Char Brodersen

Jesus follower, husband, father, Lead pastor @ Calvary Chapel, Music enthusiast

[Tom Wright @profntwright]

Scripture is, at its heart, the great story that we sing in order not just to learn it with our heads but to become part of it through and through, the story that in turn becomes part of us.
-The Case for the Psalms

[Char Brodersen @Charbrodersen]

What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn. - G.K. Chesterton

[Char Brodersen @Charbrodersen]

On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; but even they hardly realized that the world had died in the night…

[Tom Wright @profntwright]

Being a Christian doesn’t mean pretending that everything is ‘all right really’ when actually it isn’t. To lament is to recognize that things still are out of joint, and that we can and should bring our puzzled sorrow and frustration into God’s presence. God’s gift of lament (following the Jesus who, according to Isaiah 53.3, was ‘a man of sorrows and acquainted with infirmity’) is the way we join in with God’s own sorrow at the continuing tragedy of his world.

Second, though, the importance of genuine celebration. Keeping the season of Easter isn’t whistling in the dark. It is opening our eyes to the light – and, in astonished gratitude, determining day by day to live in that light. Once we get Lent right – once we learn to lament properly, with our bodies as well as our minds and hearts – we can then praise God for Jesus’ death and resurrection, and for the new creation into which we have been brought, without any danger of making it sound cheap or trivial.

-From Wilderness to Glory: Lent and Easter for Everyone

[Tom Holland @holland_tom]

“Had he died in a more merciful, less deliberately dehumanising way, it would not be possible to see in his death the sum of all horrors.”

@flemingrut on the theological implications of the fact that Jesus was not just executed, but crucified.

[Lesslie Newbigin @LesslieNewbigin]

Mission begins with a kind of explosion of joy. The news that the rejected and crucified Jesus is alive is something that cannot possibly be suppressed. It must be told.

[Char Brodersen @Charbrodersen]

@roquefort888 @calvarychapelcm @calvary_cca The local church belongs to Jesus Christ and the congregation not to me, not to Brian, not to Chuck and certainly not to Paul Smith.

[Char Brodersen @Charbrodersen]

@roquefort888 @calvarychapelcm @calvary_cca It’s funny that you would call
us usurpers. CCCM did not follow Chuck’s wishes which contrary to popular belief were never made clear. Cccm followed the bylaws that Chuck and the board set up. They voted in Brian as their pastor then and now me.

[Peter Leithart @PLeithart]

"Christianity in its essence is a risky religion, packed with the kind of ethical implications that are dangerous to status quo's, established regimes, and reigning systems.

"Perhaps we ought to impute a far more considerable role in history than we usually do—and ascribe a far more damaging influence—to those people who perform the function of making Christianity a safe religion, accommodating it to the existing order of the world, and rendering it more compliant toward the powers that be."

-Herbert Butterfield

[Char Brodersen @Charbrodersen]

@edstetzer Thanks for being there. It was a great night! Our boys attend @PacificaOC and we are really thankful for what’s happening there as well.

[Char Brodersen @Charbrodersen]

Indeed. Lord, have mercy!

[Russell Moore @drmoore]

Racist. Deranged. Humiliating to our country. The fact that we have decided to pretend to this is normal every day is a moral abomination. Have we any shame?

And every day an entire generation is being told it is “Christian” to support this. God have mercy on us.

[Char Brodersen @Charbrodersen]

Brittany's passing has left a deep void for her family. Isaiah and their daughters are facing immense challenges, both emotionally and financially. Your support can make a real difference. Please consider donating or share to help. Thanks for the kindness https://t.co/2CDUTjRuxK

[Diane Langberg, PhD @DianeLangberg]

Oppression is literally a crushing of the image of God in humans. To say or do nothing when power is abused is to contribute to the defacing of God’s image in others. In other words, it is to join with the enemy of God, who sought to destroy that same image.

[chuck degroat @chuckdegroat]

"I learned early that the methods of my work must correspond to the realities of the Kingdom. The methods that make the kingdom of America strong – economic, military, technological, informational – are not suited to making the Kingdom of God strong. I have had to learn a new methodology: truth-telling and love-making, prayer and parable. These are not methods very well adapted to raising the standard of living in suburbia or massaging the ego into fashionable shape. But America and suburbia and the ego compose my parish. Most of the individuals in this amalgam suppose that the goals they have for themselves and the goals God has for them are the same. It is the oldest religious mistake: refusing to countenance any real difference between God and us, imagining God to be a vague extrapolation of our own desires, and then hiring a priest to manage the affairs between self and the extrapolation. And I, one of the priests they hired, am having none of it. I am being subversive. I am undermining the kingdom of self and establishing the Kingdom of God."
— Eugene Peterson, The Contemplative Pastor

[Char Brodersen @Charbrodersen]

@carmenjoyimes Thank you, Carmen! It is always such a pleasure to have you on the show. Looking forward to the next time.

[Glenn Packiam @gpackiam]

I re-read the book of Judges recently. Because of other conversations taking place in our church about women in leadership, I was keenly aware of the trajectory of the treatment of women in the book of Judges.

Early on: a woman is a praise-worthy judge (Deborah!); a woman (Jael) acts courageously to kill a wicked general; then an unnamed woman flings a stone from a tower to kill a bully.

But things get worse. Women play the role of temptress in the Samson story. By the end of the book, an unnamed concubine is given over to a mob of lustful men, and she is killed. Her body is then sliced into pieces and sent throughout the nation to spark outrage.

Think of it: Women go from being a judge to being a prop.

And what's the headline of the book of Judges? "The people did what was right in their own eyes."

Left on its own, the trajectory of a sinful culture results in the degradation of women.

It is the redemptive action of God in the world that elevates and empowers women.

For all the insinuation that women in church leadership is the result of "cultural corruption" , I have become convinced it was the influence of sin that excluded women in the first place.

[InterVarsity Press @ivpress]

A reflection from @Tish_H_Warren on the third Sunday of Advent ✨

“It is the love of God, in the end, that wins the day.

The love of God is the blazing fire that purifies us, remakes us, and sets right all that is broken in us and in the world.

The love of God brings us to repentance.

The love of God sets the oppressed free and makes all things new. The love of God insists on truth and justice.

The love of God reveals every hidden thing. And it is this love that is coming for us.” ✨

Read more Advent reflections in her book ‘Advent’ from the Fullness of Time Series: https://t.co/vOpYbO5kYz

[Rev. Benjamin Cremer @Brcremer]

It is a fragile god who needs weapons, wars, and political power to preserve and enforce their will.

It is a powerful God who is born in poverty, washes feet, heals the sick, advocates for the oppressed, embodies compassion, is unjustly killed, and still changes the world.

[Char Brodersen @Charbrodersen]

Agreed. Well said.

[Glenn Packiam @gpackiam]

Before you broadcast your certainty about policies and political positions and berate others to agree with you, reflect on how many solutions to problems creates new problems, and how even the “answers” can generate unintended consequences. There is contextual complexity even when there is moral clarity.

[Lesslie Newbigin @LesslieNewbigin]

In order that the Church may truly be sign, foretaste and instrument of God’s purpose to consummate all things in Christ, it must in each place be credible as such a sign, foretaste and instrument in relation to the secular realities of that place.