Oak Arbor Church: Kindling: Recent Episodes
Oak Arbor Church
”Kindling” is a podcast hosted by Rev. Steven Gunther and Rev. Alan Cowley of the Oak Arbor New Church in Rochester, Michigan. In each episode, Steven and Alan sit down to have thought-provoking conversations about religion and life.
In this episode, pastors Alan and Steven sit down to talk about one of the most important aspects of spiritual life: prayer.
What are we supposed to say? How are we supposed to do it? When are we supposed to do it? It's easy for us to get in our heads, but the message from the Word and the Heavenly Doctrines are the same: Pray anyway.
When we think of people who are "religious" we probably imagine them sitting in a church on Sunday morning. In this episode Pastor Alan and Pastor Steven take a look at the idea of worship and what it is really all about.
Is church a "life" thing or a "Sunday morning" thing?
In this episode Pastor Steven sits down with the middle school students from the Oak Arbor Montessori School to discuss their ideas of heaven and hear their "elevator pitches" for it. They share their ideas of what heaven is really all about, why some people would choose not to go there, and how we can work to build a heavenly life in this world.
We have all wondered at some point what heaven is actually like. We recently sat down with some high schoolers to get their thoughts on what their idea of heaven is and how it would work for everyone. The results were impressive and on-point. In this episode Pastors Alan and Steven discuss the teens' ideas and in the process get to the bottom of what the New Church teaches heaven is all about.
In part two of this conversation about the connection between loving other people and loving God, Pastors Alan and Steven get into some of how we can love other people who see things or do things differently than we do. Can two people live very different lives on the surface, and even attend different churches and still both be living a life that leads to heaven? How can we support people whose path looks different than ours in ways that are actually helpful without accidentally causing harm or damage to them. In other words, how can we truly love our neighbor?
In this episode Pastors Alan and Steven move from talking about our relationship with God into our relationships with others. They discuss the link between those two ideas and ask whether it's possible to love the Lord without loving other people, and vice versa. The ensuing conversation was so good we had to split it into two parts.
In this first part, they discuss what it means to love other people and what that can look like. Spoiler alert: it doesn't just mean being nice to everyone all the time. They break down what it really means to love someone and why hatred is incompatible with our command to love our neighbor.
In this episode Pastor Alan and Pastor Steven discuss the question of how we treat God. It's easy for us to think of our relationship with God in terms of how He treats us, but what are we doing and what can we do to treat God well and invite Him into our lives and hearts?
If God's goal is our eternal happiness, but we are left in freedom to choose whether or not we want to follow Him, then what does that mean about how He treats all of us? How does He lead us and guide us toward happy, fulfilling lives without manipulating or controlling us? Pastor Alan and Pastor Steven take a look at some essential New Church teachings which can help us understand our relationship with God.
In this episode Pastors Alan and Steven discuss God's hope for all of our lives. Does God want us to live a life of restriction and piety so that we can be happy later when we get to heaven? Does He secretly manipulate things in our lives so that we get tricked into following Him? Tied up in this question are some essential things we have to ask ourselves about who God is and how He connects with each of us.
In this episode Pastors Alan Cowley and Steven Gunther sit down to discuss some of the revolutionary ideas that the New Church teaches about what it truly means to have faith. Spoiler: It's not blindly accepting whatever the church tells you.