The Loft LA - Progressive Christianity in Podcast Form

During the second week of The Season of Origins, we are invited to name and lament the atrocities of the past and examine the role Christian theology played in justifying those past harms. As Angelinos, we can see the harmful effects of Manifest Destiny theology all around us. However, Jesus guides us toward a new way of relating to one another in the Gospels by constantly reminding us that the love of God should motivate us to be responsible to all people, not just those within our tribe. www.TheLoftLA.org

Accounts of violence in the Bible, like the story of Joshua's conquest of Canaan, have been used by Christians to theologically justify violence, genocide, and war. But are these the only or main stories we should rely on when thinking about how to engage with the world? During this first week of the Season of Origins, we are invited to seek out the liberative anti-oppressive counter-stories within the Bible and our Christian tradition. As Christians, if we are to heal our past harms, we commit ourselves to living like Christ. www.TheLoftLA.org

Conversation is at the heart of our gatherings in The Loft; it's how we worship. On this final Sunday of our Loft 101 series, we focus on a well-known story from John's gospel, where Jesus engages in a conversation with a Samaritan woman at Jacob's well. Deeply embedded in scripture, this story shows us a model for how conversation can be central to our community. Join us this Sunday as Rev. Dr. Carter is joined by Everest and Westley in the center as they discuss the importance and challenges of building a big-tent progressive Christian community. www.TheLoftLA.org

Compassion was fundamental to Jesus’ ministry and the primary lens through which he engaged his community. At The Loft, we strive to follow Jesus’ spiritual path of radical compassion and view compassion as one of our guiding values. We invite you to join us this Sunday as we explore why compassion is fundamental to our spiritual practices and essential for both inspiring and guiding our actions. www.TheLoftLA.org

In a world that rewards individualism, how valuable is community? At The Loft, we believe there is significant value in creating a culture of belongingness. This value is born out of our reading of the bible, where the importance of belonging is evident in the lives of the Israelites and the early Christian communities, who had communities that they belonged to, a homeplace where they were loved just for being themselves. We invite you to join us this Sunday as we explore the value of belonging with Marilyn Figueroa, an immigration lawyer and member of The Loft community, who will share her insight into the current situation we are facing with ICE and the Department of Homeland Security. www.TheLoftLA.org

While the dismantling of the old order began with Moses, and the prophets guided his people through their deconstruction and disorder, Jesus energized his community by teaching and practicing a new way to follow God. Jesus ushers in a new expression of the Mosaic tradition he inherited. Similarly, we are called to practice prophetic imagination, and by putting into practice what we hope for, we embody the prophetic energy, the Spirit of God, to do the work our souls must have. www.TheLoftLA.org

Jesus inherited and practiced his prophetic ministry from Moses, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, among others. Similar to his forerunners, he used prophetic criticism to critique a dominant religious and political culture that had become numb to suffering. However, Jesus' use of compassionate acts as a form of prophetic criticism was a notable shift in approach and one the church ought to mirror. www.TheLoftLA.org

Order - Disorder - Reorder. As our community navigates a time of disorder, the task of prophetic imagination and ministry is to cut through despair and to identify the dissatisfied coping mechanisms that seem endless and unresolved. The prophet Isaiah and those who wrote in his style demonstrate how prophetic communities use the language of amazement to energize their people and help them shift from despair to hope. www.TheLoftLA.org

Jonah is one of the minor prophets, famous for living in the belly of a big fish for three days and being angry at God. But what else does his story have to teach us? Come this Sunday to find out! We’re excited to welcome Everest Harvey, our Director of Youth and Social Justice Ministries to the Loft this Sunday while Rev. Dr. Carter is away.   www.TheLoftLA.org

Jeremiah is rightly considered one of the major prophets. He is prominent in both the Hebrew Bible and quoted extensively by Jesus and the authors of the New Testament. While he is often misunderstood as a doomsday prophet, Jeremiah should be seen as someone who embodies the alternative consciousness of Moses in the face of a denying king. Jeremiah helps his community move from order to disorder through prophetic criticism, forcing them to see the suffering around them that they are trying to pretend does not exist. www.TheLoftLA.org

The radical break of Moses and Israel from the Egyptian Imperial system is the foundation upon which Christianity was built. The radical actions of Moses and the Israelites can hardly be overstated. In liberating his people, he guides his community through a Spiritual maturation process of order, disorder, and reordering. These three steps are guideposts for the prophetic decolonization that we see in the ministry of Jesus and what ought to be the ministry of the church. www.TheLoftLA.org

The task of the prophetic community is to nurture, nourish, and evoke an alternative orthodoxy — a consciousness that sees the world differently from the dominant cultures around them. However, the challenge we face is that the structures of the dominant culture are designed to numb you from feeling your own or others' suffering and from developing the ability to recognize that suffering. How do we resist the temptation to avoid feeling such pain? Amos shows us that seeing the world differently requires vulnerability. Only when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable can we share in and with the suffering of others and see the suffering of the world as God’s suffering. www.TheLoftLA.org

We invite you to join us as we welcome Rev. Kevin Wright who will be preaching in The Loft this Sunday while Dr. Carter is away. In his sermon Rev. Wright will explore what it looks like for marginalized communities, particularly queer communities, to have hope during a time like this.  Rev. Kevin Kim Wright is an ordained elder in the Baltimore Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church. Currently, Rev. Kevin lives in Los Angeles and serves in an extension ministry appointment as Chief of Staff at Point Foundation, the nation's largest nonprofit scholarship provider for LGBTQ individuals. www.TheLoftLA.org

The biblical witness is a book of hope. From Abraham and Sarah through the Apostles, people of faith placed their hope in the promises of God and God’s covenant with them. However, when Jesus’ spiritual path of radical compassion became overshadowed by the Roman Empire, God’s work of redemption was increasingly pushed aside. Too many Christians have embraced a secular version of hope that depends on a mythical idea of human progress. But this is not the hope seen in the Israelite community of Moses or the disciples of Jesus. www.TheLoftLA.org

Injustice is making itself visible in the streets of our city. Are we prepared to act with compassion and wisdom? Have we rehearsed our responses in a way that is faithful to the ways of Jesus? Join Rev. Blair for a conversation on “How Not to Be a Bystander”, based on James 1:19-27. Rev. Blair Trygstad Stowe serves as our Public Theologian in Residence, which makes her a regular on our The Progressive Christians Podcast. She is an ordained Elder in the California Pacific Annual Conference; while completing a PhD from the Boston University School of Theology, she serves as the Assistant Dean of Co-curricular Development and Assistant Professor in the Practice of Ministry at the Claremont School of Theology. Rev. Blair and her husband, Andrew, as well as their children, Ansel and Ellory, are regulars at Westwood UMC, most frequently in The Loft. Dr. Carter will be away until July 9, while teaching a seminary cross-cultural immersion class in South Africa. www.TheLoftLA.org

In our final Sunday during Pride month, we look into Paul's letter to the Galatians, ready to liberate it from theologies and assumptions that have been used to devalue our bodies and lives, and find freedom in a gospel of embodiment and connection. Dr. Carter will be away until July 9, while teaching a seminary cross-cultural immersion class in South Africa. www.TheLoftLA.org

Small groups were essential in the creation and maintenance of The Methodist Church. They remain the bedrock of how we sustain connectedness in our increasingly post-religious society. For the members of the Westwood UMC Queer Group, it has been a balm for the soul. Please join Rev. Dr. Carter as he is joined in conversation with members of our Queer Group to discuss their faith journeys, the role our community has played in their journey, and where we need to continue to grow in order to continue becoming the unapologetically inclusive community we hope to be. www.TheLoftLA.org

Trans identity is more than just what pronouns you use. For Christians, trans identity pushes us to wrestle with what it means to be created in the image of God and the transformation that takes place every time we celebrate Holy Communion. Join Rev. Dr. Carter and Everest Harvey as they explore what it is about being trans that isn’t clicking for people. www.TheLoftLA.org

We sometimes forget that no Gentiles (i.e., non-Jewish folks) were present to receive the pouring out of the Holy Spirit during the first Pentecost. To be sure, eventually there would be Gentile followers of the Way of Jesus, and those Gentiles would be baptized with the fire of the Holy Spirit. The story of the Gentile Pentecost teaches us that, despite our perceptions of ourselves, we are not qualified to determine who is and isn’t welcome at God’s table. This Sunday, we are celebrating Youth Sunday in The Loft. The Grapple youth will participate in worship by leading prayer, reading scripture, and playing with the handbells. We are also excited that three of our graduating high school seniors, Oz, Lauren, and Will, will offer their reflections on the role that Westwood UMC has played in their lives. We hope that you can join us as we celebrate our amazing youth and youth leadership. www.TheLoftLA.org

That human beings are created in the image and likeness of God has been a fundamental theological pillar in the history of Christianity. However, who images God and to what degree do they reflect God’s image has been a consistent point of contention. In our current social and political moment, queer persons are now facing the same scrutiny over whether they image God in ways that mirror what Black, female, disabled, and other nonwhite bodies have, and still are, facing. So what do we Christians really mean when we say that human beings are created in the image of God? www.TheLoftLA.org