The Nexus Podcast

Mary Comforts Eve (Season 12 Episode16)

For our second week of Advent, we will concentrate on Advent hope by way of reflecting on a piece of art. It is Sister Grace Remington’s Mary Comforts Eve. Look up the original piece on Google. It is by Scott Erickson. It seems to capture not only the story of Scripture in one image, but the human condition and the hope that animates the Jesus Path.

The War of Pregnancy (S12 Episode15)

Advent is here again and you can sense the excitement and anticipation in the air. This gloomy November will soon give way to Christmas lights, decorations, and songs of the season. This Christmas will no doubt be special for many after spending last year in lockdown.
 
To get our Advent season underway together, we start with the angelic announcement to Mary that she will become pregnant and bring a new life into the world. So begins the story of pregnancy, a beautiful and complicated battle between two opposing forces.  We explore all of that while keeping an eye on what this meant for Mary, and of course us. Let's get going and light our first Advent candle.

The Age of Secularism - Part 2 (S12 Episode14)

This Sunday we pick up where we left off, in third wave secularity. In our time, the secular has birthed a new ethic and new authority. They come with promise and potential, but also excesses that make the life of faith hard.
 
We dive into high school bullying, a hilariously revealing sketch from Saturday Night Live, why we all feel like we can’t keep up, the one story Charles Taylor believes is a litmus test for how all of us see the world, how the story of Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Paul push us to look for cracks in the imminent frame of the secular age, and how most Disney stories play with those same story archetypes. 

The Age of Secularism - Part 1 (S12 Episode13)

4 Questions:

1. What is it so hard to be a person of faith today?
2. Why does it feel as though depression and anxiety are at an all-time high?
3. Why are doubt and deconstruction so popular these days?
4. Why do pastors have no clue what they are doing?

To get to these, we will take a brief journey through the history of secularism. This will take us back 500+ years to a world vastly different than our own. An album cover, a statue in Venice, an enchanted forest in Briethaupt Park, Jose Bautista’s bat flip, what we learned from Donald Trump staring directly into the sun, and two songs that perfectly reflect the space in time we all inhabit: secular world three. 

Stay in the Flow (S12 Episode9)

Brad reflects on a family trip this past summer that got him thinking a lot about rivers and flow. Brad suggests that one of the best ways we can understand the nature of Scripture is to think of it as a river. Scripture continues to be a source of doubt and concern for many, but understanding it as a river may be of aid to some of us.

Game Play (S12 Episode8)

How does a woman with a PhD in psychology, two New York Times bestselling books, and no idea how many cards are in a deck end up putting her career on hold for three years so she can learn to play poker? Maria Konnikova’s story of academic turned poker professional is an interesting tale. Even more interesting though is the lessons she learned along the way and how many of those lessons seem to apply to walking the Christian Path.
 
This Sunday we explore the faith lessons inherent in so many of the games we love most.

Skin in the Game (S12 Episode7)

For the next few weeks we will explore the wild world of game theory. Conceived in the 1950s, Game Theory is a mathematic discipline that has influenced quantum theory, economics, evolutionary biology, systems science, computer science, military defense planning, and logic. Might it have something to add to our ongoing exploration of the Christian Path?
 
This week we are dive into the game behind the theory itself: poker. We will need to explore the nature and consequence of beliefs, election polling, the stakes of the incarnation, Jesus' parable of the talents, and, of course, we should probably play a little poker.
 
This Sunday promises to be both fun and challenging for us all as we explore what it means to have Skin In The Game.

Squeezed (S12 Episode6)

This Sunday is our final week in the Practices series and we will be wrapping it up by looking at Generosity.

The Hospitality of Robot Soft Exorcism (S12 Episode5)

We are almost to the end of practices here at Nexus as we look at Hospitality and Forgiveness. We spent four weeks on forgiveness in June, so the focus here will be primarily on hospitality. There are many dimensions to hospitality, but for this Sunday, let’s examine what it means to be a hospitable person?
 
Brad will examine two episodes from Jesus’ life, explain this odd thing called Robot Soft Exorcism, and relay to you a most fascinating event he witnessed unfold this summer in Victoria Park (involving police, a man on a statue, and an unruly crowd).

People, Place and Presence (S12 Episode4)

We are diving into our third practice, our desire to be present and awake to the land and people in front of us. To do that, we will start by examining the implications of one of the most boring and redundant pieces of writing in the entirety of the New Testament. It's almost guaranteed that if you have ever read the gospels, you either skipped this part or fell asleep reading it.  Have you ever read through a phone book?  Yeah, it is about as exciting as that. However, the implications of these writings are monumental for us. The speaking of the account of Jesus' genealogy.