Arapaho UMC

Arapaho UMC
  • 4.8 (11)
  • Christianity
  • Updated Daily

Progressive theology and engaging Sermons & podcasts from an affirming church in Richardson, Texas (just North of Dallas). We are intentional about our faith development: we ask questions, develop deep and lasting friendships, and work together to make a positive difference in our community. Nobody is perfect here, but being a part of this place brings out the best of us.

  1. 6d ago

    Back to School - When Will We Ever Use This?

    Back to School - When Will We Ever Use This?

  2. Aug 23

    Welcoming New Classmates

    Welcoming New Classmates

  3. Aug 16

    Back to School- Class is in Session

    Back to School- Class is in Session

  4. Aug 9

    70 Years of Women in Ministry

    70 Years of Women in Ministry

  5. Jul 26

    Hope Is a Practice

    This sermon grows out of a challenge that has never fully let go: a conversation with a seasoned border activist — someone who had been accompanying immigrants and families through crisis for generations — who said plainly that as a faith leader, you do not have the right to give up hope. Not a comfort. A call. A weight. And an invitation to understand hope as something other than optimism or wishful thinking. Drawing on Walter Brueggemann's concept of prophetic imagination — the vocation of holding open a future the empire insists is closed, of conjuring and proposing alternatives to the single story power wants to tell — this sermon makes the case that hope is not a feeling you wait to have. It is a discipline you practice. It is what you do when the feeling isn't there. It is lament that refuses to become despair. It is action that refuses to wait for certainty. It is showing up anyway. The sermon names the cost of hope honestly — the exhaustion of holding it, the temptation to let it go, the grief that comes with caring about outcomes you cannot control. And it holds that alongside the long lineage of hope-practitioners in our tradition: the prophets who spoke to empty air, the women who came to the tomb on Sunday not knowing what they'd find, the activists and faith leaders who kept marching when there was no visible reason to. Hope, we learn, is the posture of people who believe the story isn't over. It doesn't require certainty. It requires practice. And like any practice — prayer, Sabbath, generosity — it is something we can get better at, together.

  6. Jul 22

    Today I Learned... From Our Youth About Love in Real Life

    Our youth went to Boerne, Texas, to help a community recover from a flood — and while they were there, it flooded. Plans changed. Then they changed again. (And again.) But somewhere between the mops, the flood buckets, and a gym turned into a shelter, something remarkable happened: love just kept showing up. In this week's message, Pastor Jonathan shares what he learned from watching our students serve, pivot, and even preach — four lessons about love in real life: love is flexible, love can hold what can't be fixed, love stays for the long haul, and love does it together. Along the way: a sweet neighbor who learned our kids' names, a word from Paul about grace being sufficient, and the reminder we all need — wherever you are, grace is there too.

  7. Jul 12

    Today, I Learned… Methodists were Radicals

    Most people — including most Methodists — have no idea how subversive this tradition actually is. We tend to imagine ourselves as the sensible middle: not too loud, not too political, not too anything. And then you actually read the history. This sermon tells three stories that recover the radical roots of the movement we're part of. Story One: John Wesley in the fields. Wesley didn't start by building institutions — he went outside them. Banned from pulpits, he took to open fields and coal mines and street corners to preach to the people the church had left behind. His class meetings — small groups of working-class people meeting weekly for mutual accountability, financial support, and shared prayer — were grassroots communities of transformation decades before anyone called it community organizing. The method was radical because the love was serious. Story Two: Susanna Wesley in the kitchen. Long before her sons John and Charles changed the world, their mother was doing theology at the kitchen table. When her husband was away, Susanna began hosting theological discussions in her home — drawing dozens, eventually hundreds — in an era when women simply did not do such things. When challenged, she kept going. She didn't wait for permission to teach. She is, in many ways, the first Methodist preacher — and nobody gave her a license to do it. Story Three: The Seneca Falls Convention. In 1848, the first Women's Rights Convention in American history — the gathering that launched the suffrage movement — was held at the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Seneca Falls, New York. Not a coincidence. The Wesleyan Methodist Connection had broken from the main Methodist body specifically over slavery and the full inclusion of women. The people who hosted that convention had been practicing radicalism for years. The sermon lands on a contemporary question: if this is who we come from, what does it mean to be their heirs? The tradition doesn't ask us to admire the radicals from a safe distance. It asks us to pick up where they left off.

  8. Jul 5

    Today, I learned… — America is 250 Years Old

    America turns 250 this week. That's young — genuinely young, in the sweep of history — which means we are still, in a very real sense, a work in progress. This sermon holds the full complexity of that without collapsing it in either direction: not the uncritical celebration that papers over real harm, and not the cynical dismissal that forgets the genuine beauty of the democratic experiment. Both are true. Both have always been true. The question is what we do with that. This is, it turns out, a deeply Wesleyan question. Methodism gave us the doctrine of sanctification — the belief that persons and communities are not static, that grace is always at work moving us toward wholeness, that being unfinished is not a verdict but a trajectory. What we believe about individuals, we can believe about nations: transformation is possible, and the call to pursue it is sacred. The sermon explores what it means to be good citizens of both earth and heaven — holding Jeremiah's call to seek the shalom of the city alongside the prophetic tradition's refusal to let the city off the hook. The best patriots, it turns out, are the ones who hold the country accountable to its own highest ideals. That's not unAmerican. That's what love looks like.

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Ratings & Reviews

4.8
out of 5
11 Ratings

About

Progressive theology and engaging Sermons & podcasts from an affirming church in Richardson, Texas (just North of Dallas). We are intentional about our faith development: we ask questions, develop deep and lasting friendships, and work together to make a positive difference in our community. Nobody is perfect here, but being a part of this place brings out the best of us.

Information

  • Creator
    Arapaho UMC
  • Years Active
    2018 - 2026
  • Episodes
    128
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Arapaho UMC
  • Show Website
    Arapaho UMC