The Answer: The Church...Christian Community as a Counter Force? Artwork

Like Minded Deviants

Like-Minded Deviants with Dr. Lindy Backues, Jon-Michael Odean, and Justin Stewart-Fritz is a podcast that seeks to deviate from the norm. As two of Lindy’s former graduate students, Justin and Jon-Michael bring an extended friendship with him cultivated over years, enriched by their present ministries, life as educators, a good dose of grassroots practitioning, and deep respect as close friends and colleagues. Each week these three come prepared to engage in a provocative conversation. A conversation that intentionally and sometimes irreverently unpacks events and ideas plucked from newspapers and headlines, unashamedly channeling these conversations through a theologically jarring lens.

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Like Minded Deviants

The Answer: The Church...Christian Community as a Counter Force?

October 06, 2021 • Season 1 • Episode 20

Throughout this season we have arrived at the idea that the Church is not in itself the Reign of God, but the Reign of God is both its starting point and its goal. So that leads us to the question, how does the Church (as God’s idea) address the ‘crackedness’ of the cosmos (the problem of evil we explored at the beginning of the season)? How does it ‘dramatize’ and manifest grace, love, justice, and the dream of God?

Join us this week in our final content episode of the season (paired with a Bar-Talk episode) as we examine the call of the Christian Community as a Counter Force and an active participant through actionable grace in the narrative of The Pathetic God.

Hendrik Berkhof, Christ and the Powers. Translated by John Howard Yoder, Harrisonburg, Virginia: Herald Press, 1977 (ISBN: 978-0-8361-1820-9).
David P. Gushee & Glenn H. Stassen, Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context. Second Edition, Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2016 (ISBN: 978-0-8028-7421-4).
Stephen Charles Mott, Biblical Ethics and Social Change. Second Edition, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011 (ISBN: 978-0199739370).

Readings:

‘The Church and the Powers’, Berkhof, Chapter 5
‘Salt, Light, Deeds’ and ‘Thy Kingdom Come’, Gushee & Stassen, Chapters 10 & 17
'The Church as Counter-Community', Mott, Chapter 7

**Also Check out our BONUS EPISODE! BAR Talk: The conversation after class and on-tap. Reflecting on the season... and what comes next!**