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Vinings Lake Church

Messages from Vinings Lake Church in Mableton, Georgia. Vinings Lake is an ever-evolving spiritual collective waking up to beauty, truth, and goodness wherever it is found. www.viningslake.org
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Vinings Lake Church
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Now displaying: 2022
Dec 19, 2022

Something new is being birthed in and through Matthew’s collective. We asked, what is the new thing that wants to come through our collective? Rest assured, with all new ideas, perspectives, and dreams there will be opposition. Someone (Herod/Empire) has a vested interest in keeping things just as they are. Matthew’s community knows this well, as they dodge the Imperial threats. But along the way, they are visited by the most unexpected people, Magi/Astrologers. These foreign religious astrologers surprise the family with GIFTS that ultimately fuel the new path they have set out for. May we all keep our eyes opened for our Magis as we continue to give birth to the new.

Dec 11, 2022

The image of Mary giving birth to Christ has captured our attention for a couple thousand years. The Divine is showing us He is at work in and through the human. For Matthew’s audience, this image would have taken on personal meaning. Births are messy, painful, and often involve stretching. His community knows this experience all too well. Like a birth doula, Joseph courageously agrees to assist. What is the new thing trying to come forth from the heart of our community? What if, like Joseph, we helped each other give birth to what is within us? Let’s do that.

Dec 5, 2022

Is the Bible true? Are the Genesis creation accounts true? What about Jonah? I suppose we would have to ask, what do we mean by true? Which leads us to another question, is there more than one kind of truth? This week we will explore how to read the Bible literately (not literally). Maybe these authors are more interested in us engaging their stories than believing them?

Nov 21, 2022

Every act of reading is an act of interpretation. Everyone interprets. No one interpretation is objective. Everyone interprets with opinions and bias. This is why some readings lead to life while others lead to death. The question we are asking is, Are we aware of our own social location when reading the scripture? Are we aware of what factors we rely on that lead to our interpretations? This week we will talk about the many sources that lead to our interpretations. Just in time for family thanksgiving!

Nov 14, 2022

I often hear Christians use the phrase “The Bible Says.” While this is a useful metaphor for some, it can also lead to problems. The Bible doesn’t say anything, it reads. And every act of reading is an act of interpreting. Somebody somewhere has to make decisions about its meaning. We all do it. There is no way around it. It’s why scripture has been used to heal and harm, liberate and oppress, and redeem and destroy. This week we will open the door to the art of interpretation.

Nov 3, 2022

In 2 Samuel 24:1, God tells David to count the people of Israel. That same story as recorded in 1 Chronicles 21, Satan tells David to count the people of Israel. Which one is it? This is one a hundreds of example of how messy the Bible is. I mean who actually killed Goliath? Turns out the Bible is not very clear. I know! This week we explore the grey letters of the Bible. What do we do with all the contradictions, inconsistencies, and tensions? And how can something this inconsistent be our guide? What does this say about the kind of Bible we have?

Oct 23, 2022

This week we’re asking the question: Is the Bible the Word of God? If so, then what do you do with all the parts of the Bible that are bad, wrong, and immoral? Are all the words of the Bible God’s words? If not, how do we decide what is God and what is not? Who gets to make those decisions? If not, then how is this book any different from any other book? And why for thousands of years do people keep encountering the Divine in this library?

Oct 16, 2022
This week we begin with the question of origin. Where did the Bible come from? Did it fall out of the sky on two tablets while various writers got possessed by the Spirit and translated these tablets into our Old and New Testament? Why do Catholics and Orthodox Bibles have more books than the Protestant Bible? Who decided which books made it in and which books did not? What is the cannon? Did God write the Bible or did humans write it? Did God command genocide or did a community say God commanded genocide?
Sep 11, 2022

I was taught I had to overcome my fears. I was taught I need to have no fear. But the more I tried to overcome it, the more paralyzed I became by it. What if there is another way to approach our fear? What if instead of overcoming our fear we learned to integrate fear? What if fear has a proper place with all of us? Perhaps that might calm those fears down and maybe even calm ourselves down.

Aug 28, 2022

Anxiety has become my greatest professor. Anxiety has transformed me. Anxiety is transforming me. It is removing my heart of stone. And giving me a heart of flesh. My experience is that great love and great suffering transforms us the most. What if instead of getting rid of our anxiety, we leaned in and listened to what it is showing us? What if we went on the journey with it? What would we learn?

Aug 21, 2022

From guarantees to Hail Marys, I tried anything to turn down my anxiety. Some were helpful others were not. I’ve concluded: There is no magic bullet for anxiety. In my experience, it takes hard work over time to get inside, underneath, and on top of anxiety. And this difficult work has changed the way I see anxiety. And how we see anxiety can greatly effect how we experience anxiety.

Aug 12, 2022

Anxiety has been a part of my life since my earliest memories. I have not always known this. But now that I do, it helps resolve some of the disorientation and shame I carried for years. This week I want to share my experience with anxiety, more specifically living life with a panic disorder. Why now? Because we are living in the age of debilitating anxiety. And because exposing and normalizing anxiety helps reduce its power. Plus, I’ve been collecting tools, wisdom, stories, and practices that might just help reduce the anxiety in you. It all begins in a 1979 red Corvette.

Jul 24, 2022

Do you ever feel the heaviness of how broken the world is? Have you ever felt stuck under that burden and weight? It begs the question, How did Jesus work for transformation within the heaviness of all the suffering, pain, and injustice yet not be overcome by the weight of it all? In Matthew, Jesus not only gives us insight into this lightness, He invites us into it. We can work WITHIN the heaviness yet FROM and IN and WITH a lightness. I can feel the weight being lifted already.

Jul 18, 2022

Paul makes one basic observation about how he understands the natural order of the universe: we reap what we sow. For some, this is understood as a threat. For Paul, it was understood as a hope. For all those who have grown weary, fatigued, depleted, and burnt-out working for beauty, truth, and goodness, do not give up! The process of cultivating a new earth is arduous at times, but it is not in vain. If we continue to sow love, joy, and peace, we will inevitably reap a world where universal flourishing is a reality.

Jul 11, 2022

The U.S. has averaged over eleven mass shootings per week in 2022. At least 344 people have been killed and almost 1,400 wounded. Is this the kind of world we want to live in? What if I told you we get to create the world we want to live in? Last week we looked at imagination. This week we move to integration. The prophet Micah uses the image of beating swords into plowshares to evoke the process of transformation. Instruments of death are transformed into instruments of life. Today we talk about guns + hearts.

Jul 6, 2022

What kind of a world do we want to live in? This is the crucial question of our time. Our world is not fixed, static, or finished. To the contrary, it is evolving, unfolding, and malleable. The point? We get to create the world we want to live in. In this series, I want to evoke a collective consciousness that transcends our status quo. I want us to propose a future that seems unthinkable to the dominant reality. My hope is that together we can nurture imagination and inspire integration for a new earth. My passion is that we get caught up in a vision of what could be.

Jun 12, 2022

Stephen is considered the first martyr of the early Jesus movement. His story is recorded in the book of Acts 6-7. Like the book of Acts, Stephen’s story is one of motion and progress. He is caught up in a movement that is expanding, growing, and stretching. Stephen finds himself challenging the status quo by critiquing the temple which he says, “Cannot contain the Divine.” But this message was too much for many. As a result, he is martyred for his efforts in the great expansion. His persecution becomes the very story that moves the early Jesus people away from Jerusalem and out to the ends of the earth.

Jun 5, 2022

Stephen is considered the first martyr of the early Jesus movement. His story is recorded in the book of Acts 6-7. Like the book of Acts, Stephen’s story is one of motion and progress. He is caught up in a movement that is expanding, growing, and stretching. Stephen finds himself challenging the status quo by critiquing the temple which he says, “Cannot contain the Divine.” But this message was too much for many. As a result, he is martyred for his efforts in the great expansion. His persecution becomes the very story that moves the early Jesus people away from Jerusalem and out to the ends of the earth.

May 22, 2022

Stephen is considered the first martyr of the early Jesus movement. His story is recorded in the book of Acts 6-7. Like the book of Acts, Stephen’s story is one of motion and progress. He is caught up in a movement that is expanding, growing, and stretching. Stephen finds himself challenging the status quo by critiquing the temple which he says, “Cannot contain the Divine.” But this message was too much for many. As a result, he is martyred for his efforts in the great expansion. His persecution becomes the very story that moves the early Jesus people away from Jerusalem and out to the ends of the earth.

May 16, 2022

Our friend, author, speaker, and activist Brian McLaren joins us for a conversation.

May 8, 2022

Perpetua (182-203) is a twenty-one-year-old mother from the Roman city of Carthage. In The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas, we find a first-person diary from Perpetua herself that describes her arrest and life leading up to the day before her execution. In her diary, she transparently writes about her anxiety, grief, and joy that all sit side by side. At one point, in referencing her prison cell she writes, “The dungeon became to me as it were a palace, so that I preferred being there.” Her story is widespread has inspired and strengthened weary communities for centuries to continue to bear witness to the rule of God.

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