Making A Place for Hospitality
The Loft LA - Progressive Christianity in Podcast Form
Release Date: 07/27/2026
God: The Heartbeat of Reality & The Mystery of Evil
The Loft LA - Progressive Christianity in Podcast Form
As Christians, we believe that God is the heartbeat of reality, a life-giving and sustaining presence. All Christians can affirm this claim. However, as we deconstruct our faith, we realize that the way we “see” God, our understanding of God’s relationship to the world, and God’s character significantly shape how we practice Christianity and how we respond to the evil and corruption of our time. Conversation Question: What do you understand the character of God to be? Stated differently, what is your God most fundamentally like? www.TheLoftLA.org
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Scripture: The Heart of our Tradition
The Loft LA - Progressive Christianity in Podcast Form
To be Christian is to be centered in the God of the Bible. For us, the Bible is our sacred scripture and sacred story. Yet the Bible is also one reason many people have left Christianity or the church and now describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” At some point in our spiritual formation, we must answer this question: How do we read the Bible after deconstruction, and why does it matter? Please join us in The Loft as we answer this question together. www.TheLoftLA.org
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Faith - The Way of the Heart
The Loft LA - Progressive Christianity in Podcast Form
Most people would define Christian faith as believing a set of Christian beliefs to be true. In some parts of the world, the word “believer” is a synonym for Christian. Defining faith this way has made it primarily about the beliefs in our heads, but this is not how the Bible and the Christian tradition speak about faith. Faith has always been a matter of the heart. Recovering and reconstructing our definition of faith will help us see Christianity as a way of life - a way of living with our hearts centered in God. www.TheLoftLA.org
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After Deconstruction: New Wine & New Wineskins
The Loft LA - Progressive Christianity in Podcast Form
What are we to do when the tradition that taught us to ask “what would Jesus do?” no longer reflects what Jesus showed us in his life and teachings? Deconstruction. Decolonization. Reconstruction. For many people of faith, these three words mark the moments when they realized the religious beliefs embedded in their childhood were at odds with their experience of God as Divine Love. Those three words could also describe how the disciples experienced Jesus’ teachings, which challenged parts of their religious traditions. www.TheLoftLA.org
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God Doesn’t Have Favorites
The Loft LA - Progressive Christianity in Podcast Form
Join guest preacher Everest Harvey in The Loft as we wrap up our sermon series on hospitality and explore what it means to create home for every person in God's community. www.TheLoftLA.org
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Making A Place for Hospitality
The Loft LA - Progressive Christianity in Podcast Form
Because we practice hospitality as a core part of our faith, we work to make the our spaces more welcoming. This requires us to pay attention to how people experience our homes and our churches, in hopes that they will be places characterized by love and generosity. www.TheLoftLA.org
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Hospitality With God
The Loft LA - Progressive Christianity in Podcast Form
How does greed or emptiness get in the way of offering hospitality to God? And what can we do? We welcome Rev. Dr. Diana Holbert, our Minister of Care, to The Loft this week as Rev. Dr. Christopher Carter has been home battling Covid. We invite you to keep him in your prayers as he continues to recover. www.TheLoftLA.org
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We Are Strangers Who Welcome Strangers
The Loft LA - Progressive Christianity in Podcast Form
Throughout his teaching and ministry, we encounter Jesus as a vulnerable guest, a needy stranger, and a gracious host. Jesus both welcomes and needs to be welcomed. In this way, when we are hospitable to the needy stranger, we do so with the awareness that we may be showing hospitality to Christ. And when we receive hospitality from a stranger, they give it knowing that they may be showing hospitality to Christ too. www.TheLoftLA.org
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Hospitality As Spiritual Practice
The Loft LA - Progressive Christianity in Podcast Form
In ancient times, hospitality was regarded as a pillar on which the world's moral structure rested. It is an important theme in scripture, central to the gospel story. In the New Testament, we encounter Jesus as a vulnerable guest, a needy stranger, and a gracious host. The teachings of Jesus enrich and challenge our modern definitions of hospitality, inviting us to see it as a spiritual practice. www.TheLoftLA.org
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Queer Callings & Responses
The Loft LA - Progressive Christianity in Podcast Form
The Song of Mary and the Song of Hannah remind us that God’s call to prophecy, service, and leadership is not limited to cisgender men. The songs of Elsa, a character whose story is decidedly queer, suggest something similar. Reading these stories together can help us understand how essential it is to respond to our calling. www.TheLoftLA.org
info_outlineBecause we practice hospitality as a core part of our faith, we work to make the our spaces more welcoming. This requires us to pay attention to how people experience our homes and our churches, in hopes that they will be places characterized by love and generosity.
www.TheLoftLA.org