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!

Wearing god’s glasses

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We're back into Jesus' parables, drawn this time from the set that comes late in Matthew's gospel. We're trying to learn to see the world (and its people) the way God sees it (and us)

Laborers in the vineyard. The Psalm says, “The Lord is just in all his doings.” But do we really believe that? When God does exactly as God pleases, loving the just and the unjust, rewarding those who work hard and those who have hardly worked, it doesn’t seem fair. But Jesus says that’s the way God sees things. We have to figure out if we’re going to be happy with that. Matthew 20:1-16; Psalm 145.

Tenants in the vineyard. God’s logic is absurd: the father whose previous messengers have been murdered might have thought twice about sending his son. The Psalm cries out for rescue, for salvation. And God sends, instead of a divine army, a mortal (dying) messiah. What kind of sense does that make? Are we able to see the secret strength in the scapegoat savior? Matthew 21:33-46; Psalm 80.

Virgins, lamps, slaves, money. The servant of God is a ready servant – one who thinks ahead to God’s future and takes appropriate action now. We are asked to consider our lives as an exercise in ready waiting, because God is always, consistently ahead (Rob Bell’s term from What We Talk About When We Talk About God) – not static, not standing still. So our faith is not an exercise in achieving Christian stasis, growing stagnant. Sometimes we treat faith as a project to be accomplished. But there is always more, always a new consideration, always more oil for the lamp, always a new investment to make, always a new risk to take. Matthew 25:1-30; Proverbs 24 (selections).

Rev. Nathan Russell came to bring us the good word from Matthew 25:31-46 -- Jesus' last substantive teaching before his arrest and execution. Reading the gospel before the sermon, Nathan asked the church to withhold their "Thanks be to God" following the reading and instead answer two questions: "Is it true?" "Is it meaningful?" When he asks those questions again at the end of the sermon, I guarantee nobody's answers were the same as the first time.