Worst Church Ever Podcast Episodes, liturgy, Religion

Happy New Year!

Hello and a belated Happy New Year (and Epiphany)! We’ve been hard at work the last 6 weeks making new content and building out some new platforms. We have a new schedule for 2024 that we’re excited to share, and we want to invite you to check out our recent updates at Spotify, YouTube, and Facebook.

New Year, New Voices, New Schedule

Nathan Key has joined the Worst Church Ever family, and he and Chris are doing hour-long, 3-segment video episodes that publish every Monday on YouTube and Spotify. Worst Church Ever: Coffee Hour covers a broad range of topics with sincerity, heart, some humor, and, hopefully, a healthy dose of humility. Join us!

Tuesday and Thursdays will be for short-form content on platforms that favor that style. YouTube Shorts, Facebook/Instagram Reels, and, heaven help us, TikTok.

Wednesdays will see the continuation of our Narrative Journeys through the books of Scripture, continuing from where we’ve been in Genesis and moving forward with short, close reads of the text paying particular attention to repeated motifs of trauma and healing.

On Fridays, we’ll share a brand new feature called Songs from a Broken Liturgy. John Hardt joins the fold to tell the story of the Broken Liturgy gatherings. In the dying days of the emerging church movement, John, a pastor, musician, and creator, began convening radically different worship experiences in unlikely places. This is the story of where Broken Liturgy has been and where it might be going.

We hope you’ll add to the conversation in 2024!

Worst Church Ever Podcast theology

Who Do We Think We Are? (Season 2 Edition)

It’s a great idea, putting the word “worst” at the very beginning of your podcast’s name. Best for forward and all of that. But here’s what it means to us:

We named this podcast after two realities: the first was that consumer Christianity is often about finding the “best” church in town, and maybe we should drop all aspirations for the world’s standards of success and embrace Jesus’ upside-down vision for the kingdom of God. The second reality is that the fundamentalists next door really think we’re the worst, and not in a “the last shall be first” kind of way.

We launched in the middle of the pandemic and are starting Season 2 now.  There are 25 episodes to-date, mostly dealing with repeated cycles of trauma in the first 25 chapters of Genesis. There are also one-off bonus episodes about everything from 90s CCM to Carl Sandburg to UAPs.

As Season 2 unfolds, we’re going to continue our close looks at the trauma/healing cycles of scripture, but we’re also going to do more one-off material, special interviews, guest spots and more.  Check us out.  We’re the total worst, so you can’t possibly be disappointed!

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Season 2 (Even Worser) Coming Soon!

We’re getting ready for Season 2!

Interesting, Isn’t it?

During Season 1, we ran some Facebook ads to get the word out about the podcast. The comments (and DMs) mostly came from two groups who, on the surface, have little in common. There were triggered diatribes from people who think all Christians are mean-spirited fundamentalists, and there were the triggered diatribes from actual fundamentalists who think all people who aren’t fundamentalists are going to the Bad Place. Interesting, isn’t it?

People who have actually listened to the show seem to appreciate it, and we’re grateful for that. As we launch Season Two (Even Worser), we invite you to bring your questions, (respectful) feedback, suggestions for topics and guests, and welcome you to share your stories.

Here’s what we’re planning:

  • Continuing with the stories of the Old Testament through the lens of generational trauma
  • Deconstructing fundamentalist approaches to scripture in general.
  • Sharing Bonus Episodes (short, sweet, and random)

New for this Season:

  • Interviews 
  • Special Guests
  • Supplemental looks at Gospel passages, Epistles, Psalms, and Proverbs (following the Narrative Lectionary cycle, more or less)

Stay tuned! New shows start in July, but some warm-up Bonus Episodes (Short, Sweet, and Random) may drop sooner!

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Ep 14: Headfakes & Heartbreaks (The Banishing of Hagar and Ishmael, Genesis 21)

“A few chapters back, Sarah tells Abraham to get rid of Hagar, and Abraham says “she’s your slave. She’s your issue.  Do whatever you want.”  In other words, you’ve already trafficked this Egyptian to me, I’ve already raped her, I don’t give a shit.”  But now, oh, but now.  But now there is a son involved, and so now, this jackass seems to care…”

Hagar’s story is far from over as the cycle of trauma in Abraham’s family continues. A few episodes later, we’ll see how Sarah’s actions in this chapter haunt Isaac into adulthood and into his own marriage.

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Strange New Worlds (and Patreon)

Hello! 

Worst Church Ever here.  We started our podcast on May 5, 2021, and we’re about to hit our 500th download.  That’s not earth-shaking news, but it’s also not bad for a new pod with no budget that comes out and tells you how much it sucks right from the start.

Why Worst Church Ever?  The name is part joke, part humblebrag, part theological aspiration. It’s a reminder (to ourselves) that we don’t know everything, that we don’t claim to represent the entirety of the progressive Christian tradition, and it’s a little bit of flaming coal for those pastors (conservative and progressive alike) that think it’s their job to be the hippest, coolest, biggest, best. That’s not our journey, but we hope they’re warm and well-fed on theirs.

We’re as sick as you are of words like “deconstructing,” but we have a hunch that deconstruction hasn’t gone nearly as far as it needs to in Christian circles.  No, we can’t just slap together a flaming pile of garbage and call it deconstruction (this isn’t a cooking competition), but we can continue to look our scriptures, traditions, and theologies with fresh eyes.  This podcast has a near-obsessive need to do just that.  In the process, we’re rejecting theologies of exclusion, believing that the Good News is going to be good, and not just for people who “get it” (whatever that means).   

Our costs are fairly low (most of the platforms we use are free), but we’re launching a Patreon account to help defray the occasional (modest) social ad buy and to connect to people who are interested in taking an honest, thoughtful look at these issues together.

That’s our story. What’s yours?  Let’s connect!

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Quantum Gospel, Cosmic Christ

Hushed and tired tones from 1AM. Holy Ghost Coast to Coast. Quantum physics, Upanishads, Schrodinger, Eden, and Jesus…

We skipped the bumper music and reached directly for the warm milk and melatonin. The snoring dogs scared away Schrodinger’s cat.

Many quantum theories predict that objects move from the quantum to the macro realm only when (and only because) they are observed. This bonus episode considers the incarnation of Christ as God’s quantum choice to observe us from within the flesh and blood of Jesus. In choosing to enact this course of action from the infinite scenarios in the probability cloud of God’s consciousnesses, God elects a reality in which God is bound to us. We also consider the quantum origins of evil and more.

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Ep. 10: Circumcision, Power, and Violence in Genesis 17

Who gets to put (which) skin in the game, and why does it matter?

Partial transcript:

Hello and Welcome to Worst Church Ever, the progressive Christian podcast that grew up down the block from Wayside School.  We like our stories sideways and our Biblical theology…subversive. 

In the last episode, we talked about Sarah’s treatment of Hagar in Chapter 16 as Sarah’s way of reproducing her own trauma.  Trafficked by her husband in the court of Pharaoh, Sarah now traffics her Egyptian slave in Abraham’s tent. We said that it’s hard to see the patriarch and matriarch as anything but villains in this story, and we ended with Hagar’s exaltation of El Roi, the God who she saw in the wilderness, and, perhaps more importantly, the God who saw her.

We pick up today with Chapter 17, which again finds God (Yahweh) making a covenant with Abram/Abraham:  

“ When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. 2 And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.” 3 Then Abram fell on his face; and God said to him, 4 “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. 5 No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. 6 I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. 7 I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. 8 And I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding; and I will be their God.”
9 God said to Abraham, “As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. 10 This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. 11 You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. 12 Throughout your generations every male among you shall be circumcised when he is eight days old, including the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring. 13 Both the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money must be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. 14 Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.”

Listen to episode 10 for the rest of the story!

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Who Do We Think We Are, Anyway?

Progressive Christian podcast about social justice, Biblical Studies (that’s Biblical Studies, friends, not church camp Bible Studies!) and more. The world’s worst Christian podcast. Deconstructing the stranglehold that fundamentalist and conservative evangelical voices seem to have on American religious discourse. Progressive Christians digging around in what the Bible actually says, because the Good News is supposed to be good…

Available Spotify, Apple, Google, and more. If you like what we’re doing, please do subscribe and review on your platform of choice. Thank you!