Friends Church Calgary Weekly Message

I was trained as an altar boy. Church was a place of certainty, where I knew what to believe and what was expected of me. But as I grew older, questions emerged, my faith unravelled, and I eventually emptied my spiritual box. So what brought me back?This Sunday at Friends Church Calgary, I’ll share my personal journey of losing and rebuilding my faith - and some surprising clues that helped me find my way back. If you’ve ever wrestled with questions, felt that old beliefs no longer fit, or wondered whether it’s okay not to have all the answers. You don’t need to have it all figured out to take the next step.Donate to Friends ChurchTo donate to this podcast and support the making of more of these please visit https://friendschurch.ca/podcast

You might have found Friends Church when it felt like you were hanging off a spiritual cliff, arms shaking, grip slipping, no idea what was below. Maybe it was when the quiet ache of an empty spiritual box couldn't be ignored anymore, whether you emptied it yourself or it was never filled to begin with. Maybe it was the loneliness of being the one whose spiritual life changed, watching the distance grow with people who used to feel like home. Or maybe it was the fear that every spiritual question you asked was pushing you further from the truth.If any of that feels familiar, you're not the only one in the room. And sooner or later, we all hit the same question: now what? How do we move forward? How do we get that spiritual box to feel good again, or for the first time, without feeling like we're just making it up?The first step might not be the one you expect.Donate to Friends ChurchTo donate to this podcast and support the making of more of these please visit https://friendschurch.ca/podcast

For the last few weeks I've been inviting us into an uncomfortable question about the technology in our pockets, on our desks, and in our driveways. Not whether technology is good or bad, but what we're actually using it for.We've looked at how it distracts us from feelings we'd rather not feel, how it quietly takes over skills we used to build for ourselves, and how it can feel so human that we forget it isn't.Most of that conversation has been about what technology does to us. This Sunday, in the final message of Digital Idols, I'm turning the question outward. What does it cost the people around us when we pick up that technology? How do we balance the good it can do with what it costs?It's not a comfortable place to end a series. I honestly wanted to skip this one until I realized I'd be doing the exact thing this series has been talking about, avoiding something hard because it's uncomfortable. Avoiding hard stuff is not the Friends Church way!Donate to Friends ChurchTo donate to this podcast and support the making of more of these please visit https://friendschurch.ca/podcast

You asked for it, so this Sunday we're finally talking about AI. This isn't a debate over whether it's good or bad, and it isn't a warning about robots taking over. Most of us use these tools every day without asking what they're doing to us, or what we're doing to them. Every new technology shows us something about ourselves, and AI might be showing us more than we'd like. But if we're willing to pay attention, these technologies can give us something valuable: insight into what we need to be healthy, to live healthy, and to create a healthy world. Donate to Friends ChurchTo donate to this podcast and support the making of more of these please visit https://friendschurch.ca/podcast

When was the last time you did math without a calculator doing the heavy lifting? Probably a while, and that's okay. We don't need to do long division anymore. But some skills are different. Walking up to a stranger to ask for help or to connect. Sitting with loneliness, boredom or fear without reaching for your phone. Figuring out what you actually like and what makes your life feel like it's worth something. Technology can't do those things for us, can it?Yet we try to let it. Quietly, one swipe at a time, we hand over the things that make us human, because if it can do the math, surely it can do this too. And the cost shows up later. The phone call we dread. The conversation we avoid. The feelings we never learned how to hold. Could this be part of why so many of us feel more anxious, more alone and less like ourselves than ever?This Sunday in the Digital Idols series, we'll look at how to tell the difference: which skills you can happily hand to your devices, and which ones are worth fighting to keep. Join us at the Spiritual Gym this Sunday at 10:30am - invite someone in your life that might need this one.Donate to Friends ChurchTo donate to this podcast and support the making of more of these please visit https://friendschurch.ca/podcast

You've had a long day, and there's a choice waiting. One option is messy and uncertain and might go nowhere. The other is always there and always easy, and it never says no. This Sunday we're starting in a place that will probably get us in a little trouble, with one young man's after-work dilemma, and what it shows about the always-on technologies we all reach for, including the chatbot in your pocket. It's not about shame and it's not about rules. It's about a question most of us feel but rarely say out loud, and an ancient story about a golden calf that turns out to be surprisingly modern. If you've ever caught yourself choosing the easy thing over the real thing and wondered why, join us this Sunday at 10:30 at the Spiritual Gym.Donate to Friends ChurchTo donate to this podcast and support the making of more of these please visit https://friendschurch.ca/podcast

Speaker: Vince KlassenEveryone has one: the scroll that never really ends, the show that autoplays into the next one, the project that always needs one more hour, the busy that keeps you too busy to notice what you're avoiding. It works, until the day it doesn't, and whatever you built it to outrun is still sitting there waiting.There's an old story about a group of people who couldn't sit with their pain either, so they built a statue of a calf out of gold to make the feeling go away. We all have our own version of that Golden Calf.This Sunday we're looking at what ours actually is, what it's been standing in for, and how we deal with what we've been trying to make go away.Come find out this Sunday at 10:30 at the Spiritual Gym.AI Prompt: I think there's an emotion I'm avoiding instead of working through, and I want help finding it and naming what I use to distract myself from it. Walk me through this one question at a time. Don't give me the whole list at once, wait for my answer before moving to the next question. Start by asking me when I last felt something rise that I didn't want to sit with. Then help me find the actual emotion itself and name it. Check whether there's a second emotion riding along with the main one, since feelings often travel in pairs. Once we've named the emotion clearly, help me name the distraction I used, whether that's overthinking it, scrolling my phone, staying busy, joking about it, or something else. Then help me come up with a plan to use that distraction less and feel the emotion more.Donate to Friends ChurchTo donate to this podcast and support the making of more of these please visit https://friendschurch.ca/podcast

You have a story, the real one, not the Instagram version. And this Sunday we're talking about what happens when you finally let it out into the open, how one honest story, told or heard, can be the spark that gets you unstuck and moving again. You don't need a tidy ending or a lesson learned to make it worth telling. You just need to have lived it.If you've ever felt spiritually stuck and wondered what it would take to catch fire again, come find out this Sunday at 10:30 at the Spiritual Gym. Bring your story. You might be surprised what it lights up in you, and in someone else.Donate to Friends ChurchTo donate to this podcast and support the making of more of these please visit https://friendschurch.ca/podcast

Some of us gave up on the Bible a long time ago. Too many crazy stories that don't seem to happen anymore, too many fights over what you're required to believe before you're even allowed to open it, too much of a "why does this even matter to my life today" feeling. So it sits on a shelf, more like a museum piece than something that could matter today. Here's why I still think it's worth picking back up: I see it as an ancient collection of writings from people wrestling with the exact same things we are. How do we navigate this life? Why do bad things happen to good people? Is there a purpose behind any of it? How do I live a good life? And so many more. You've probably got a few of your own.So let's explore the Bible through a new lens, one where you don't need to already believe a word of it. Just bring an open mind and your own story. I'll show you a way into these old stories that might surprise you, one that could inspire the next stage of your spiritual journey.Bring someone in your life who wants a way into the Bible that inspires their life today.  See you at the Spiritual Gym!Donate to Friends ChurchTo donate to this podcast and support the making of more of these please visit https://friendschurch.ca/podcast

Some days it doesn't bother you. Other days, a story you've told yourself for years stops feeling like a story and starts feeling like the truth, no matter what's actually in front of you. It might be about relationships, about God, about who you are or aren't allowed to be. This week we're looking at what happens when a story takes over, and what it costs us and the people we love when it does. You'll leave with a real way to loosen that story's grip and start evolving it, instead of staying stuck inside it. Come with the story that gets you at your weakest. Leave with a way to change your relationship to it.Join us this Sunday, 10:30 am, at the Spiritual Gym, and bring someone who's stuck in a story of their own.Donate to Friends ChurchTo donate to this podcast and support the making of more of these please visit https://friendschurch.ca/podcast