Forefront Podcast

For many Americans, the concept of Palestine is nebulous at best and highly misconstrued at worst. Those raised in Evangelical circles were taught that Israel was a long-established nation favored by God and that Zionism was a morally right idea. However, many people are unaware that Israel was not established as a nation until after World War II and that Zionism, which is an anti-Semitic political philosophy more than anything else, has been fueled by colonialism and capitalism for over 100 years leading to suppression, eviction, and genocide of countless Palestinian lives. Sadly, the 32,000+ deaths in Gaza since the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2024 is not a new injustice, but just a new chapter in the oppression of a people whose homeland was partitioned against their will thanks to a UN resolution decades ago. In this episode, two Palestinian Christians and PhD students, Amir Marshi and Marah Sarji, bring voice to the Palestinian experience that has been drowned out and ignored in a time and country that sees almost unchallenged and unquestioned support for Israel.  ABOUT AMIR Amir Marshi is a Palestinian PhD student, organizer, researcher, and writer hailing from the city of Nazareth. His previous engagements encompass work on Palestinian history, settler colonial state violence, and the incarceration of Palestinian children in Jerusalem. He has written on the impact of the Apartheid wall and colonial settlements in and around Jerusalem on the geopolitical and social fabric of Palestinians in Jerusalem, contributing as an author for the Jerusalem Story website. His focus also extends to student movements and public pedagogy in Palestine. Amir co-founded the Edward Said Forum for Palestinian students in the Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts Department at Tel Aviv University, as well as the Souq Stories project—a multi-sited photographic exhibition spotlighting historic Palestinian open markets. He earned his MA from the University of Chicago Divinity School in 2023 and is currently pursuing his PhD in History and Anthropology at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. His current work is centered on the colonial history of Christian Zionism on the one hand, and on the other, the political history of the Arab Church in Palestine-Syria and the North American Arab diaspora. ABOUT MARAH Marah Sarji is a PhD student in theology. Born and raised in Nazareth, she became passionate for justice and peace in Palestine. She received her bachelors in sociology, anthropology and business administration, and her masters in sociology and anthropology, both from Tel Aviv University. During her studies, Marah became active among Kufiya and Saleeb, a movement of young Palestinian Christians seeking to reconcile faith and identity following colonization and Western theological influences in Palestinian Christianity. Marah’s research focuses on the life experiences of struggle and steadfastness of women in Palestine, their faith in God and belief in divine sovereignty. Her research interests also include womanist theology, Palestinian liberation theology, anthropology of theology, coloniality and decolonization. For more background information on Palestine and what has fueled the conflict, check out the following books: 1. The Bible and Zionism: Invented Traditions, Archaeology and Post-Colonialism in Palestine-Israel 2. Epic Encounters Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East Since 1945 3. All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 4. Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness  5. The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood  6. Christian Zionism: Road-map to Armageddon?  7. Facts on the Ground Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society  8. Decolonizing Palestine: The Land, The People, The Bible   9. Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History 

Rev. Venida celebrates the Good News of Easter Sunday with a message highlighting the power given to us through the resurrection. Through this gift, we can freely embrace our own mortality, and recognize the freedom we have been granted to pursue abundant life through the life-giving love of Jesus.

Palm Sunday is not a celebration. Palm Sunday is the shattering of hope and watching one's worst fears come to pass. How do we reconcile hope in the midst of our grief, our pain, and the shattering of our own expectations?

It's Drag Sunday with the sensational Flamy Grant! Flamy leads the music and shares her journey that led to her own Radical Unraveling of Vocation. It's a day of celebration like no other!

Rev. Venida shares a message on the story of Job as we continue the Disruption sermon series. Everything Job holds dear — his property, his family, his wealth, his physical health — has been taken from him. Reduced to suffering and misery, Job laments his circumstances and tries to make sense of what has happened to him. How do we also seek to make meaning of our pain?

Kai (they/them) speaks about Israel-Palestine, an issue that feels overwhelming to lots of folks: What is the Christian stake in all of this? They will walk us through a historical and theological context that outlines Christian responsibility in the current oppression of and genocide against Palestinians.

These days when people think about their relationships with land, it's often under the context of landownership: buying it, selling it, farming it, exploiting it. According to Dr. Mari Joerstad, the Israelites of the Old Testament would be horrified by our attitudes towards and interactions with the Earth. For Old Testament societies, owning and selling private land was just not a concept or practice like it is today. Dr. Joerstad talks to us about what the language in the Hebrew Bible says to us about the relationship that Israel had to the land and, in turn, to God and how that extended to the concept of being accountable to the land. We also get into a discussion about how contemporary concepts of landownership are so tied into identity of societies that it leads to armed conflict.  Joining this conversation is Amanda Clevinger, the leader of Forefront's Faith & Climate Change small group. ABOUT MARI Dr. Joerstad is a biblical scholar, whose research focuses on ecology, land, migration and belonging in the Hebrew Bible. She received her BA from the University of Toronto, a Master of Religion from the Toronto School of Theology (Wycliffe College), and a PhD from Duke University, where she studied with Ellen Davis. A revised version of her dissertation, entitled The Hebrew Bible and Environmental Ethics: Humans, Nonhumans, and the Living Landscape, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2019. She has also published articles in journals like The Journal of Biblical Literature, Horizons in Biblical Theology, and The Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture. More recently, she has been a Research Associate at the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University, where she has provided support for the grant Facing the Anthropocene, lead by Norman Wirzba and Jedediah Purdy, and funded by the Henry Luce Foundation.

What happens when the unimaginable has happened? Where is God? What happens when our plans, our world falls apart? Join us as we learn from the experience of the Disciples when their lives were disrupted.

In Pastor Mak's final sermon as a member of the Forefront staff, she shares her testimony of her 5 years at Forefront and how this church has impacted her life in tremendous ways. She contemplates the meaning of having a "calling", interrogates the concept of having to "do it all", and shares her hopes for the future.

What happens when humans disrupt God’s plan for justice? What should be our collective response when we do? Rev. Venida continues our Disruption Sermon Series sharing the good news that God can give us the strength to recreate God’s plans in our own lives with new vision and intention that propel us forward to bring change and liberation to those suffering.

Rev. Josh tries to make sense of our disappointments in how our expectations of our parents or our hopes for our children sometimes get disrupted. He shared vulnerably about the parallels between his own story and that of Moses and his Mother Jochebed. And concludes the message with some practical advice on how to navigate the challenges within family dynamics.

The COVID lockdown of 2020 changed the paradigm for all of us. The pandemic set many of us on a journey of discovery new routines, anxieties, and fears that we had never experienced before. For Forefront co-pastor, Makenzie Gomez, it was also the start of a journey living with disabilities and chronic illness. Makenzie's journey didn't just see her realizing that there were new physical limitations in her daily routine, but also realizing there was internalized ableism in the world, the Church, and even within herself that had to be interrogated. In this first "Forefront Conversations" of 2024, Pastor Makenzie Gomez expands upon the sermon she gave in November 2023 to dive deeper into internalized ableism, how her experiences have shaped her relationship with faith and prayer, and why it's not cool to tell people living with disabilities that they're "an inspiration." Listen to Makenzie's sermon, "We Will Not Be Silent: Ableism." ABOUT MAKENZIE GOMEZ Pastor Makenzie (Mak) Gomez is one of the Co-Pastors at Forefront whose focus is Operations. Her spiritual upbringing includes a mix of Presbytarian (PCUSA), Non-Denominational Evangelical, and Inter-Denominational Christianity. She received her BFA in Musical Theatre from Boston Conservatory and is a proud member of Actors Equity Association. Outside of Forefront, she is a professional performing artist and teacher. Mak is Mexican-American and identifies as queer/lesbian. Forefront helped her discover that embracing the intersection of sexuality and spirituality can truly be a holy and healing experience, and she hopes to continue to foster a similar environment of wonder for others. At Forefront, Mak produces Sunday services, oversees our Sunday Volunteer Teams, and manages the Church Calendar. She preaches semi-regularly, provides pastoral care and opportunities for growth (particularly when it comes to volunteer and leadership development), and aims to bring as much creativity as possible to all she does. Mak works closely with our deacons of Events & Data.

Please forgive the low quality of our stream. Unfortunately, we had streaming issues and had to stream from a phone instead.   What is your relationship to anger in this season? In what ways are you or aren’t you prone to suppression? Where have you seen rage practiced well? Does Scripture or Jesus provide healthy demonstrations of anger? Rev. Josh explores all of this and more as a disrupts our mind's relationship to anger!

Rev. Venida continues the Disruption Sermon Series highlighting the story of Peter and the disciples as they navigate the stormy seas. She looks at how God can keep us afloat, and work for us and through us in the midst of life’s uncertainties.

Pastor Angela kicks off our new series, “Disruption”, where we will be exploring how we can move forward after our world falls apart. How do we go on when our hopes and dreams appear to be unraveling? Who are we when life upends our identity, when our path disappears? Is this the end, or is it a new beginning? Is there anything too hard for God…is it ever too late…can things turn around? And how do we find joy after the things we feared most have occurred?

Rev. Josh concluded our series “Those Who Dream” with Epiphany Sunday. Epiphany simply means a mystery being revealed. This church holiday marks the day the Maggi in Matthew 2 is led by astrology, finds a 2-year-old Christ-Child, and is forever changed by his light, life, and love. In this message, you are encouraged to ask, where or what has the light of Christ shined on a dark part of your life, theology, or the world and left you changed? And when we arrive on the other side of 2024, how do you want to live and love differently?

Rev. Josh reminds us that we are all dreamers. Like those gathered around the manger, we come to Christmas each year with awe, wonder, and holy imagination for what is possible. Like Mary, we treasure God’s dream in our hearts and commit to keeping it alive. Like the holy family, we believe and trust in a God who comes to us in the vulnerability of a child. How might we like Mary use our imagination to dream of a world and a church that is more just and peaceful?

Rev. Venida continues the second Sunday of Advent with a focus on sowing joy. When we sow a seed in the soil, something so small becomes something so big, so beautiful, so nourishing. Expectant mothers Mary and Elizabeth experienced joy that was so big, so beautiful and so nourishing with the seed of a visit. This sermon explores how the small seeds we sow can yield joyful returns.

Rev. Venida opens the Advent season with our new Sermon Series - Those Who Dream - from the Sanctified Art curriculum. She reminds us that those who dream do not fall asleep to the realities of the world. God prompts us to pay attention to where God’s dreams for change and new life are emerging. In Advent, we remember that God’s ultimate dream is to be intimately connected to us — to come down and dwell among us.

Our leadership team member, Priscilla Alabi, talks about her travels through Israel/Palestine and the ongoing fight over land. How did you first learn about the conflict between Israel and Palestine?