The Jesus Conversations Podcast

In this episode, the JAU group discusses the difference between the word church and the Greek word ecclesia. The latter has less to do with the building and more to do with a people "called to be one in Jesus", a connection of many members to one body with no top-down control.

Links mentioned in the conversation:

Mars Hill Church https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-rise-and-fall-of-mars-hill/id1569401963

Origin of the word church https://www.etymonline.com/word/church

Definition of the word ecclesia

https://www.compellingtruth.org/definition-ekklesia.html

Does the revelation that we live as Jesus change anything in our lives? In this episode of the Jesus as Us Sunday morning conversation, we talk about how this knowledge changes how we see everything, including tough or bad circumstances. What do our mouths have to do with this?

Prompted by a recent article claiming evangelical Christians are promoting misogyny, our discussion centered on the controversial topic of submission. Knowing that we are one with and living as Jesus, what does submission look like? Is it top-down command and control or something else? Doesn't Paul teach command and control? How can Jesus be our Master and our life at the same time?

For months, we have been talking about what it means to live as Jesus, or Jesus as Us. In this episode of our Zoom meeting, we share what it means to know Jesus as church. What does that mean? How does a community manifest Jesus? One of the chief attributes is that it is a "safe place" to share and love one another.

 

The article link on Christian misogyny

Christian nationalism is rooted in stupid tough-guy misogyny: What would Jesus say? | Salon.com

 

Our conversation in this episode included a comparison of how our contemporary Christian culture attempts to explain our daily circumstances in a logical or systematic way. This is how Christian teachers try to manage the narrative or paradigm of our lives being separate from God. That narrative will never have adequate answers.

The highlight of our conversation in this episode was seeing our brother Arnold live on our Zoom call following his major surgery this week. We "realize" or recognize God in Arnold's health crisis. We also discussed other places where we have recognized God's presence and work in our lives. Christ in us is an adventure, discovering Jesus everywhere.

Dennis and Scott look back at the experiences they had in the institutional, mainline church. They agree that Jesus was there, but was He happy with all the religiosities? Did He dislike the pastors and leaders for the same things that the Pharisees were doing centuries before? Is this why people are leaving the mainline church today? What would society and the world be like if the true church continued like it did in Acts 2?

Scott's blog link - https://myscottpage.blogspot.com/

Our group picked up the question from last week, "How to pray for someone", which led to deeper digging into realizing what is happening around us in the unseen dimension. What we see around us is not the real life that we live in Jesus. One of our group members shared these realizations are "the next step to my real life".

Dennis is joined again with Scott Wakefield in this episode. They tackle how to help someone who has just realized the truth of Christ living in them. Can the person resort to the old conventions of Christian teaching or is there a whole new framework of words and constructs that need to be entertained? How is even Scripture to be read and studied? 

Resources cited in this conversation can be found on the Resource page of our website at www.nwmenscolition.com 

One of the members of our JAU Zoom group, Arnold Quigley, faces another series of medical procedures for total hip replacement. This will not be a typical hip surgery, but a long-involved process of repeat surgeries and therapies. The question arose, how do we best pray for Arnold? Do we voice the same platitude prayers for healing, or is there a better way to pray for our brother that reflects our knowledge of Christ in our brother? What are Christ's own words for Arnold as he faces these next days?