Word of Life Church » Podcasts

Faith Life Weekend 2012: I Am From The Future

Pastor Brian Zahnd — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 01:00:23 +0000

The first job of the church is not to be relevant or even successful, but rather, to be faithful. Our greatest act of prophecy is to be faithful to the Lordship of Jesus here and now. To be prophetic we need to live (as much as possible) according to the age to come. We need to ask ourselves the question: What does the redeemed world where Jesus reigns look like, and what will be restored and what will be abolished? If we can answer these questions, we gain a course of action and a template of how to live now. We must keep asking what will be restored and what will be abolished, and hen we must do all we can to be that way now. It is in this way that we are from the future. But if we say we believe the age to come will be very different, and yet live the same as the surrounding culture, we are not prophetic.

Faith Life Weekend 2012: East of Eden

Pastor Brian Zahnd — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 17:00:14 +0000

We live in a world gone wrong. And it has been going wrong for a long time. It’s gone off course because humanity thought it could know good and evil without God, because human civilization has been built around the wrong axis. Jesus came to give the world a new axis. Instead of an axis of power and violence, Jesus gives an axis of love and forgiveness. This is the saving beauty of Jesus Christ and the cross. This is the story the Bible tells of Cain and Abel, a portrait of humity moving away from God and headed for trouble. This is the story of East of Eden.

Faith Life Weekend 2012: Axis of Love

Pastor Brian Zahnd — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 01:00:42 +0000

The organizing principle of human civilization is an axis of power enforced by violence. The Bible shows us this as it tells the story of Cain murdering his brother Abel, then fleeing to the East and founding the first human civilization. But through the cross, Jesus re-founds the world and human civilization. Jesus does this at the cross by giving humanity a new organizing principle. Instead of power enforced by violence, Jesus establishes the world around love expressed in forgiveness. This is the radical accomplishment of the cross. Jesus gives the world a new axis, an axis of love and forgiveness.

Faith Life Weekend 2012: A Cathedral of Astonishment

Pastor Brian Zahnd — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 16:00:38 +0000

In our modern Christianity, we have lost our astonishment with the gospel story. We’ve made the gospel practical, sensible, and reduced it to things like “The Four Spiritual Laws”. We have no use for astonishment because we have no use for astonishment. But astonishment is the most appropriate initial response to the gospel story. To respond to the gospel story with utilitarian questions is completely inappropriate. Our first response should be astonishment and stunned silence. Without this initial response, you meet Christianity in a wrong way. Our faith, our theology, and our Christian witness all needs to work to create a cathedral of astonishment. We have a Christianity that is relatively popular, but damaged. In our attempt to make Christianity practical, we have stripped it and left it shallow and trite. And in the long run, when you sacrifice beauty for the sake of practicality, you end up making it completely impractical. If we build churches by making the gospel “practical” and worship “exciting” we may end up with something popular, but is it Christianity?

Faith Life Weekend 2012: Beauty Will Save the World

Pastor Brian Zahnd — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 01:00:03 +0000

In part 1 of the five part series of Faith Life Weekend 2012, Pastor Brian Zahnd constructs a framework for Christian beauty. Christianity has long laid claims to truth and goodness. But we are facing a difficult time for Christianity in America. A thin, shallow, and judgmental imitation of Christianity has swallowed everything up. Without abandoning our claims to truth and goodness, what if we recovered beauty, an aesthetic presence within the world? Christianity needs an alternative to the paradigm of protest and condemnation. Instead of heated arguments, contentious debates, and angry protests, what if we adopted a strategy of displaying the beauty of Christ in our own lives? What if we demonstrated in our own lives how Christ can give beauty for ashes? The world has grown tired of our shouting, moralizing, and grasps for political power. It is time we escaped from the thin and ugly, and instead, live our lives in beautiful imitation of the cruciform.

Watch the accompanying video of the Christmas Food Court Flash Mob singing the Hallelujah Chorus, as referenced in the podcast.

Jonah: A Comedy

Pastor Brian Zahnd — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 17:00:24 +0000

The story of Jonah fits well in the genre of comedy. It has elements of the absurd and the ridiculous, the greatest of which is being swallowed and spending 3 days and nights in the belly of a whale. But just because there is an element of unmistakable humor in the story of Jonah doesn’t mean there isn’t a very serious and important message in the story. Although Jonah is a prophet who belongs to the elect people of God, he is not more righteous than people who don’t know the first thing about God. This story is told to prevent the people of God from having a superior attitude. After all his failures, he is still successful at the mission God called him to. Jonah is successful because God is merciful!

Ignorance, Knowledge, & the New Humanity

Pastor Brian Zahnd — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 01:00:46 +0000

A message from Pastor Derek Vreeland

The Son of Laughter

Pastor Brian Zahnd — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 17:00:21 +0000

In this continuation of the series “The Ancient & Mysterious Stories of God”, we discover the story of Jacob. At the center of Jacob’s story is the story of how Jacob got a new name and became Israel, and it is the universal story of how people become people of God. Jacob’s story is our story as Christians. Jacob’s story is YOUR story.

The Unkosher Christ

Pastor Brian Zahnd — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 01:00:10 +0000

The Torah given through Moses was part of Israel’s journey toward knowing God. But it wasn’t a full revelation of God; it wasn’t even an enduring revelation God.
Laws of kosher, of being either clean or unclean, were necessary to form Israel into a distinct people. But when Jesus came as the Jewish Messiah fulfilling the mission of Israel, he deliberately challenged the entrenched ideas of kosher and unkosher people. In this message, Pastor Brian Zahnd examines how Jesus transcended the laws of exclusion that formed religious society and the implications that has for us.

Three Long Walks

Pastor Brian Zahnd — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 17:00:20 +0000

The first 11 chapters of the Bible tell a dark, tragic tale of man’s migration away from God. These chapters are filled with Man’s original fall, murder, violence, and a devastating global flood. But in the 12th chapter we meet a man who sends the story of the Bible in a new direction: a journey back to God. As part of his series “The Ancient and Mysterious Stories of God”, Pastor Brian Zahnd delivers a dramatic first-person telling of the story of the life of Abraham, the father of our faith, and three long walks he had to take on the journey back to God.