Galileo Church

We seek and shelter spiritual refugees, rally health for all who come, and fortify every tender soul with the strength to follow Jesus into a life of world-changing service.

5860 I-20 service road Fort Worth, TX 76119 USA

(682) 760-1274

OUR MISSIONAL PRIORITIES:

1. We do justice for LGBTQ+ humans, and support the people who love them.

2. We do kindness for people with mental illness and in emotional distress, and celebrate neurodiversity.

3. We do beauty for our God-Who-Is-Beautiful.

4. We do real relationship, no bullshit, ever.

5. We do whatever it takes to share this good news with the world God still loves.

Trying to find us IRL?
Mail here: P.O. Box 668, Kennedale, TX 76060
Worship here: 5 pm CT Sundays; 5860 I-20 service road, Fort Worth 76119

Trying to find our Sunday worship livestream?
click here!

Riddle me this: Jesus’ parables of god’s reign

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We're reading parables from Matthew 13 for five weeks, starting now. And everything about our worship -- the seating, the music, the table, the reflection time -- is like a parable, definitely unexpected and kind of absurd. We're trying to get in the headspace and heartspace to hear Jesus's words about God-Who-Cannot-Be-Apprehended.

This recording includes instructions from Erin F. about how to get ourselves into conversation groups after the sermon. We had a lot to talk about. Three questions:

1. How do you feel about the mission Jesus and Isaiah shared, to confuse the issue of God for their hearers?

2. On a spectrum from clarity to confusion, where do you feel most comfortable? What parts of your life are in your comfort zone? What parts of your life are outside your comfort zone?

3. Katie suggested that God is playing a game of Sardines with us. Are there other games you can think of that God likes to play?

Matthew 13:1-17.

This Sunday we repeated the Parable of the Sower from Matthew 13:3-8, adding the explanation of the parable given a little later, Matthew 13:18-23. After the sermon we did lightning rounds of one-on-one conversation, switching partners for each question:

1. Imagine a Buzzfeed Quiz, "Which Soil Are You?" Which one do you think you would get -- path, rocky, thorny, good? Which one would you have gotten five years ago?

2. Do you think a person chooses to be one kind of "soil" or another? (i.e. Do you choose your disposition toward God's reign?) Or are you just born that way?

3. The church is commissioned by Jesus to share (or sow) the word (or seed) of God's reign. Based on this parable, how should we be doing that?

For today we read Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43. Can I just say, this church is bold for confronting texts in the Bible that don't square with our own ideas about how nice Jesus really ought to be? To disorient ourselves in preparation for a disorienting parable, we sat on quilts on the floor; during the sermon I moved from microphone to microphone around the perimeter of the room so that people had to pivot on their behinds to keep facing me. The message was something like, "Don't get too comfortable." And we did not.

After the sermon, we turned again to Confounding Questions for Conversation:

1. Katie quoted a friend quoting a Russian author (Alexander Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago, brought to our attention again in Brian McLaren's Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha,and Mohammed Cross the Road?: "The line between good and evil runs through the center of my heart." Does that seem true to you? How do you know?

2. If someone were going to judge you -- wheat or weed -- what evidence would you like for them to consider?

Just two little short ones for this night: parables from the deli, Matthew 13:31-35, mustard and yeast. And Galileo Church's very first dedication of a baby to the reign of God, our very own mustard seed, CC Bates. Kinda scary. Kinda awesome!

Erin James-Brown has a way with words. But really, she has a way with life. We love the way she describes the with-God-way, with longing — and also with her teeth gritted, because, as she says, "doing what Jesus proposes here is stupid. Watch out." Yeah, we really should be able to admit that what we're doing, seeking this treasure with our whole lives on the line, is reckless and risky. Matthew 13:44-46 and following.

Confounding questions for our post-sermon conversation:

1. Have you ever found something for which you were willing to give up something valuable? Was it an easy decision, or difficult? Would you do it again?

2. What do you think about Jesus' scandalous relationship to money (i.e. asking people to sacrifice it all, requiring his disciples to depend on the hospitality of others)? How does his way of talking about money strike you? Does it challenge? inspire? leave you with more questions?