by Doug Hammack | Jun 29, 2014 | A Christian Church for the Quantum Era, Message Audio
We begin a new lesson today about how this moment in history is playing out in the Christian church. It will be a peek beneath the surface of what we can see happening, and will begin questioning why it is happening. Consequently, this first introductory lesson is...
by Doug Hammack | Jun 22, 2014 | Individual Lesson, Message Audio
Each first Sunday for the balance of the year, we are having a lunch after church to discuss tough questions about our religious life. The project coincides with my book, Rethinking Our Story: Can We Still Be Christian in the Quantum Era? Today’s lesson is...
by Robin Camu | Jun 15, 2014 | Enneagram, Guest Speaker, Message Audio
There are 9 Enneagram types and they are based on 9 sins (ways of “choking off the glory of God”). These have since been reduced to the 7 deadly sins. (Fear and deceit were left out from the 7 deadly sins) These 9 types are numbered 1 through 9 and are...
by Doug Hammack | Jun 8, 2014 | Christian Meditation, Message Audio
A lot of people don’t meditate because they think they’re not very good at it. Who among us likes to start the day failing at something every morning?! But meditation (the mindfulness meditation we practice at NRCC) doesn’t work that way. Turns out,...
by Doug Hammack | Jun 1, 2014 | Christian Meditation, Message Audio
My last child is about to leave for college (43 more days). As I’m getting him ready to go out the door, I feel a sense of “finals-week” pressure. I’ve got to review 18 years of really important stuff with him as he finishes up his last few...
by Doug Hammack | May 25, 2014 | Message Audio, Rethinking Our Story: Afterlife
We conclude our lesson rethinking the afterlife with this — if it is true that the texts on which we built our afterlife narrative were not what we thought they were — shall we keep the afterlife as part of the Christian narrative? Yes, we conclude, but...
by Doug Hammack | May 18, 2014 | Message Audio, Rethinking Our Story: Afterlife
If, as we have suggested, the texts we Christians have cited to construct our afterlife story — were not written about the end of time . . . Shall we abandon the idea of the afterlife altogether? Perhaps not. Have a listen, Doug ...
by Doug Hammack | May 11, 2014 | Message Audio, Rethinking Our Story: Afterlife
Have you ever heard Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats? If you have, there’s a good chance you thought it was a parable about the afterlife – the final judgment before we all go on to eternity. It might surprise you that that’s not what...
by Doug Hammack | May 4, 2014 | Message Audio, Rethinking Our Story: Afterlife
As we have been discussing, the Greco-Roman world view has influenced our thinking on the afterlife to separate the here and now from the here-after. It also made the afterlife a much more prominent part of our story than it ever was before. The message of Jesus...
by Doug Hammack | Apr 27, 2014 | Message Audio, Rethinking Our Story: Afterlife
We pick up from our lesson before Easter, building a foundation for rethinking the Christian story of the afterlife. How we imagine what happens after we die, has a great deal to do with how we live. If Christians are, in general, not behaving well these days (pretty...
by Doug Hammack | Apr 20, 2014 | Easter, Message Audio
Easter is the centerpiece of our tradition. In this time in which we are rethinking how we tell the Christian story, it would make sense that we’d do some rethinking of Easter as well. Have a listen, Doug ...
by Doug Hammack | Apr 13, 2014 | Message Audio, Rethinking Our Story: Afterlife
The story we Christians tell about the afterlife is deeply rooted in our psyches — so deeply in fact, that very few of us every think about it critically. However, it is certainly problematic, and may not be as “Christian” as we think it is. Have a...
by Doug Hammack | Apr 6, 2014 | Message Audio, Rethinking Our Story: Afterlife
The Christian narrative most traditional church folks learned growing up is pretty heavily weighted toward the afterlife. We look today, at Jesus’ central focus, the Kingdom of God. What we learn is that the afterlife was at best a footnote to the central...
by Doug Hammack | Mar 30, 2014 | Message Audio, Rethinking Our Story: Salvation
Have a listen, Doug https://media.blubrry.com/north_raleigh_community_church/s3.amazonaws.com/nrccaudio/2014/03-30-14_Sermon.mp3Podcast: Play in new window |...
by Doug Hammack | Mar 23, 2014 | Message Audio, Rethinking Our Story: Salvation
After some time looking at the unintended and negative consequences of telling the Christian salvation story in only one way, and ignoring the other historical ways, we turn now to imagining how we might tell the salvation story if we restored those ancient and other...
by Doug Hammack | Mar 16, 2014 | Message Audio, Rethinking Our Story: Salvation
The way most Western Christians have the story of salvation since the Enlightenment (the 11th century, really), has some unintended and negative consequences. As we saw at the beginning of this lesson, when we take our Christian doctrine of ineffability seriously, we...
by Doug Hammack | Mar 9, 2014 | Message Audio, Rethinking Our Story: Salvation
Again, we shape our stories, and then our stories shape us, and our religious stories most of all. And also again, when our stories gets unhealthy, our souls get unhealthy. In this lesson, we tell the Christian salvation story in the way most Enlightenment Christians...
by Doug Hammack | Mar 2, 2014 | Message Audio, Rethinking Our Story: Salvation
We shape our stories, and then our stories shape us. Of all the stories that shape our lives, our religious stories the most power. And for Christians, of all our religious stories, the one most shaping of them, is our salvation story. So, if that story gets...
by Doug Hammack | Feb 23, 2014 | A Christian Church for the Quantum Era, Message Audio
I was all set to move on to the next in a cluster of lessons around the theme: “Quantum Christianity.” However, some really great questions came up on our “How’s Your Soul?” Facebook page. “Doug, how can you say what you said last...
by Doug Hammack | Feb 16, 2014 | A Christian Church for the Quantum Era, Message Audio
At our community meeting earlier this year, we reviewed what we do and why we do it. Being “A Christian Church for the Quantum Era,” we said, is our most basic purpose. Today we pick up where we left off two weeks ago (before Tripp Fuller our guest...
