Revolution Church

Apologies for the delay everyone! Holidays get like that sometimes. But here it is, and it’s a good one! Some people might claim we are overstating this, but sincerely this talk feels like it can be Revolutionary. Or at least close to it. Maybe even the start of something. This talk might make some people uncomfortable, but that is not the intention. If it makes you feel uneasy, please just sit with it a bit. Think on it. And if you still are uncomfortable, please please dive into some scholarship and some studies, and please let us know where we might have missed the mark or help us understand something we might have overlooked or misunderstood. Please try not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Because Revolution Gathering wants to be a place for different ideas, different studies. It’s why we don’t call ourselves a church anymore, or Jay a pastor—because often times, especially recently it seems, Christians have been acting like a bunch of jerks. Judgmental and scapegoating. We don’t want to be a part of that. Today Jay discusses the book of Revelation. Oh man that’s a rough book, but Jay was up to the challenge. Jay is wondering if maybe the expectations the people had at the time of the coming Messiah were not met. They wanted a more physical, conquering king. A zealot that would overthrow the government and help rise up against their oppressors…but instead they get a man telling them to love and forgive. To treat enemies like friends. Who wants to hear that? I know that sounds like a joke, but seriously, when you’re being crushed by an oppressor who wants to hear that? Especially when you’ve been waiting for a Deliverer. So Jay is looking at the Book of Revelation and trying to find how it lines up with the Christ of the New Testament. It certainly feels like the Old Testament God full of fire and wrath comes back at the end of the New Testament, but is this the case? Is this book a prophecy? Is it a revenge fantasy? Is it a misunderstanding of who God is? Is it wishful writing of how the people of the time wished the Messiah would had acted? What is real? Does the book of Revelation make it harder to love each other? Does it give more fear than love? It’s a struggle, and maybe we’ll never know. But let’s remember to be patient and kind. Let’s remember that some of the more legalistic aspects people hold so tight are things they’ve been taught their whole lives, and that isn’t the easiest to unlearn. It takes time. And it is scary. Remember there is a lot of humanity in our faith! We can’t lose sight of that. Let’s remember what Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “People are not our enemy. Misinformation is our enemy.”This talk was given on July 3, 2023 from Seattle, WA.www.facebook.com/revolutionchurchmnwww.revolutionchurch.com/donatewww.youtube.com/revolutionbroadcasting@jaybakker@revolution1994@revolution94 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we just kick right into the talk, no real monologue or catch-up. Jay picks up where the last talk ended…sort of. An unofficial continuation. Today Jay uses the idea from last week of Kierkegaard’s philosophy of the individual and how if we judge people only on the fraction of their lives and personalities that we see then we are in dangerous territory. Judging brings about more judgement. Judging others opens us up for people to judge us based on the fractions of our personalities. Jay then dives into Jesus’s discussion on specks and logs. How we often focus on the splinter in someone else’s eye and ignore the big plank sticking out of our own. We ignore the fraction in our own eye. Love covers a multitude of sins, but does it cover a multitude of specks? A multitude of fractions? Is that what grace really is? Hate is easy. Judging is easy. This is the hard work. This is the going against the grain. To look past these specks in their eye and see the person in front of us, the human being in front of us. It’s very punk rock to love everyone and to show everyone grace. And if you know anything about Revolution you know we love punk rock, so let’s do the hard work.This talk was given on June 25, 2023 from Seattle, WA.www.facebook.com/revolutionchurchmnwww.revolutionchurch.com/donatewww.youtube.com/revolutionbroadcasting@jaybakker@revolution1994@revolution94 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We have a bit of a delayed talk this week. It was a real busy few days with wrapping up some of the loose ends with the big move, Father’s Day, and Juneteenth—but hey, better late than never! Today’s talk is a bit off the beaten path. Today Jay talks a lot about Kierkegaard and what it means to think and act as individuals, rather than fall into scary groupthink. Jay discusses the strange truths we have, and how often we have an assumption that anyone, or any thought, that is in the majority is automatically true. But is that always the case? Can there be a fear or an agenda in the majority that infects its way through the crowd. Is a crowd the untruth? Jay also takes Kierkegaard’s ideas and takes a look at some of Jesus’ teachings, as well as Paul, to see what they say about the individual. Because groupthink keeps us from living our best lives in so many ways. A lot of the division we have these days is because of focusing on whole groups of people, rather than individuals. It can be hard to love a crowd, it’s real easy to hate a crowd. But it’s a bit easier to love an individual. To not turn the individual into a fraction of who they are. Obviously, a group or community can be a very beautiful thing. Very beautiful. But let us remember too that a crowd is composed of individuals. So let’s not turn other people in fractions of who they are. Or as Jay puts it Let’s live a life that confuses the algorithm.This talk was given on June 20, 2023 from Seattle, WA.www.facebook.com/revolutionchurchmnwww.revolutionchurch.com/donatewww.youtube.com/revolutionbroadcasting@jaybakker@revolution1994@revolution94 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jay is all moved and back at it! It was a hell of a move and full of ups and downs…probably mostly downs. But it’s done and it’s good! A sad reality of life is that sometimes life just sucks and sometimes you just have to talk about it. Due to moving around a lot as a kid, moving brings up a lot of past feelings for Jay. Add on today’s current climate and…we’ll it’s been a bit rough recently. Today’s talk has a lot to do with disagreeing well and with arguing well. Grace doesn’t come with an asterisk, but maybe disagreeing/arguing well does. It’s often easier to argue well with a stranger than it is with someone you know and someone you love—a friend or family member. Jay is having his ‘practice what you preach’ skills tested to their limits these last few weeks. Today he talks a bit about a phone call he had with his dad! A call 4-years in the making! Jay talks about other tough conversations he’s had recently as well. He reflects on those conversations and tries to grade himself on how he did. Did he argue well? Did he show grace? Jay also touches on the passing of Pat Robertson and the feelings that brought up in him as well. It’s a high energy, very raw discussion today. Sometimes that’s just needed.This talk was given on June 11, 2023 from Seattle, WA.www.facebook.com/revolutionchurchmnwww.revolutionchurch.com/donatewww.youtube.com/revolutionbroadcasting@jaybakker@revolution1994@revolution94 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jay is up to his eyeballs with his big move, so rather than having to find a way to come up with a talk, Josh is filling in so Jay has room to breathe for a bit! Today’s talk is inspired by a line from Elton John’s song Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. It’s about going back to a simpler time. An easier time. The strange thing about Christianity, though, is that we’ve gotten to a place where ‘progress’ is actually further behind us. It’s back back. Back to Jesus and Peter and Paul talking about grace and equality. So, the way we go forward at Revolution is to go backwards. Back to a time before the corruption set in. To a time where the belief structure was just about loving and accepting people and being aware that the old laws of the Bible are crushing us—just like it crushed everyone that came before us. To help demonstrate the dangers of taking the Bible literally and living in the way of legalism, we take a strange journey to show the complicated path the Bible took to be written in English. And how many links in the chain there were between that and getting the Bible to America. This doesn’t diminish anything, and it doesn’t take away from the Bible. All it shows is how it makes no real sense to take it so literally. There were too many cooks in the kitchen for thousands of years, including misprints and plenty of people being burned at the stake. The Bible is incredible, and we lose a lot of that when we force it to be literal and we force legalism into our lives. Today we also talk about Elijah, Elisha, Shawn Michaels, Final Fantasy 7, and the movie The Darjeeling Limited. It’s a fun one!This talk was given on June 4, 2023 from Long Island, NY.www.facebook.com/revolutionchurchmnwww.revolutionchurch.com/donatewww.youtube.com/revolutionbroadcasting@jaybakker@revolution1994@revolution94 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The world is kind of screwy and we’re gonna head there a bit today. The bulk of Jay’s talk today explores some passages in 1 John. Because, besides all of the confusion and anxiety of life these days with politics and hate and fear and war—Jay is adding moving to a new apartment on top of all of that! And in the end, it seems despite our effort and drive to power through, life still seems pointless more often than not. And because of that apathy sneaks its way in more than we’d ever care for it. Today Jay’s real question is “What are we doing to get through this everyday?” That’s why a focus on 1 John today is really helpful. Because it talks a lot of how true love casts out fear and it casts out hate. We learn that to truly love God, we can’t hate our neighbor. It just doesn’t work. So when we’re all in a bit of darkness and we’re all struggling…and our leaders have become so petty and pathetic with each other, things just do not feel safe. It all feels so dark and overwhelming. But if we all help each other, lean on each other, love each other. Then that lets a lot of light into our really dark world.This talk was given on May 21, 2023 from Seattle, WA.www.facebook.com/revolutionchurchmnwww.revolutionchurch.com/donatewww.youtube.com/revolutionbroadcasting@jaybakker@revolution1994@revolution94 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Happy Mother’s Day everyone! Today’s talk is a little weird but that’s okay because Jay’s gotta be Jay. After a brief continuation and further thoughts/developments of last week’s talk, Jay jumps into what our focus is with Revolution—learning to have the tough conversations. Trying to stop ‘othering’ others. We say ‘trying’ because it’s not easy, we all struggle. But sometimes trying goes a lot further than we think. So let’s keep trying. Let’s try to overcome binary thinking. Let’s try to come together. Revolution is trying to bring people together while our politicians and social media try to manipulate and divide. Giving this immense pressure to be something we’re not. It seems that even people who want us to be different and unique…want us to be different and unique just like them—hate who they hate, love who they love, hold sacred what they hold sacred. But we’re all human. And humans are nuanced. When did we lose the nuance? When did we become so legalistic? It’s important to set boundaries, but maybe our boundaries come with a door or window, something that helps us mend relationships in the future. But, hey, let’s not forget it’s Mother’s Day! Let’s see what Tammy Faye has to say about it! Jay reads an excerpt from I Gotta Be Me, and it sums up everything perfectly—as only Tammy Faye can. Happy Mother’s Day! This talk was given on May 14, 2023 from Seattle, WA.www.facebook.com/revolutionchurchmnwww.revolutionchurch.com/donatewww.youtube.com/revolutionbroadcasting@jaybakker@revolution1994@revolution94 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Like so many of our talks recently, this one wasn’t the one that was planned. But our original plans got derailed once again by a national tragedy. And that tragedy almost always seems to be another mass shooting in America. We are so sick of it. We’re sick and we’re heartbroken. We’re in danger everywhere we go. Jay’s talk this week is short. And it’s raw. Because enough is enough! These shooters don’t care about our politics, at all. They don’t only kill liberals, or adults, or people of color. We’re all equal in our danger. So when all of this is happening, how do we love our neighbor? How does that fit into this? If the book of James says that ‘faith without works is dead,’ then where does only offering up thoughts and prayers fit in? Something more needs to be done. We need to choose people over religion. We need to love each other and not let religion get in the way. We need something, because this can’t go on. This talk is raw and uncensored. Normally, I (Josh) take time to edit out any or the harsher words that might slip out in emotion or frustration. It didn’t seem right with this one. Enough is enough. This talk was given on May 7, 2023 from Seattle, WA.www.facebook.com/revolutionchurchmnwww.revolutionchurch.com/donatewww.youtube.com/revolutionbroadcasting@jaybakker@revolution1994@revolution94 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Todays talk is a bit heady and philosophy heavy, but it’s a good one! After studying and listening to some Todd McGowan, Jay starts to really break down the idea of separation and what Paul means when he talks about “…for all have sinned.” Often times we’ve heard that as a way to make us feel bad, or to emphasize how much we rely on salvation, but what Jay discusses is: What if what it means is we’re all equal? Similar to what Paul says in Galatians about there being no Jew nor gentile. If sin is separation, and grace is reunion – then by saying ‘for all have sinned,’ really we can look at it that we’re all just as separated. We’re all coming from the same place. We’re all starting on a level playing field. That we’re all outcasts! Together! It gives us a common ground, together. And that’s a start to getting rid of the concept of ‘other.’ If we see that nobody belongs, then it stops us from fighting about who belongs. When Jesus is sharing a meal with Matthew and is questioned about the company he kept, he told them that he came to help the sick, not those who think they aren’t. He came to help the separated, not those who feel they aren’t. Let’s live in the imperfection and the contradiction of it all! And realize that that’s the meat of living.This talk was given on April 30, 2023 from Seattle, WA.www.facebook.com/revolutionchurchmnwww.revolutionchurch.com/donatewww.youtube.com/revolutionbroadcasting@jaybakker@revolution1994@revolution94 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jay gets a little serious this week and shares with us his first personal experience with Christianity and how that led him to where we are today and what Revolution is trying to be as a community. Feeling inspired by a punk rock show to stay true to himself, Jay discusses how the Christian legalism he encountered at a young age–the hurt it caused and how it pushed him away from God almost altogether. But eventually that all led him to discovering grace and acceptance and loving radically. How the more he dove into studying and reading, Jay came across the idea that Christianity isn’t the faith of being rigid. Or at least it shouldn’t be. As a society we spend so much time looking for things that separate us, but we have so much in common. And the most important thing we have in common is our humanity. Let’s have a love that reconciles. A love that Jesus said we would be known by. Let us be driven by love and not rules, not separation. Because we’re not different–we’re just people.This talk was given on April 23, 2023 from Seattle, WA.www.facebook.com/revolutionchurchmnwww.revolutionchurch.com/donatewww.youtube.com/revolutionbroadcasting@jaybakker@revolution1994@revolution94 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.