The experience of the global pandemic has changed us. And it has changed our friendships. Some may have deepened, while others have dwindled without getting a solid chance to take root.Let's begin the new year with a conversation on that deeply personal connection with others we all long for but often struggle to cultivate.Friendship is essential to our humanity. It is also a gift that we are free to receive and to offer. Some friendships help us become our true selves.You might remember with fondness the name of your childhood buddy. You know what it feels like to let your guard down with that one person in your life. Afterall, they really care. And you are most certainly familiar with the pain of broken trust.So join us to take another look at friendship together. Let's discover more about ourselves and what it means to cultivate friendships in a world that feels increasingly lonely and polarized.★ Support this podcast ★

Commons Church Podcast

Resurrection and Friendship - Jeremy Duncan

Try this thought experiment. What moments in your life do you consider pivotal? Maybe it’s a big trip, grad school graduation, or the birth of a child.Now, imagine yourself taking ten minutes to write from memory what happened, how you felt, and who said what. Next, imagine someone else who was with you writing down what they saw, how they felt, and who said what.Can you imagine the differences? One story feels intimate, the other distant. One story catches a mortifying detail, the other only fondness. One stirs sadness, and the other stays upbeat. There are so many angles to the same story. It’s true in life, and it’s true in the scriptures.This Advent, we go back to the moments just before Jesus was born. We trace tragedy in a genealogy. We find comedy in Joseph's confusion. We see fairytale in Elizabeth’s late-in-life pregnancy. We stumble through mystery as Mary gets the news of a baby soon born to change the world.★ Support this podcast ★

Christmastide - Scott Wall

Advent as Mystery - Bobbi Salkeld

Advent as Fairytale - Scott Wall

Advent as Comedy - Bobbi Salkeld

Advent as Tragedy - Jeremy Duncan

Church tradition holds that 16th-century reformer Martin Luther despised the epistle of James, going so far as to say that it contained little to none of “the nature of the Gospel.” One of Luther’s biggest complaints was that this early Christian letter contains only the slightest mention of Jesus, which is why he thought it had so little to offer. But part of why we think the book of James deserves our attention is because, if you look close enough, it says some profound things about what it means to be like Jesus. And it doesn’t sugarcoat them in saccharine, theological language either. James speaks to the grit of our lives: yo what it means to be an everyday human, the struggle to have faith, the challenge of putting faith to work. Which, curiously enough, sounds a lot like Jesus. ★ Support this podcast ★

Wealth - Jeremy Duncan

Humility - Scott Wall

Teachers - Jeremy Duncan

Doers - Bobbi Salkeld

The Brother of Jesus? - Jeremy Duncan

One of Jesus' key ideas was that of the kingdom of God. An imagination for the world as it could be pervades not only Jesus' teaching but all of his interactions. In fact, this is a uniquely human ability to think in sequence and to understand meaning through the lens of past, present, and future. Simply put, we live in a storied world, and one of the most important questions for any story is, "Where is it going?" Jesus taught from these three aspects of reality: There is a past from which we live—an explanation for the way things are. There is a way to live in the present— our responsibilities defined by the story we are a part of. There is a future to live toward—a hope that motivates and comforts us. The Good News doesn't hold together without all of these and certainly not without a strong sense of where the story is going. Our question in this series is simple—what do Jesus' parables about the future teach us about how we should live today. ★ Support this podcast ★

Nets and Sorting - Jeremy Duncan

Surprise Pearls - Bobbi Salkeld

Mustard Seeds - Jeremy Duncan

Bad Weeds - Jeremy Duncan

Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. As a Christian community that strives to live, play and help in the urban neighbourhoods of Calgary, we have chosen the name Commons Church to indicate our commitment to making the imagination of God tangible in our space. We believe God is invested in the renewal of all things, therefore, we want to live the "Good News" by being part of the rhythms of our city as good neighbours, good friends, and good citizens in the common life of the city.

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Commons Church Podcast

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