co.uk/post/my-journey-of-faith-doubt
Don't Burn The Guitar - An Ode to Perspective - Anth Chapman - Sunday 20th February 2022 by QYork
Chris, Joel, Danny, Ruth and Jenny share what's inspired them from the last month at Q.
The Need to be Heard vs The Need to be Herded - Anth Chapman - Sunday 6th February 2022 by QYork
The Danger Of Isms Pt 4 - Demonise, Angelise Or Humanise? - Danny Sewell - Sunday 30th January 2022 by QYork
To get the full picture and watch videos of talks, the related video clips and songs then check out the blog of this service here: https://www.qyork.co.uk/post/the-danger-of-isms-part-3-the-search-for-meaning-sunday-23rd-january-2022
Anth Chapman - The Danger of Isms - Part 2 - Overpowered or empowered? - Sunday 16th January 2022 by QYork
From atheism and veganism, to socialism and capitalism there are many isms that tempt us to submit to their rules, when freedom is calling us to something beyond beliefs...
To get the full context of these talks, check out the blog at https://www.qyork.co.uk/post/putting-the-x-back-in-christmas-christmas-at-our-house-2021
Watch the video clips relevant to this talk on the blog here: https://www.qyork.co.uk/post/avoiding-the-hamster-syndrome-sunday-21st-november-2021
"I AM" Is A Complete Sentence - Anth Chapman - Sunday 12th September 2021.docx by QYork
Joining The Dots and The Power of Doubt - Anth Chapman - Sunday 15th August 2021 by QYork
Keeping the peace or selling your soul? - Anth Chapman - Sunday 25th July 2021 by QYork
Part 2 of our exploration into The Physics of The Quest, where, inspired by the movies Eat, Pray, Love and Smallfoot, we explore how faith is more than belief and requires us to embrace mystery and continue to learn.
Belief is the insistence that the truth is what one would “lief” or wish it to be. The believer will open his mind to the truth on condition that it fits in with his preconceived ideas and wishes.
Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be.
Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown.
Belief clings but faith lets go.
Check out the blog from this service for all the highlights including videos of talks, movie clips and songs: https://www.qyork.co.uk/post/what-do-you-hear-highlights-from-our-house-sunday-11th-april-2021
I believe in the importance of the cross in the Jesus story.
It is not my intention to pull any punches on your behalf but to say how I see it.
I was taught to defend a dogma, not engage a conversation, that kept me from being open to new ways of seeing things for much of my life.
I hope you will see in this message why we may be at cross purposes.
A Buddhist, a Puffer Fish & a Sound Engineer walk into a bar - Sunday 4th April 2021 by QYork
In almost all circumstances, the quest for certainty overshadows the quest for truth. Within that scenario, ‘truth’ becomes manipulated to fit a specific narrative thereby giving the appearance that the certainty being offered is beyond question which is of course, the object of certainty – to place things beyond question. It’s time to let truth have its rightful place.
I believe there has been abuse and misuse of many principles conveyed and applied by the church and institutions which misrepresent the original idea contained within the thing and so make it a tool of manipulation rather than a means of emancipation. I want to talk about one of those things today
I don’t want to live in a society that survives because of mercy, I want to live in one that thrives because of loving kindness.
If we cannot overcome the curse of tribal religion and its bleed into all forms of life from family to politics, this will never become a reality.
This message should be listened to in tandem with the previous two entitled “God as changing reality”
Find part 1 here: www.qyork.co.uk/post/god-as-a-changing-reality and part 2 here: www.qyork.co.uk/post/god-as-a-changing-reality-part-2
I know by long experience, that the choice of a certain title, or the subject matter of a talk, will cause some to bypass, switch off or ignore.
Everybody likes the stuff on getting past pain and declarations of what will give them guaranteed success with dollops of warm, fuzzy feelings, but dare to delve into things that get close to challenging a hearer or reader's ‘need to change’ areas and, that’s not so popular.
"God as an changing reality" is a two part message of that kind.
Go on, I dare you…
The study of anthropology gives us insight into the human concepts of god throughout the ages. From the ancient text of the bible appearing to accredit to God the authorising of genocide, murder and ethnic cleansing, to the human propensity for prejudice, there emerges the still present defect of God, life, politics and religion viewed through the tribal model. How do we break that cycle and release the healing wholeness that comes through a different spirit?
ACTS OF NECESSARY VANDALISM
There are times in our lives when to access the life we so longingly desire, we may need to vandalise what is.
Now, that may seem a word and a statement inappropriate to use considering its strong and aggressive implications toward lawlessness, but, having got your attention, let me try and give you a different perspective on this subject that may help you initiate your breakthrough.
Stop settling for stuck when you could journey to free.
WHAT LIES BEYOND THE PAIN?
There are things in life that will keep you stuck in places from which you should have moved on but never did.
Do you really want to die there?
If you are determined to reshape the potential outcome of the story, break away from the pain of the past and the stagnation of the present, hopefully these steps drawn from ancient wisdom will help.
Without going into all the details, something has been nudging me towards sharing the following video with you. I am posting it particularly for my church friends out there, as I have this nagging feeling it’s what some of you need in your journey right now.
The words we use can sometimes be unhelpful and misleading in respect to the message we are trying to convey. The bible translators were not immune to this. What makes it worse, is the thought that sometimes this was done deliberately!
By looking at the characters on stage during the epic event we call the nativity, how do we unlock its twists and turns and secrets to bring us a life defining moment that will keep unfolding for as long as we can imagine? An understanding of the truth of incarnation really is the gift that keeps on giving.
The greatest devil you will ever face, possibly the only one, is the one on the inside.
What is known in the bible as “the wilderness temptation” was not intended to convey some nominal exercise in script writing or storytelling, but to draw us into a very familiar human story which no human can avoid, the inner questions of identity and purpose.
Like the story, we are led there, whether we like it or not.
The religious spirit is a vile curse that has blighted all humanity since the beginning of time. The religious spirit is like oil, it gets everywhere!
It is not confined to religious organisations but seeps into anything and everything that holds power over people.
What would you think should be the response?
Have you ever felt stuck in your life?
The biblical story of the pool of Bethesda paints a powerful picture of what it means to be late to the party and addresses the frustration and reason why we reach the state of “stuck”.
There comes a time in all of our lives when we must face what we least want to face.
In that moment we have to acknowledge that we ourselves have contributed to the situation we now have to face along with others along the way.
The names we would give to the things we fear facing the most may be different but, at the core, they’re all rooted in the same things and there is one indispensable key to their resolution.
Can an ancient story give us the insight we long for?
Socrates said, “I am wise, not because I know, but because I know that I don’t know”.
There is something paradoxically powerful about this statement that asks important questions about what we would perceive constitutes wisdom, especially in regards to our quest for wholeness and what it means to be human.
If we can put aside the methods we adopt to simply survive situations rather than overcome them, like avoidance, selective blindness, and forced optimism, we may be able to accept there is a place from which to look that offers a noticeable and dynamic life changing shift.
It’s not so much what you’re looking at but where you’re looking from that makes the difference in life.
Within the dynamic of life we often find ourselves facing challenging contradictions.
What if these arise to alert us to the presence of a greater reality than the one we currently embrace?
This is where the Judas principle comes in.
We are QChurch! Why Q? We are on a Quest, a Quest for spirituality, joy, relationship, justice, beauty and a new world.
If you enjoyed what you saw, click on the link below which will take you to our website. https://www.qyork.co.uk
I’m not sure the author of the nursery rhyme "There was an old lady who swallowed a fly” would have known just how relevant this poem would be to a 21st century world.
Anything started from a basis of fear will always create reactions not conducive to healthy outcomes. If we spend our time reacting to the latest circumstance we will always end up on a path of more destructive consequence.
To the casual observer, the approach to solving the perceived problem becomes more and more absurd.
To the participator, it looks like the obvious and sensible next step!!
Perspective is a great leveller of extremes.
Anth Chapman - John Lost His Head. Don't Be Like John. Pt 2 - Wednesday 20th May 2020 by QYork
Anth Chapman - When the movies make more sense than The Bible - Thursday 30th April 2020 by QYork
Here's a link to the image Chris talks about: https://static.wixstatic.com/media/daf06a_0ebafbea5a1a4712aa6e3f712a3a03c4~mv2_d_2480_3508_s_4_2.png
Religion often rejects those that it doesn't consider acceptable. Anth unpacks the nuggets of truth that lie in the ancient story of when a man called Phillip meets an Ethiopian Eunach.
Anth points out some of the important junctions and turns we need to take on our journey of life, that will determine the path we travel.
The videos mentioned can be viewed here:
How the brain works: https://youtu.be/0hPYoJaCoFs
Moneyball Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAG74hfW4pM
Watch the talk in full on our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mSX4DiMJvA