Awaken Bowness Podcast

Acts Ep5: Changing Our Mind

In this podcast Nikayla interviews renown Christian Ethicist Dr. David P Gushee about his book, Changing Our Mind (2014).
In Acts 9 Paul is stopped dead in his tracks by the living Jesus and it radically changes his mind about the Jesus movement. The people of the Jesus movement have to radically change their minds about Paul. In Acts 10 Peter sees the living God tell him to radically change his mind about the Gentiles. A lot of the book of Acts is about changing our mind and you might even argue that the GOSPEL is about changing our mind about Jesus. 

Acts Ep4: But The Bible Clearly Says

In this podcast you'll be introduced to two important Jesus followers: Stephen and Philip.
The early Christian movement will challenge social norms so radically that Stephen will be executed for it and Philip will be led by the Spirit to baptize a gender variant foreigner from a racial minority. The Bible CLEARLY says that eunuchs AND foreigners are not allowed to participate in the assembly of the LORD but here we got Philip baptizing and fully affirming the place of this person within the assembly because the Spirit told him to do it! What do we do with that? If the purpose of the Bible isn't to guide us towards certainty or a certain answers, what is the purpose of the Bible? 
Warning: There was a strange glitch in the recording and it sounds like we recorded this with an electric potato but hopefully you'll be so entranced by the brilliant content you won't notice. Next time it'll be better sound quality! Thank you for listening and sharing.

ACTS Ep3: Marriage, Money, and Power

"We don't really need the church, because we have each other!" - Ananias and Saphira, probably
 
When the local church makes marriage the end-goal of discipleship instead of an act of worship it becomes an 'energy draining vortex that seeks to capture all our imaginative capacity for intimacy' (Willie James Jennings). What if the marriage we celebrated most was the marriage of heaven and earth found in the local church community? Imagine the sense of belonging, safety, vulnerability, intimacy! It'd be a revolution and I'll tell ya what -- a lot of folks wouldn't like it. Listen to Nikayla unpack the Ananias and Saphira (one of the only married people mentioned in the NT) story and get ready for the single people in the community to call the Apostles out on their hypocrisy in Acts 6. 
 
Let's be a Church that pours love and welcome and time and treasures and talents INTO the Church instead of staying safely back to watch and only show up when we think we need to (ought to?) or when we think the church has something to give to us. 
 
Acts Commentary by Willie James Jennings https://www.amazon.com/Acts-Theological-Commentary-Bible-Belief/dp/0664234003
affinitymentorship.com
The Booklet of Uncommon Prayer by Kenji Kuramitsu at evangelicalsforsocialaction.org

ACTS Ep2: The Kin-dom of Christ and the House of Commons

In this episode, I interview some of the members of a Christian intentional community that existed in Bowness for 9 years. I ask Megan, Steph, and Lee about what inspired them, what was difficult, and where they saw God. There was a lot of laughter and a few tears as we reflected on how incredibly difficult it is to be a family of God that practices radical non-violent hospitality in a neighborhood like Bowness. It turns out, they found Jesus in the lost and the vulnerable and Steph even went as far as to call it ... magical. 
If you're interested in expressions of community living, our parish church in Bowness is always interested in new and creative ways of living in community together  from co-housing to co-neighbouring and we are all simultaneously afraid and inspired by the call of Jesus to be a new and peculiar people in this place.
 
Books I highly recommend which were cited in this episode include:
God is Stranger by Krish Kandiah (I accidentally said his last name as Kandish, sorry Krish) https://www.ivpress.com/god-is-stranger
Ada Maria Asasi-Dias who came up with the term 'Kin-dom of Christ' instead of Kingdom with the help of a franciscan nun names Georgene Wilson in Mujerista Theology: A Theology for the 21st Century
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CMC6AEO/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0
Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CMC6AEO/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0

ACTS Ep1: The Elisha to my Elijah on the Day of Pentecost

In this episode we look at Ascension and Pentecost and how it alludes back to Elijah and Elisha. Nikayla shares about the wildly destablizing and disruptive movement that was the early Jesus Movement.
 
In this episode Willie Jenning's commentary on Acts https://www.amazon.ca/Acts-Professor-Willie-James-Jennings/dp/0664234003 was cited as well as his book
The Christian Imagination: The Theology and Origin of Race https://www.amazon.ca/Acts-Professor-Willie-James-Jennings/dp/0664234003
and Soong Chun Rah's book The Prophetic Lament https://www.amazon.ca/Prophetic-Lament-Soong-Chan-Rah/dp/0830836942
and Lisa Sharon Harper's The Very Good Gospel https://www.amazon.ca/Very-Good-Gospel-Everything-Wrong/dp/160142857X

Episode 7: The Apocalypse of Jesus and The Everlasting Garden

Apocalypse means 'uncovering' or 'unveiling'. In this episode Logan Renaud and I talk about what is 'uncovered' in the book of Revelation. Is it the violent end of the world? No. It's the end of violence. What's 'uncovered' is that Jesus, the lamb who was slain, gets the last word. The Kingdom of Jesus is the eternal kingdom - these corrupt and broken systems cannot and will not last and this, my friends, is very good news.  This is the final episode in our garden series. 

Episode 6: Creator becomes Creation: Garden and Embodiment

Let's be unraveled by our belief in the Incarnation. It's hard to deconstruct the "flesh versus spirit" dualism we often conform to here in the post-enlightenment west, but God became flesh! Creator became creation! This should awaken us to more wonder than we can fathom. We begin in Genesis and go into the Gospels to reflect on what our belief in the Incarnation invites us into. Jesus simultaneously has authority over creation and yet is vulnerable to creation. Jesus is fully God and fully human - not human on the outside and God on the inside - this paradox invites us to do the difficult work of reconciliation and be unified as created ones made in the image of God. 

Episode 5: The Nonviolent Authority of Jesus

Eric and I talk about Jesus and what Jesus' authority over nature means for us today. Jesus calms the storm, walks on water, and curses fig trees. There are themes and stories from the Old Testament which can inform our understanding of this authority and wow - Jesus is God, and Jesus is right here in our midst? This is terrifying and wonderful and inspires me to enter the mundane with great expectations. Eric shared a bit of his knowledge about the ways climate change and natural disasters are and will continue to displace the most vulnerable populations on earth and he invites affluent Christians here in Calgary to consider what it means to follow Jesus across the water. Thanks Eric and Happy Birthday :)

Episode 4: Unless a Kernel of Wheat Falls to the Ground and Dies...

Rod Olson is an urban farmer,a lamenting truth-teller, and a man who can hear the soil teach about Jesus. This was a wildly inspiring interview about the gospel, incarnation, death, resurrection, and all of the ways the earth is preaching the gospel right here in Bowness. Have a listen and be inspired! 

Episode 3 Planting Seeds in the Wild Unknown

This podcast is a look at the ways we tend to vilify the future and mythologize the past in times of crisis. We look at the story of the wilderness wandering between Egypt and Sinai and consider the disciples between Ascension and Pentecost. Ultimately, I hope it encourages you to be still and trust that there is healing yet to come - gardens yet to plant and a community right here worth belonging to, even and perhaps especially, in the wild unknown.