The Jesus Society

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A conversation about relationships, renewal & purpose in the Kingdom of God

Episodes

Monday Sep 28, 2020

A Pandemic Church Model

Monday Sep 28, 2020

Imagine you’re one of the Christian families in Acts chapter 8 who are forced to flee Jerusalem because of persecution. You end up in a new town. You’re now the only Christians in that town. If a church is going to be formed there, you’re gonna have to do it. What do you do? What would that look like?

Also, imagine — and this will be much easier for most of you — that a pandemic has just hit and churches have closed their doors for two months. What are you going to?

And while you're imagining that, think about this question — What’s the smallest number of Christians you need to have a legitimate church?

Join me today as we discuss:

1. The smallest number of people you need to have a healthy and legitimate church.

2. The difficulty most of us face in 2020 trying to imagine a different kind of church than we're used to.

3. What we think we need to have a legitimate church vs. what we really need.

4. The four primary functions of a healthy church.

5. What church has looked like for about 12 of us during the pandemic and why it just might work for you.

6. The important ingredients in our new "model" of church.

7. How this new experience of church has changed us all.

8. How and why you might try this approach to church.

What I want you to see, and why I wanted to talk about this today is to help you see that any of you can do this. There’s simply no reason to have been alone in front of the TV every week wishing for the churches to open their doors again.

The Kingdom of God doesn’t collapse just because buildings are closed. It’s my contention that the Kingdom can thrive, as it always has, when difficulties arise. God is still God, and his people can still meet and grow and serve and love.

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And with that, I want to thank you for joining us today. I hope you’ll join us again next week.

As always, we’d appreciate it if you’d tell others about the podcast. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe, rate and review us on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, AND now also on Apple Music.

Please visit us on our Facebook group for the Jesus Society Podcast. Just search Jesus Society Podcast, and I’m sure you’ll find it. Feel free to suggest topics for episodes, ask questions, and share your own story of how the Father is loving you and transforming you.

Also, check out our website — thejesussociety.com.

Thanks for listening!

And remember, you are greatly loved.

Monday Sep 21, 2020

Freedom Part 5 - Freedom From Fear

Monday Sep 21, 2020

We all have our fears, don’t we? Maybe you’re afraid of being alone. Maybe you’re afraid of being rejected. Perhaps your greatest fear is the fear of the unknown; of the future; of dying. The point is, we all have our fears. We all have those things that make us afraid.

But for some of us, fear can become crippling. Debilitating. Paralyzing. Some common fears I've encountered in myself and others are:

Fear of embarrassment

Fear of never getting married/being alone

Fear of being worthless/useless/hopeless

Fear of not being loved

Fear of failure

Fear of conflict/confrontation

Fear of rejection

Fear of being vulnerable

Fear of financial problems/poverty

Fear of the future

Fear of death

So we’re going to try and unravel some things related to fear today and hopefully get us moving in a healthy direction.

Join me today as we discuss:

1. The two different kinds of fear

2. Can we really live without ever being afraid?

3. How to live in the midst of fear

4. THE key to overcoming fear

5. The one thing God always says in Scripture regarding to fear

6. How overcoming fear ties back into love and trust

7. The antidote to fear

8. The management strategy for fear

9. Three stories from Scripture that illustrate all of this.

10. What about those times when God is with us and yet we still suffer?

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As always, we’d appreciate it if you’d tell others about the podcast. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe, rate and review us on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, AND NOW ALSO ON AMAZON MUSIC!

Also, check out our website — thejesussociety.com.

Thanks for listening!

And remember, you are greatly loved.

Monday Sep 14, 2020

Reading the Bible Like Jesus and Paul

Monday Sep 14, 2020

If you read the Bible the way Jesus read the Bible, or you read the Bible the way Paul read the Bible, or if you read the Bible the way the writer of Hebrews or Peter or any of the apostles read the Bible, you will fail seminary classes.

That’s your Paul Harvey teaser. Join me today to get the rest of the story.

I want to talk briefly today about how we read the Bible and how we should read the Bible.

Join me today as we discuss:

1. The difference between exegesis and hermeneutics, and why each are important in biblical interpretation.

2. What the heck is historical-critical exegesis?

3. The problem with critical biblical interpretation

4. Why you have to be a Christian to REALLY understand the Bible.

5. Two important guidelines for Bible reading (but not the only guidelines)

6. The Rest of the Story - why Jesus and Paul would fail seminary classes

5. Reading the story through the lens of its conclusion

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As always, we’d appreciate it if you’d tell others about the podcast. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe, rate and review us on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Also, check out our website — thejesussociety.com.

Thanks for listening!

And remember, you are greatly loved.

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Resources for Today’s Show:

1. How to Read the Bible for All It’s Worth (4th edition, 2014), by Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart

Monday Sep 07, 2020

Freedom Part 4 -- The Importance of Identity

Monday Sep 07, 2020

Today we're talking about another part of freedom, and that’s the idea of identity. And this ties in closely with last week’s episode. You have two choices in life: You can see yourself as a son or daughter of God. Or you can see yourself as an orphan. And it matters greatly how you see yourself. Because if the enemy or the world can convince us that we’re something other than what God says we are, we will never make it.

And Satan will try and attack us either by casting doubt on the nature of God or by dismantling our sense of our own identity.

Join me today as we discuss . . . .

1. Who are you . . . really?

2. How the Lord helped me sort this out for myself

3. Several important truths about how God created you from Psalm 139

4. The hope of re-creation in Christ.

5. The contrast between seeing ourselves as slaves and seeing ourselves as sons/daughters.

6. Important insights from the story of the Prodigal Son.

7. Four important truths about your new identity as an adopted son or daughter of God.

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As always, we’d appreciate it if you’d tell others about the podcast. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe, rate and review us on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Also, check out our website — thejesussociety.com.

Thanks for listening!

And remember, you are greatly loved.

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Resources for Today’s Show:

1. The Heart of an Orphan vs. The Heart of a Son (PDF)

2. Neil Cole, Cultivating a Life for God

Monday Aug 31, 2020

Freedom Part 3 - The Father Heart of God

Monday Aug 31, 2020

The big thing we have to understand about spiritual freedom is that it’s rooted, not in an event or a process, but in a person — Jesus Christ. And we see this in two passages in the gospel of John (John 15:4-5, and John 8:31-36)

Jesus couldn't be clearer. It’s only by clinging to him — abiding in him — that we become free and remain free.

And because that's so, one of the first things we’ve got to get settled in all this is our belief in who God is. Not our belief in God, but our belief in who he is. Because we will never abide in him — cling to him — if we don’t see him as he is.

Join me today as we discuss:

1. Who God says he is.

2. Wrestling with God as a Father

3. God is better than your earthly father - maybe by a lot!

4. What a good father looks like.

5. How a loving God deals with imperfect people.

6. How to really please God.

7. How the Adversary tries to get us to believe things about God that are not true.

8. How to begin moving from doubt to faith

9. Do you have the heart of an orphan or the heart of a son/daughter? And why it matters so much.

10. Three concrete ways you can begin to experience God’s heart for you.

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As always, we’d appreciate it if you’d tell others about the podcast. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe, rate and review us on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Also, check out our website — thejesussociety.com.

Thanks for listening!

And remember, you are greatly loved.

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Resources for Today’s Show:

1. The Heart of an Orphan vs. The Heart of a Son (PDF) Note -- This PDF is available on the Jesus Society Facebook group page. The link should take you there. I couldn't figure out how to add a PDF directly to the show notes for the podcast. Hope you find it helpful.

2. Growing in Intimacy with God - Does God Talk to Us? (Episode 11 - May 4, 2020)

3. Growing in Intimacy with God - Prayer as Dialogue (Episode 12 - May 11, 2020)

4. Growing in Intimacy with God - Learning to Live Loved (Episode 13 - May 18, 2020)

5. Growing in Intimacy with God - Where is God When I Hurt? (Episode 14 - May 25, 2020)

Monday Aug 17, 2020

Freedom Part 2 - Brokenness & Bondage

Monday Aug 17, 2020

So we’re gonna be talking over the next few weeks about the idea of freedom — what it is, why we need it, and how to get it. In John 8:31-32, Jesus says, “If you continue in my word, you really are my disciples. You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” The truth will set you free. Well . . . free from what? The easiest answer here is free from sin. But I think Jesus’ concept of freedom is bigger than that. I think he’s envisioning a freedom from anything that holds you back from becoming Christlike, and thus living the full and abundant life he wants you to live. Free to love and to be loved. Free to succeed, and free to fail. Free to hurt and free to heal.

Join me today as we discuss:

1. Brokenness vs. Bondage

2. The nature of bondage

3. What exactly is "the abundant life?"

4. The two categories of lies the enemy tells us

5. What freedom looks like

6. How to cooperate with Jesus in moving toward

7. How freedom happens

7. The two critical tools that God gives us that we tend to run away from

8. The big rocks of freedom that we're going to be addressing in the coming weeks.

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As always, we’d appreciate it if you’d tell others about the podcast. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe, rate and review us on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Also, check out our website — thejesussociety.com.

Thanks for listening!

And remember, you are greatly loved.

_______________________

Resources for Today’s Show:

1. American Gospel: Christ Alone (available on Amazon Prime and Netflix)

Monday Aug 10, 2020

Freedom Part 1 -- Deep Healing

Monday Aug 10, 2020

Today I’m going to introduce what we’re going to be talking about for the next few weeks. There’s a story in the New Testament that I think introduces our subject beautifully. And that is the story of the woman at the well in John 4. So today, we’re going to walk through that story and notice some things about this interaction with this woman. And we’re going to pay particular attention to who this woman is, what her life has been like up to this point, the baggage she has been carrying around, and the ways she has been coping with that baggage so that she could survive and function in her society. AND, how Jesus sets her free from all of that.

And THAT is the subject we’re going to be exploring in the weeks ahead — freedom.

Jesus wants to transform all of us into agents of Kingdom blessing in God’s good world. And the key word there is the word “transform.” Because on the front end of our journey with God, none of us are very Christlike. We’ve lived too long in this world and the world has had its way with us. And so we're battered and bruised, and we’ve picked up a lot of junk along the way. And those things affect the way we think about ourselves and about others, and the way we treat ourselves and others. And our heart has figured out ways to hide from the truth. And in a very real way, we are in bondage to those things.

And part of the transformation Jesus wants to bless us with involves setting us free from those broken ways of thinking and behaving that keep us bound up. So in the weeks ahead, we’re going to talk about some ways in which we can begin to face the truth about who we are and who God is and allow him to begin to help us get that stuff out into the light where it can be named and dealt with.

And I think the story of the woman at the well is the perfect place to begin that journey.

You can find the story in John 4:1-42. Join me today as we discuss it!

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As always, we’d appreciate it if you’d tell others about the podcast. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe, rate and review us on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Also, check out our website — thejesussociety.com.

Thanks for listening!

And remember, you are greatly loved.

_______________________

Resources for Today’s Show:

1. The Complete Chronicles of Narnia (Boxed Set - 7 Books), by C. S. Lewis (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0583331378/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_lKdkFbKMK2Y0K)

Monday Aug 03, 2020

Finding Your Calling - A Primer

Monday Aug 03, 2020

Today I’m going try and tackle, in an introductory way, the subject of calling, what it means to find your calling, and some suggestions on how to do that. And the reason I say this is introductory is that calling is something that unfolds over time in the context of a relationship with God. And neither I nor anyone else can help you sort out your calling in a 30-60 minute podcast where it’s just me talking to you.

So this is us dipping our toes into the water, hopefully getting ourselves sorted out and moving in the right direction, and learning to avoid some of the common ways we get tripped up in our search for our calling in the modern world.

Join me today as we discuss:

1. Some o the reasons why calling is so difficult to sort out.

2. Five common misconceptions about calling.

3. Two important precursors to finding your calling.

4. Ten questions to aid you in sorting out your own calling.

5. Why you just can't find your calling by yourself.

6. The thing that is far more important than having a calling.

As always, we’d appreciate it if you’d tell others about the podcast. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe, rate and review us on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Also, check out our website — thejesussociety.com.

Thanks for listening!

And remember, you are greatly loved.

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Resources for Today’s Show:

1. David G. Benner, The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery (2015).

2. Ruth Haley Barton, Sacred Rhythms: Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation (2006).

3. Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabille, The Road Back to You (2016).

4. Gordon Marino, “A Life Beyond ‘Do What You Love’”, May 17, 2014 (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/17/a-life-beyond-do-what-you-love/)

Monday Jul 27, 2020

The Christendom Shift - Part 2

Monday Jul 27, 2020

NOTE: If you haven't listened to last week's episode, you should listen to it before you listen to this episode. There is some useful background material there, and you will understand this episode better if you listen to last week's episode first.

Last week we started talking about series of shifts that took place beginning in the early 300s AD that changed the nature of the way churches functioned in the world pretty much from then on, and not necessarily for the better. Church historians call this the Christendom Shift. It's a shift that took place from the period of pre-Christiandom (the first three centuries AD), to Christendom (everything after the early AD 300s).

And like most societal changes, this didn’t happen overnight; it actually took about 100 years, but if we were going to try to put a starting point on it, it’d probably be when Constantine became emperor. Before Constantine, Christianity was subversive and counter-cultural, and in many ways, it was hard to be a Christian. And within a century of Constantine, it’s punishable by death to NOT be a Christian. After Constantine’s time, Christianity has a huge impact on mainstream culture. And that in turn changed Christianity. And we talked at length about Constantine in last week’s epiosode.

So there are about eight ways in which Christianity changed after Constantine. And we talked about four of those last week, and we’re going to talk about the other four this week.

I am deeply indebted for much of my understanding of all this to the work of Alan Kreider, who was an Anabaptist Menonite scholar. He passed away just a few years ago, but he wrote a number of books and articles about early Christianity and the Christendom shift that have been really helpful to me. There is a link below to a book he wrote in 2007 that sums up most of this pretty well. It’s called The Change of Conversion and the Origin of Christendom.

Join me today as we discuss:

1. How the church moved from seeing themselves as resident aliens to seeing themselves as residents after Constantine.

2. How the church viewed Jesus differently in Christendom than they did in pre-Christendom.

3. How Christian assemblies changed both in form and in function after Christendom, and how that affected the transformation of Christians.

4. How mission changed after Christendom.

5. Why all of this matters, and how much of these issues continue to influence Christianity even today.

God’s church — as he designed it — is wonderful! His Kingdom is the most heavenly thing you can experience on earth. Living in relationship with God’s redeemed and transformed people is simple, it’s safe, it’s energizing, and it’s so very attractive to people. God’s power in us to be his arms and his feet and his hands and using us to bless the world is the greatest adventure you will ever live. God’s ways are perfect, and they lead to all of his blessings` — for us, and for the world. Don’t cheapen that or diminish it by settling for less in any of the ways the church of the fourth century did. Don’t do it. Please.

As always, we’d appreciate it if you’d tell others about the podcast. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe, rate and review us on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Also, check out our website — thejesussociety.com.

Thanks for listening!

And remember, you are greatly loved.

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Resources for Today’s Show:

Alan Kreider, The Change of Conversion and the Origin of Christendom (2007).

Monday Jul 20, 2020

The Christendom Shift - Part 1

Monday Jul 20, 2020

Today and next week, we’re going to talk about a seismic shift that took place in early Christianity, beginning in the early fourth century AD (300s) that changed the way churches functioned from then on, and not necessarily for the better. Scholars call this the Christendom Shift.

It is a shift that took place from the period of pre-Christiandom (the early church of the first three centuries), to Christendom (everything after the early AD 300s). And like most societal changes, this didn’t happen overnight; it actually took about 100 years, but if we were going to try to put a pivot point on it, it’d probably be when Constantine became emperor.

Before Constantine, Christianity was subversive and counter-cultural and so much outside of the mainstream culture that it was, at times, regarded as a threat punishable by death. And within a century of Constantine, it’s punishable by death to NOT be a Christian.

Most of my understanding of all this rests on the work of Alan Kreider, who was an Anabaptist Menonite scholar. He passed away just a few years ago, but he wrote a number of books and articles about early Christianity and the Christendom shift. And I did a fair amount of work in graduate school interacting with his work (see resources below).

This stuff is really important, I think, and there are a lot of implications in all this for today's church. This is Part 1 of a two-part look at the Christendom Shift.

Join me today as we discuss:

1. The role of Constantine the Great in starting the Christendom Shift

2. The first four of eight ways in which Christianity was changed as a result of the Christendom Shift, many of which remain to this day: Vantage Point, Attraction, Power, and Sanctions.

3. How laws, monks, and landowners worked together to make Christianity compulsory.

4. Why these things are so important to us today.

As always, we’d appreciate it if you’d tell others about the podcast. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe, rate and review us on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Also, check out our website — thejesussociety.com.

Thanks for listening!

And remember, you are greatly loved.

_______________________

Resources for Today’s Show:

Alan Kreider, The Change of Conversion and the Origin of Christendom (2007).