Fabric Podcast

So This Is Xmas: Want The Unwanted 12/21/2014

It's interesting that all these nativity scenes appear in people's front yards this time of year.  Stables are smelly, dirty, messy places - something you hide in the back with the rest of the unwanteds of our lives, of our society, of ourselves... But what if it is the hidden and unwanted in our lives where God's love chooses to be born? What can God move from our back yards into the front?   What's even more interesting is that God chooses to be born into that mess.

So This Is Xmas: Speak The Unspoken 12/14/14

There is power in naming what has been unknown, in speaking what hasn’t been heard. God wants to be known. God wants the good news to be reality. That means putting words to the silence and telling a different story than the usual one on the news or at the water cooler. It’s a crazy idea, but what if we told the story of God at work in our world so that the Christmas story became the Christmas reality: God present and part of the extraordinary and the ordinary of life.

So This Is Xmas: Possible Impossibilities 12/7/14

 “For with God nothing will be impossible” has to be one of the most troublesome lines in the Bible, and here it is in next week’s pre-Christmas story. What is impossible that you want to be possible? What can’t seem to get birthed that you wish could? Well, God is thinking the same thing and scheming. You can count on it being a surprise because God has very different ways of making the impossible possible, and you’ll find yourself saying, “So THIS is Christmas!?!?”

So This Is Xmas: Expect the Unexpected 11/30/2014

Expect the Unexpected: Thanksgiving dinner, Black Friday, and now December is knocking on the door... Are you stuffed? Life can be filled to overwhelming this time of year, and it's often a mix of good (e.g., celebrations, gift-giving, and family) and not so good (e.g., loneliness, stress, and family!). In all the busy-ness, God poses the question, are you interruptible? Is there room in your life to receive and to give the gift of love this Xmas? Let's prepare some room for those interruptions together!

Grits & Grace 11/16/14

Jesus was a storyteller. These stories are usually referred to as parables, which is just a churchy word for story with a
message, and although the tales he told present powerful stories of God’s
love and grace, they are also filled with complexity and nuance, which is
probably why we continue to read and discuss them today. Andy Jolivette is
here with us today to look at one of Jesus’ best-known parables, The Prodigal
Son and His Brother. 

ROPE: Celebrating ROPE 11/09/14

Celebrating ROPE One of the things we say
around Jacob's Well is that it’s a sin for church to be boring. Okay, we all sin once and a while… but it isn’t just
a matter of Sunday morning being entertaining (or not), but that this God stuff is fun.
Sure, not all the time, there is tough stuff in life, but we’re in it because
it makes life better. Today we are going to stop and celebrate by hearing some ROPE stories of people from our own community who have been weaving and knotting. Be inspired and reminded of your own ROPE stories.

ROPE: Weaving & Being Woven 11/02/14

The thing about ROPE is that we don’t each have our own nice, neat and tidy one. We weave and are woven into each other’s rope and all share God in ours. It’s a tangle. So we aren’t a world of seven billion individual ropes, but a complicated tapestry capable of extraordinary strength and beauty. It’s simplicity and completeness is very different from our simplistic and limited way of putting life together. So step back, way back, with us next Sunday and see God’s view of the fabric we weave and are woven into.

ROPE: Growth Matters 10/26/14

Mike Rusert talked about growth as an element of ROPE.Check out more about ROPE here: http://outlook.jacobs-well.net/ROPE