Episodes
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Episode 66
Chapter 4 (Part II)
Ezekiel 37:11-14
Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the LORD; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the LORD.”
Discussion
- Revisit Last Week
- Open for Questions/Reflections
- Can We Unite With Different Gifts?
- What Is the Message Now?
Wednesday Apr 30, 2025
Safe House Podcast Ep. 65 - Chapter 4 - Ezekiel 37:8-10
Wednesday Apr 30, 2025
Wednesday Apr 30, 2025
Live Service for April 30th, 2025
order The Cross and the Lynching Tree
https://a.co/d/4xn5nVL
podcast notes
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iv4h1VA2zvbgt0vE3NzMEsD2O1Tpzb0Z?usp=drive_link
Pastor Dr. Charles W. Ferguson
Mitchell Harper
Episode 65
Chapter 4
Ezekiel 37:8-10
And I looked, and behold, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them. But there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord GOD: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.” So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.
Discussion
1. The Winds of Prophecy
2. An Interesting Intersection
3. Putting the Message Where You Can Get
4. Uniting as One (Truly!)
Clair United Methodist Church - https://www.clairumc.com/
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Wednesday Apr 23, 2025
Safe House Podcast Ep. 64 - Chapter 3 - Galatians 2:15-21
Wednesday Apr 23, 2025
Wednesday Apr 23, 2025
Live Service for April 23th, 2025
order The Cross and the Lynching Tree
https://a.co/d/4xn5nVL
podcast notes
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iv4h1VA2zvbgt0vE3NzMEsD2O1Tpzb0Z?usp=drive_link
Pastor Dr. Charles W. Ferguson
Mitchell Harper
Episode 64
Chapter 3
Galatians 2:15-21
We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.
But if, in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not! For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.
Discussion
1. Crucifixion (Lynching) as a catalyst for movement
2. Identifying with Christ through crucifixion
3. Discipleship & Suffering
4. All the Way to Calvary
Clair United Methodist Church - https://www.clairumc.com/
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Wednesday Apr 16, 2025
Safe House Podcast Ep. 63 - Chapter 2 (Part II)
Wednesday Apr 16, 2025
Wednesday Apr 16, 2025
Episode 63
Chapter 2 (Part II)
Micah 6:6-8
With what shall I come before the LORD,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
Discussion
- The Stress of Inner Conflict (Niebuhr has a complex perspective on race—at once honest and ambivalent, radical and moderate. On the one hand, he says that “in the matter of race we are only a little better than the Nazis”; and, on the other, he is urging “sympathy for anxious [white] parents who are opposed to unsegregated schools.” In terms almost as severe as those of Malcolm X, Niebuhr speaks about “God’s judgment on America.” He calls “racial hatred, the most vicious of all human vices,” “the dark and terrible abyss of evil in the soul of man,” a “form of original sin,” “the most persistent of all collective evils,” “more stubborn than class prejudices,” and “the gravest social evil in our nation.” “If,” he concluded, “the white man were to expiate his sins committed against the darker races, few white men would have a right to live.”[24] But, unlike Malcolm, Niebuhr also says that the founding fathers, despite being slaveholders, “were virtuous and honorable men, and certainly no villains.” “They merely bowed to the need for establishing national unity” based on “a common race and common language.” He even says that the 1896 Supreme Court doctrine of “separate but equal,” which made Jim Crow segregation legal in the South, “was a very good doctrine for its day,” since it allowed “the gifted members” among ex-slaves, a “culturally backward” people, to show, as a few had done in sports and the arts, “irrefutable proof that these deficiencies were not due to ‘innate’ inferiorities.” In my view these latter views amount to a moral justification of slavery and Jim Crow.)
- Compromise vs. Justice (Niebuhr praised the 1954 Supreme Court decision ending segregation in public schools, which he claimed “initiated the first step in the Negro revolt.” Yet he was also pleased by the Court’s added phrase, “with all deliberate speed,” which “wisely” gave the white South “time to adjust” (while also opening a loophole to delay integration). “The Negroes,” Niebuhr said, “will have to exercise patience and be sustained by a robust faith that history will gradually fulfill the logic of justice.” Niebuhr’s call for gradualism, patience, and prudence during the decade when Willie McGee (1951), Emmett Till (1955), M. C. “Mack” Parker (1959), and other blacks were lynched sounds like that of a southern moderate more concerned about not challenging the cultural traditions of the white South than achieving justice for black people. He cited the distinguished novelist William Faulkner and Hodding Carter, a Mississippi journalist “with a long record of fairness on the race issue,” in defense of gradualism, patience, and prudence, so as not to push the southern white people “off balance,” even though he realized that blacks were understandably smarting under such a long history of injustice: “We can hardly blame Negroes for being impatient with the counsel for patience, in view of their age-long suffering under the white man’s arrogance.”)
- Environmental Immersion (German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, during his year of study at Union (1930-1931), showed an existential interest in blacks, befriending a black student named Franklin Fisher, attending and teaching Bible study and Sunday School, and even preaching at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. Bonhoeffer also read widely in African American history and literature, including Walter White’s Rope and Faggot on the history of lynching, read about the burning of Raymond Gunn in Maryville, Missouri (January 12, 1931), in the Literary Digest, “the first lynching in 1931,” and expressed his outrage over the “infamous Scottsboro trial.” He also wrote about the “Negro Church,” the “black Christ” and “white Christ” in the writings of the black poet Countee Cullen, read Alain Locke and Langston Hughes, and regarded the “spirituals” as the “most influential contribution made by the negro to American Christianity.” Some of Bonhoeffer’s white friends wondered whether he was becoming too involved in the Negro community.[30] Niebuhr, in contrast, showed little or no interest in engaging in dialogue with blacks about racial justice, even though he lived in Detroit during the great migration of blacks from the South and in New York near Harlem, the largest concentration of blacks in America. He attended socialist and leftist meetings when W. E. B. Du Bois and A. Philip Randolph were present and included such writers and artists as James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, and Countee Cullen of the Harlem Renaissance in his course Ethical Viewpoints in Modern Literature (a course that Bonhoeffer attended). But Niebuhr cites no black intellectuals in his writings. He repeatedly writes about “our Negro minority” (not “our brothers,” as he referred to Jews), a phrase that suggests white paternalism. Although Niebuhr allowed his name to be used for the support committee of the Legal Defense Fund of the NAACP (1943), he did not join the organization or attend any of its conferences dealing with racial justice. He often used the word “negro” in the lower case, at a time when the NAACP fought hard to establish its capitalization. He seemed only marginally concerned about justice for black people, even though he firmly opposed racial prejudice in any form.)
Wednesday Apr 09, 2025
Preview Safe House Podcast Ep: 62 Chapter 2
Wednesday Apr 09, 2025
Wednesday Apr 09, 2025
Live Service for April 9nd, 2025
order The Cross and the Lynching Tree
https://a.co/d/4xn5nVL
podcast notes
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iv4h1VA2zvbgt0vE3NzMEsD2O1Tpzb0Z?usp=drive_link
Pastor Dr. Charles W. Ferguson
Mitchell D. Harper
Matthew 16:21
From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.
Mark 8:31-33
And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”
1 Corinthians 1:26-29
For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.
Discussion
Can’t Talk About What You Will Not Acknowledge
Change At Deliberate Speed
Hard Conversations or Uneasy Agreement
Clair United Methodist Church - https://www.clairumc.com/
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Wednesday Apr 02, 2025
Safe House Podcast Ep: 61 - Chapter 1
Wednesday Apr 02, 2025
Wednesday Apr 02, 2025
Live Service for April 2nd, 2025
order The Cross and the Lynching Tree
https://a.co/d/4xn5nVL
podcast notes
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iv4h1VA2zvbgt0vE3NzMEsD2O1Tpzb0Z?usp=drive_link
Pastor Dr. Charles W. Ferguson
Mitchell Harper
Episode 61
Chapter 1
Acts 10:34-42
So Peter opened his mouth and said: “Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, 35 but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. 36 As for the word that he sent to Israel, preaching good news of peace through Jesus Christ (he is Lord of all), 37 you yourselves know what happened throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism that John proclaimed: 38 how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. 39 And we are witnesses of all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, 40 but God raised him on the third day and made him to appear, 41 not to all the people but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. 42 And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead.
Conversation
1. Why did the meaning of lynching change in society?
2. Expression as a form of protest
3. Instrument of Destruction to Image of Hope and Victory
4. Wrestling with Who God Is?
5. Coming to Grips with an Adjusted Faith Journey
Clair United Methodist Church - https://www.clairumc.com/
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Come join us every Sunday for a Live stream service and if you would like to donate for the church click the link above
Wednesday Mar 26, 2025
Safe House Podcast Ep: 60 - The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Introduction)
Wednesday Mar 26, 2025
Wednesday Mar 26, 2025
Live Service for March 26th, 2025
order The Cross and the Lynching Tree
https://a.co/d/4xn5nVL
podcast notes
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iv4h1VA2zvbgt0vE3NzMEsD2O1Tpzb0Z?usp=drive_link
Pastor Dr. Charles W. Ferguson
Mitchell Harper
Mark 10:45
For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Romans 3:24-25
and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.
Conversation
1. How did we get here?
2. Blackness and Christianity
3. Separation within the Community
4. The Dichotomy of the Cross
5. Viewing Faith through a Lens of Reality
Clair United Methodist Church - https://www.clairumc.com/
!!!!!DONATE TO THE AMAZING STREAMING TEAM @ - https://bit.ly/2CwmMwT
FOR ALL THE AMAZING WORK THAT HAS BEEN DONE DURING THIS TIME!!!!!
We do not own the rights to this music.
Come join us every Sunday for a Live stream service and if you would like to donate for the church click the link above
Wednesday Mar 19, 2025
Safe House Podcast Ep: 59 - Liberation vs. Freedom (Part II)
Wednesday Mar 19, 2025
Wednesday Mar 19, 2025
Live Service for March 19th, 2025
podcast notes
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iv4h1VA2zvbgt0vE3NzMEsD2O1Tpzb0Z?usp=drive_link
Pastor Dr. Charles W. Ferguson
Mitchel Harper
Genesis 45:4-20
So Joseph said to his brothers, “Come near to me, please.” And they came near. And he said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are yet five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God. He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt. Come down to me; do not tarry. You shall dwell in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and your children and your children's children, and your flocks, your herds, and all that you have. There I will provide for you, for there are yet five years of famine to come, so that you and your household, and all that you have, do not come to poverty.’ And now your eyes see, and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see, that it is my mouth that speaks to you. You must tell my father of all my honor in Egypt, and of all that you have seen. Hurry and bring my father down here.” Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin's neck and wept, and Benjamin wept upon his neck. And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them. After that his brothers talked with him.
When the report was heard in Pharaoh's house, “Joseph's brothers have come,” it pleased Pharaoh and his servants. And Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Say to your brothers, ‘Do this: load your beasts and go back to the land of Canaan, and take your father and your households, and come to me, and I will give you the best of the land of Egypt, and you shall eat the fat of the land.’ And you, Joseph, are commanded to say, ‘Do this: take wagons from the land of Egypt for your little ones and for your wives, and bring your father, and come. Have no concern for your goods, for the best of all the land of Egypt is yours.’”
Exodus 1:8-10
Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, “Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.”
Conversation
1. Comfort in a Foreign Land
2. Maintaining Uniqueness vs. Assimilation
3. When the Threat Level Rises
Clair United Methodist Church - https://www.clairumc.com/
!!!!!DONATE TO THE AMAZING STREAMING TEAM @ - https://bit.ly/2CwmMwT
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We do not own the rights to this music.
Come join us every Sunday for a Live stream service and if you would like to donate for the church click the link above