Loft Gathering: Grounded In Our Truth
The Loft LA - Progressive Christianity in Podcast Form
Release Date: 08/16/2024
How We Share
The Loft LA - Progressive Christianity in Podcast Form
Parents spend countless hours teaching their children about the importance of sharing, it is a lesson we struggle to fully comprehend even in adulthood. In America, we live in a society of extreme wealth and poverty because we are still unable to share. Why do we allow these extremes to exist? We invite you to join us on Sunday as we explore how our trinitarian understanding of God can help us develop a mature spirituality of generosity. www.TheLoftLA.org
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How We Heal
The Loft LA - Progressive Christianity in Podcast Form
In times of unrest, Jesus often responded by tending to his immediate needs and those of his community before deciding what to do. As we emerge from this season of political unrest, the healing stories of Jesus show us that our response to this unrest is to begin with personal and communal healing. Doing so reminds us that God cares for all of God’s creatures, great and small. www.TheLoftLA.org
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The ‘Big Lies’ of Christian Nationalism
The Loft LA - Progressive Christianity in Podcast Form
The gospels tell us that Jesus practiced nonviolence and taught his followers to expand their preconceived ideas about who was welcome at God’s table. Despite this inclusive theology, we are currently in the midst of another rise of Christian Nationalism—a belief system rooted in mythological lies about American history and the Divine. We invite you to join us this Sunday as we unpack the lies of Christian Nationalism by centering the life, teachings, and politics of Jesus. www.TheLoftLA.org
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Unmasking Loneliness: Building a Culture of Connection
The Loft LA - Progressive Christianity in Podcast Form
What role should churches, and specifically our church, play in addressing the challenges of loneliness in our faith community? We invite you to join us for the last sermon of this series as we explore how following the religion of Jesus should transform our relationship with ourselves and each other. www.TheLoftLA.org
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Unmasking Loneliness: The Community We Mean To Have
The Loft LA - Progressive Christianity in Podcast Form
We all want to be accepted and belong to a supportive circle of friends. However, our desire for relationships and community are often in conflict with what we actually prioritize, and we are now learning that children are noticing this behavior and mirror it. How can we close the gap between what we say we want and what we actually prioritize? How might we prevent our children from developing habits that promote social isolation? What we see in the gospels is that Jesus invites us to view ourselves as a family of families, interconnected and embodying the compassionate instinct that we were...
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Unmasking Loneliness: Better Together
The Loft LA - Progressive Christianity in Podcast Form
What does it mean to be someone’s friend? How does friendship expand our experience of the Divine? As humans, we all need the social connection of friendship to help prevent us from feeling lonely. To be sure, making friends and keeping friendships alive is not easy. However, as we see in the friendships between David and Jonathan and Jesus and his disciples, friendship is essential to our spiritual growth. www.TheLoftLA.org
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Unmasking Loneliness: Connecting from the Inside Out
The Loft LA - Progressive Christianity in Podcast Form
For those of us who struggle with loneliness, the obvious “solution” to our challenge would be to go and spend time with people. If only it were that easy. While there are several practices that we should adopt to address our longing for community, the most important one is somewhat counterintuitive. Jesus teaches his disciples that we must first deepen our connection with ourselves, which builds the foundation upon which we establish new or strengthen existing relationships. www.TheLoftLA.org
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Loft Gathering: Unmasking Loneliness
The Loft LA - Progressive Christianity in Podcast Form
Rugged individualism and self-determination are among the core values that dominate American culture. These values have simultaneously incentivized many of us to prioritize our vocations or social obligations at the expense of and for the benefit of our relationships. The result is that far too many of us struggle with loneliness and long for connection and belonging. As the writer of Ecclesiastes makes clear, our feelings of loneliness are not new, and the antidote to loneliness is human connection.
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Loft Gathering: Guidelines for Compassionate Actions
The Loft LA - Progressive Christianity in Podcast Form
Jesus’ spiritual path is centered on love, and we embody love through actions that aim to ease the suffering and promote the flourishing of all life. Throughout his ministry Jesus shows us that compassion begs for embodiment and that compassionate actions are contagious.
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Loft Gathering: How To Love The Neighbors You Don’t Like
The Loft LA - Progressive Christianity in Podcast Form
Jesus’ way of radical compassion is, in fact, radical. In his parables on forgiveness and love, he encourages his followers to forgive those who have wronged them as many as seventy-seven times and to love their enemies! Given our polarized society, is this kind of compassion possible or even practical?
info_outlineJesus’ spiritual path of compassion invites us to stay grounded in the truth of our belovedness. But all too often we become disconnected from this truth and forget. In moments of stress, anxiety, or loneliness we can even begin to think that perhaps we aren’t worthy of being loved. However, Jesus invites us to remember who we are and whose we are so that we can reground ourselves in the sacred Source of Compassion whenever we feel lost.