Advertise on podcast: The Loft LA - Progressive Christianity in Podcast Form
Rating
4.7from
This podcast has
481 episodes
Explicit
No
Date created
2017/06/24
Latest episode
2026/09/28
Average duration
44 min.
Release period
8 days
Description
The Loft is a progressive Christian community that is unapologetically inclusive. If you're curious about what a socially and politically progressive Christianity looks like, this podcast is for you. This podcast is the edited audio from our weekly Sunday gathering of people who are interested in following Jesus' spiritual path of radical compassion. Their are four values that inform and help form our community: - Conversation is the center of our gatherings. We facilitate a conversational approach to thinking about and living out our faith together. - Belonging defines who we are and aim to be. We are not isolated individuals but people who belong in divine grace. - Compassion is God's love in action. It is in serving and helping others – we actively take the good news out into our city and the world. - Decolonization is our theological approach. We are committed to the ongoing work of decolonizing Christianity in order to better love and serve the world.
Podcast episodes
Check latest episodes from The Loft LA - Progressive Christianity in Podcast Form podcast
What Does It Mean to Love God?
2026/09/28
Both the writers of the Hebrew Bible and Jesus taught, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” Indeed, Jesus tells us that this is the greatest commandment. In the final sermon of our After Deconstruction series, we address the corollary question this commandment raises: what does it mean to love God? What does loving God look like in practice? How we practice loving God is how we practice Christianity.www.TheLoftLA.org
Reconstructing Salvation: Transforming the Heart
2026/09/21
Salvation is most often associated with what we must do (or believe) to go to heaven. As a result, most Christian theologies of salvation focus on what happens after we die. However, if we assume that salvation is important, it seems odd that Jesus would speak so little about what happens when we die. What Jesus speaks about frequently and passionately is how we can transform the world he lived in - the world we live in - into the Kingdom of God.www.TheLoftLA.org
Born Again: A New Heart & The Heart of Justice
2026/09/14
The phrase “born again” carries A LOT of theological baggage. Yet the New Testament suggests that if being “born again” leads to judgmentalism, self-righteousness, and policing in-group and out-group boundaries, we can question whether someone has experienced the spiritual transformation of the heart Jesus describes in John. This transformation is both personal and political: when we are centered in God, our hearts beat for justice. Conversation Question: What comes to mind for you when you hear the phrase "born again?" How, if at all, has it influenced your understanding of what it means to practice being a Christian?www.TheLoftLA.org
Jesus: The Heartbeat of God
2026/09/07
Christianity is unique among world religions because God is not revealed to us through a text but through Jesus, the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us. Jesus is what can be seen of God, embodied in a human life. Through his life and his teaching about a Way of life, he reveals the heart of God to us.www.TheLoftLA.org
God: The Heartbeat of Reality & The Mystery of Evil
2026/08/31
As Christians, we believe that God is the heartbeat of reality, a life-giving and sustaining presence. All Christians can affirm this claim. However, as we deconstruct our faith, we realize that the way we "see" God, our understanding of God's relationship to the world, and God's character significantly shape how we practice Christianity and how we respond to the evil and corruption of our time. Conversation Question: What do you understand the character of God to be? Stated differently, what is your God most fundamentally like? www.TheLoftLA.org
Scripture: The Heart of our Tradition
2026/08/24
To be Christian is to be centered in the God of the Bible. For us, the Bible is our sacred scripture and sacred story. Yet the Bible is also one reason many people have left Christianity or the church and now describe themselves as "spiritual but not religious." At some point in our spiritual formation, we must answer this question: How do we read the Bible after deconstruction, and why does it matter? Please join us in The Loft as we answer this question together.
www.TheLoftLA.org
Faith - The Way of the Heart
2026/08/17
Most people would define Christian faith as believing a set of Christian beliefs to be true. In some parts of the world, the word "believer" is a synonym for Christian. Defining faith this way has made it primarily about the beliefs in our heads, but this is not how the Bible and the Christian tradition speak about faith. Faith has always been a matter of the heart. Recovering and reconstructing our definition of faith will help us see Christianity as a way of life - a way of living with our hearts centered in God.
www.TheLoftLA.org
After Deconstruction: New Wine & New Wineskins
2026/08/09
What are we to do when the tradition that taught us to ask "what would Jesus do?" no longer reflects what Jesus showed us in his life and teachings? Deconstruction. Decolonization. Reconstruction. For many people of faith, these three words mark the moments when they realized the religious beliefs embedded in their childhood were at odds with their experience of God as Divine Love. Those three words could also describe how the disciples experienced Jesus' teachings, which challenged parts of their religious traditions.
www.TheLoftLA.org
God Doesn't Have Favorites
2026/08/03
Join guest preacher Everest Harvey in The Loft as we wrap up our sermon series on hospitality and explore what it means to create home for every person in God's community.
www.TheLoftLA.org
Making A Place for Hospitality
2026/07/27
Because we practice hospitality as a core part of our faith, we work to make the our spaces more welcoming. This requires us to pay attention to how people experience our homes and our churches, in hopes that they will be places characterized by love and generosity.
www.TheLoftLA.org
Hospitality With God
2026/07/20
How does greed or emptiness get in the way of offering hospitality to God? And what can we do? We welcome Rev. Dr. Diana Holbert, our Minister of Care, to The Loft this week as Rev. Dr. Christopher Carter has been home battling Covid. We invite you to keep him in your prayers as he continues to recover. www.TheLoftLA.org
We Are Strangers Who Welcome Strangers
2026/07/13
Throughout his teaching and ministry, we encounter Jesus as a vulnerable guest, a needy stranger, and a gracious host. Jesus both welcomes and needs to be welcomed. In this way, when we are hospitable to the needy stranger, we do so with the awareness that we may be showing hospitality to Christ. And when we receive hospitality from a stranger, they give it knowing that they may be showing hospitality to Christ too.
www.TheLoftLA.org
Hospitality As Spiritual Practice
2026/07/06
In ancient times, hospitality was regarded as a pillar on which the world's moral structure rested. It is an important theme in scripture, central to the gospel story. In the New Testament, we encounter Jesus as a vulnerable guest, a needy stranger, and a gracious host. The teachings of Jesus enrich and challenge our modern definitions of hospitality, inviting us to see it as a spiritual practice.
www.TheLoftLA.org
Queer Callings & Responses
2026/06/29
The Song of Mary and the Song of Hannah remind us that God's call to prophecy, service, and leadership is not limited to cisgender men. The songs of Elsa, a character whose story is decidedly queer, suggest something similar. Reading these stories together can help us understand how essential it is to respond to our calling.
www.TheLoftLA.org
Baptized Into A Found Family
2026/06/22
The Bible tells us that when Jesus was baptized, he heard a voice from heaven declare, "This is my Son whom I dearly love." In the story of Jesus' baptism and temptation, we see the triumph of vulnerability over toxic masculinity and the beginnings of a found family that can survive temptation and thrive as their authentic selves.
www.TheLoftLA.org
Podcast reviews
Read The Loft LA - Progressive Christianity in Podcast Form podcast reviews
tgnoe 2025/04/17
I was looking for a progressive church podcast
The progressive Christians podcast was shared with me during a time of dread after inauguration in 2025, and that was great, but finding this podcast ...
PRS6565 2024/09/23
Fake Christianity
The Bible outlines what sin is. Call it whatever you want.. the alphabet mob (LGBQt whatever) will face god one day.
yagirlregan 2022/11/13
The perspective we need
Love this podcast. Always inspires me to think more deeply about my faith and God. Thank you!