Vinings Lake Church

In 2 Samuel 24:1, God tells David to count the people of Israel. That same story as recorded in 1 Chronicles 21, Satan tells David to count the people of Israel. Which one is it? This is one a hundreds of example of how messy the Bible is. I mean who actually killed Goliath? Turns out the Bible is not very clear. I know! This week we explore the grey letters of the Bible. What do we do with all the contradictions, inconsistencies, and tensions? And how can something this inconsistent be our guide? What does this say about the kind of Bible we have?

This week we’re asking the question: Is the Bible the Word of God? If so, then what do you do with all the parts of the Bible that are bad, wrong, and immoral? Are all the words of the Bible God’s words? If not, how do we decide what is God and what is not? Who gets to make those decisions? If not, then how is this book any different from any other book? And why for thousands of years do people keep encountering the Divine in this library?

This week we begin with the question of origin. Where did the Bible come from? Did it fall out of the sky on two tablets while various writers got possessed by the Spirit and translated these tablets into our Old and New Testament? Why do Catholics and Orthodox Bibles have more books than the Protestant Bible? Who decided which books made it in and which books did not? What is the cannon? Did God write the Bible or did humans write it? Did God command genocide or did a community say God commanded genocide?

I was taught I had to overcome my fears. I was taught I need to have no fear. But the more I tried to overcome it, the more paralyzed I became by it. What if there is another way to approach our fear? What if instead of overcoming our fear we learned to integrate fear? What if fear has a proper place with all of us? Perhaps that might calm those fears down and maybe even calm ourselves down.

Anxiety has become my greatest professor. Anxiety has transformed me. Anxiety is transforming me. It is removing my heart of stone. And giving me a heart of flesh. My experience is that great love and great suffering transforms us the most. What if instead of getting rid of our anxiety, we leaned in and listened to what it is showing us? What if we went on the journey with it? What would we learn?

From guarantees to Hail Marys, I tried anything to turn down my anxiety. Some were helpful others were not. I’ve concluded: There is no magic bullet for anxiety. In my experience, it takes hard work over time to get inside, underneath, and on top of anxiety. And this difficult work has changed the way I see anxiety. And how we see anxiety can greatly effect how we experience anxiety.

Anxiety has been a part of my life since my earliest memories. I have not always known this. But now that I do, it helps resolve some of the disorientation and shame I carried for years. This week I want to share my experience with anxiety, more specifically living life with a panic disorder. Why now? Because we are living in the age of debilitating anxiety. And because exposing and normalizing anxiety helps reduce its power. Plus, I’ve been collecting tools, wisdom, stories, and practices that might just help reduce the anxiety in you. It all begins in a 1979 red Corvette.

Do you ever feel the heaviness of how broken the world is? Have you ever felt stuck under that burden and weight? It begs the question, How did Jesus work for transformation within the heaviness of all the suffering, pain, and injustice yet not be overcome by the weight of it all? In Matthew, Jesus not only gives us insight into this lightness, He invites us into it. We can work WITHIN the heaviness yet FROM and IN and WITH a lightness. I can feel the weight being lifted already.

Paul makes one basic observation about how he understands the natural order of the universe: we reap what we sow. For some, this is understood as a threat. For Paul, it was understood as a hope. For all those who have grown weary, fatigued, depleted, and burnt-out working for beauty, truth, and goodness, do not give up! The process of cultivating a new earth is arduous at times, but it is not in vain. If we continue to sow love, joy, and peace, we will inevitably reap a world where universal flourishing is a reality.

The U.S. has averaged over eleven mass shootings per week in 2022. At least 344 people have been killed and almost 1,400 wounded. Is this the kind of world we want to live in? What if I told you we get to create the world we want to live in? Last week we looked at imagination. This week we move to integration. The prophet Micah uses the image of beating swords into plowshares to evoke the process of transformation. Instruments of death are transformed into instruments of life. Today we talk about guns + hearts.

What kind of a world do we want to live in? This is the crucial question of our time. Our world is not fixed, static, or finished. To the contrary, it is evolving, unfolding, and malleable. The point? We get to create the world we want to live in. In this series, I want to evoke a collective consciousness that transcends our status quo. I want us to propose a future that seems unthinkable to the dominant reality. My hope is that together we can nurture imagination and inspire integration for a new earth. My passion is that we get caught up in a vision of what could be.

Stephen is considered the first martyr of the early Jesus movement. His story is recorded in the book of Acts 6-7. Like the book of Acts, Stephen’s story is one of motion and progress. He is caught up in a movement that is expanding, growing, and stretching. Stephen finds himself challenging the status quo by critiquing the temple which he says, “Cannot contain the Divine.” But this message was too much for many. As a result, he is martyred for his efforts in the great expansion. His persecution becomes the very story that moves the early Jesus people away from Jerusalem and out to the ends of the earth.

Stephen is considered the first martyr of the early Jesus movement. His story is recorded in the book of Acts 6-7. Like the book of Acts, Stephen’s story is one of motion and progress. He is caught up in a movement that is expanding, growing, and stretching. Stephen finds himself challenging the status quo by critiquing the temple which he says, “Cannot contain the Divine.” But this message was too much for many. As a result, he is martyred for his efforts in the great expansion. His persecution becomes the very story that moves the early Jesus people away from Jerusalem and out to the ends of the earth.

Stephen is considered the first martyr of the early Jesus movement. His story is recorded in the book of Acts 6-7. Like the book of Acts, Stephen’s story is one of motion and progress. He is caught up in a movement that is expanding, growing, and stretching. Stephen finds himself challenging the status quo by critiquing the temple which he says, “Cannot contain the Divine.” But this message was too much for many. As a result, he is martyred for his efforts in the great expansion. His persecution becomes the very story that moves the early Jesus people away from Jerusalem and out to the ends of the earth.

Our friend, author, speaker, and activist Brian McLaren joins us for a conversation.

Perpetua (182-203) is a twenty-one-year-old mother from the Roman city of Carthage. In The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas, we find a first-person diary from Perpetua herself that describes her arrest and life leading up to the day before her execution. In her diary, she transparently writes about her anxiety, grief, and joy that all sit side by side. At one point, in referencing her prison cell she writes, “The dungeon became to me as it were a palace, so that I preferred being there.” Her story is widespread has inspired and strengthened weary communities for centuries to continue to bear witness to the rule of God.