The Grace Cafe Podcast

Welcome to The Grace Cafe! In this episode we talk about the freedom we have in Jesus and how this freedom allows us to rest from our own works and effort. But organized church and organized religion redefines freedom and rest to keep us dependent on the system.

Welcome to episode 13 of the Grace Cafe podcast. This episode is a conversation about how religion and institutional church dilutes grace with performance goals designed to keep the institution alive. There is no rest apart from grace. In religion, the work is never done and there's always more to do. When we come to understand the grace of the New Covenant rightly, we realize the pressure to conform and perform is off and the work is done.
Enjoy!

Welcome to episode 12 of the newly relaunched Grace Cafe Podcast. In this episode we talk about the importance of being rooted and grounded in the grace of the New Covenant. The write of the letter to the Hebrews put it like this:

"Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace..." (Hebrews 13:9)

Anything that leads us away from grace and attempts to establish our hearts in anything other than New Covenant grace should be viewed as a diverse and strange teaching that's to be rejected. And yet almost without exception, the opposite is true in the world of organized religion. When we talk about the grace of the New Covenant to someone still inside organized religion, we are rejected and looked upon as someone involved in a strange teaching because the pure message of grace has been so watered down that it sounds foreign to so many in the church. So let's talk.

Here's the link to the episode of the Gracereach podcast we mentioned in this episode.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-gracereach-podcast-with-brad-robertson/id1503583444?i=1000642413493 

Enjoy!

This episode is a look back at our journey out of institutional church. Leaving religion and coming into a better knowledge of grace was a years-long process for us. Being a pastor in a high-performance based church setting finally caused Mike to hit a wall of performance and Susan fell into a deep depression. All of this came to a head for us on early 2009 when we made a final decision to leave.

In addition to this episode we will continue to sprinkle bits and pieces of our story in future episodes. But with so many new followers since shutting down or last podcast, we decided to dedicate one full episode to share our story with you here. 

Welcome to episode 10 of The Grace Cafe Podcast. In this first episode of 2024 we update you on what's been happening with us, including Mike's recent health scare, a little bit of our back story, and our current dilemma of community and church.

Find us online and interact with us at https://www.gracecafepodcast.com

Enjoy!

Welcome to episode 9 of The Grace Cafe podcast. This is a past episode (98) of the old  Grace Cafe from New Year's Eve, 2020 that we wanted to share with you. In it, we talk about ways Christianity has weaponized faith and the Bible to enforce conformity. We'll be reaching back from time-to-time and bringing forward one of those old episodes to share with you and this is one of them.

Also, Mike was recently interviewed on the Grace at Last podcast. This was a conversation about church and the New Covenant with Corinne Kinstler. You can listen to it by going to https://www.lastministry.org/grace-at-last-podcast/022-what-i-should-know-about-church-with-mike-adamsnbsp or on your favorite podcast app.

Enjoy!

Complimentarianism and hierarchy are not neutral. They are harmful to the people in it, especially women and children, and they are in opposition to the gospel of New Covenant grace. In this final installment of our series on women in the church, we talk about some of our personal struggles with old patriarchal habits and what it's been like for us since coming out of that system after having spent almost 40 years in it.

Feel free to contact us by going to https://www.gracecafepodcast.com/ and using the contact page there. 

We're closing in on the end of our series on women in the church. The topic in this episode is Can Women Be Pastors? One objection to women pastors that is raised by those opposing the idea is that Paul told Timothy an elder (pastor) has to be the husband of one wife. But is male elders what Paul had in mind with that statement or was he addressing polygamy? 

And why are we (men and women) so obsessed and set on rising to the top of the church hierarchy when Jesus told us there isn't to be one? 

Let's talk...

Welcome to episode 6 of The Grace Cafe Podcast. We're continuing our topic of women in the church and how historically, the church's view of woman has been harmful and abusive. It's not a good track record. In this episode we talk about headship and submission. We use 1 Corinthians 11 and Ephesians 5 as the backdrop for our conversation and why we believe Paul's use of the word "head" (κεφαλὴ) wouldn't have meant authority or leader to the readers of his day.

Here are a couple of online articles that you might want to take a look at. The second one is more detailed and contains a lot of good references. Inclusion here doesn't imply our agreement with everything in the articles, but they are a good thought-provoking read.

• ‘Head’ Does Not Mean ‘Leader’ in 1 Cor 11.3, by Ian Paul - https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/head-does-not-mean-leader-in-1-cor-11-3/
• What About the Word Kephale ("head") in the New Testament?, by Laurie Fasullo - https://www.searchingtogether.org/kephale.htm

Enjoy!

We're continuing with the overall topic we started back in episode 2 of women in the church. More specifically, how the institutional church has weaponized certain verses in the New Covenant scriptures and used them against women without fully considering the historical and cultural context. This has resulted in needlessly silencing half of the body of Christ and opened the door wide for abuse of every kind. 

In this episode we're going to take a careful look at 1 Corinthians 14:34-40. It's here that the passage says the law commanded women to be silent, therefore, women should not be allowed to speak when the body of Christ is assembled. The problem is, the law doesn't say that and even if it did, we (and the people Paul was writing to) are not under the law, so why does that matter even if it were true? We think there's something else going on here that needs to be talked about, so let's talk.

In this episode we take a look at the historical and cultural context of Paul's first letter to Timothy and specifically, 1 Timothy chapter 2. In giving his reasons for writing this letter to Timothy, Paul instructs him to dispel myths that had arisen in the assembly (1 Timothy 1:3-4). In chapter 2 of his letter we see Paul begin to dismantle some of those myths and those myths centered around the worship of the pagan idol, Artemis. The culture in Ephesus was heavily influenced by the worship of Artemis. Artemis was a female goddess of Greek origin and the worship and culture of Artemis was female centric. While males could participate in the worship of Artemis, women were dominate and men had a lesser role (kind of the opposite of what we see today in most churches). 

Here are some of the myths Paul addresses:

• In the Ephesian culture, Artemis was looked to as the protector of women in childbirth. 
• Women stood a better chance of Artemis hearing and answering their prayers if they wore expensive clothes and jewelry when petitioning Artemis.
• Artemis was born before her twin brother Apollo, meaning woman was created before man.

We also need to keep in mind these important points:

• Timothy was not a pastor. There's no indication of that anywhere in Scripture. That's a church history-driven idea that is incorrect.
• The letters of 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus are not "pastoral letters" written to pastors. Calling them pastoral letters is another false assumption delivered to us from church history.
• The letters to Timothy and Titus are not across-the-board manuals for doing church. They address specific problems that arose in specific locations involving specific people. Failure to recognize this and instead promote the false assumption that everything in them is applicable to every generation without regard to the historical and cultural context they were written in, has led to the muzzling of half of the body of Christ.

Books mentioned in this episode:

• Artemis: Virgin Goddess of the Sun and Moon - https://tinyurl.com/2p9cfykc
• What's With Paul and Women? https://tinyurl.com/yp6n47xn

Welcome to episode 3 of the recently re-launched Grace Cafe Podcast! In this episode we continue the series we started last time concerning women in the church. This week we start to explore the question, did Paul command women to be silent in church? This episode is a much needed overview of what the New Testament says about women in the body of Christ. We look at several of the clear passages of scripture to lay a good foundation for this topic before jumping into the sometimes not-so-clear waters of 1 Timothy chapter 2 and 1 Corinthians 14 next time.

We are breaking this question up into multiple parts because there is so much to work through in getting a clear understanding of this topic and we don't want to rush past anything in sorting it out. So this is part one of Did Paul Command Women to be Silent in Church? Grab your favorite beverage and listen in!

Welcome to episode 2 of The Grace Cafe podcast! In this episode we're launching a multi-part series centered around the topic of women in the church and how church history and tradition have damaged and diminished the way women can function within the body of Christ. We start in this episode by talking about patriarchy and how it has damaged women by taking away their voice and individuality. We share from our personal experiences with patriarchy as we believe so much error has flowed out of this system that it needs addressed first. 

Grab your favorite beverage and listen in as we see where this series takes us. And thank you all for the overwhelming response we've received from this relaunch of The Grace Cafe!

Enjoy!

Welcome to episode one of the relaunched Grace Cafe Podcast! In this first episode of The Grace Cafe, we talk about why it was necessary to stop the original Grace Cafe Podcast back in 2019 and how and why this relaunch came to be a reality. Our conversation takes us to a variety of other topics that are woven together throughout this episode. Grab your favorite beverage and listen in!