After The Crash

• 01 Crashy People
  Adam Smith / 1.13.08 / 45min
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• 02 The Crash Broadcast
  Adam Smith / 1.20.08 / 36min
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• 03 The Forgetful Crash
  Adam Smith / 1.27.08 / 37min
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• 04 A Crash of Prespectives
  Adam Smith / 2.03.08 / 42min
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B-Roll

• 01 Jeconiah, the father of Shealtiel?
  Adam Smith / 12.2.07 / 39min
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• 02 Too Good for God's Will?
  Adam Smith / 12.9.07 / 53min
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• 03 Caeser is Lord?
  Adam Smith / 12.16.07 / 41min
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• 04 A Careful Search
  Adam Smith / 12.23.07 / 47min
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Containing the Hulk

When I was a kid, I remember late night plea-bargaining with my parents from time-to-time to let me to stay up an extra half hour and watch the old-school original Hulk series on television. I’d be all zipped into my footie-bottomed Thundercat PJs, nervously huddled under a blanket, my eyes glued to the TV, just waiting for the scrawny, permed-up 70’s B-actor to snap and mutate into the green make-uped body builder with the bad bowl cut and teach those small-minded evil-doers a lesson. Even though I knew he was trapped inside TV land, when the Hulk broke out, it always scared me a bit—but hey, I was 8 and Disney movies could give me nightmares. Now, an even scarier thought, as I’ve gotten a bit older is the realization that there’s a little Hulk living inside of me as well—all of us really. Not an actual bad-haircut green beast with pecks as big as Monster Truck tires, but a mutated version of ourselves that sifts to the surface when anger pushes us over the edge. We all get angry. But what do we do with it? What happens if we snap? Have you ever just lost it and said something you never thought you’d say or broken something? Have you ever just flat-out scared yourself? When we let our red hot anger slowly simmer just below the surface, it’s just a matter of time until it boils over the edge and begins to reek havoc on our lives. And what does God think about all this? In this series we’ll be uncovering the buried Hulk in all of us, looking at this powerful emotion through God’s eyes and learning to take baby steps to gain control of if instead of letting it control us.

• 01 Angry Like Jesus
  Adam Smith / 11.4.07 / 30min
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• 02 Angry At Grace
  Adam Smith / 11.11.07 / 43min
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• 03 Chain-leash Anger
  Adam Smith / 11.18.07 / 34min
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• 04 Angry With God
  Adam Smith / 11.25.07 / 54min
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Authority Issues

Submission. The word itself makes me feel frustrated. Just seeing it typed out all smug on a computer monitor makes me want to rise up and “fight the power”—you know—“stick it to the man” and all…whatever that means. There’s just something about that word that reeks of static conformity, iron-fisted control and a loss of personality—ok, so maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but these associations are the reason we all rage against it. We want to be our own person. We want to make our own decisions. We want to be free. And yet, oddly enough, the Bible outlines this idea that the only way to truly be free is to completely submit to the authority God’s placed in our lives. How’s that for a confusing, little Yoda-ish nugget of wisdom. Granted, the Biblical definition of submission isn’t quite as loomingly depressing as my flashback 16-year-old punk-rock mindset often paints it to be, but it’s still amazingly hard to live out. And what happens when the authority figures in your life are unreasonable or unknowledgeable, untrustworthy or just flat out uncool? I usually feel like just blowing them off, but what does God have to say on the matter? During this series we’re going to take a look at just what God has to say about submission, obedience and a whole other slough of words that will all probably make you cringe at first. But in the end, will you allow God’s opinion on the matter to weigh in?

• 01 Extra Credit
  Adam Smith / 10.7.07 / 57min
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• 02 Animal Fatties
  Adam Smith / 10.14.07 / 34min
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• 03 How to Survive a Spear Attack
  Adam Smith / 10.21.07 / 51min
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Rooms

When I was in grade school, everyday after our afternoon recess, we’d sluggishly file inside, put our sweat-mop heads down on our desks and sit quietly as the soft-voiced teacher would read us a chapter from some imaginative children’s novel. And, I have to admit, I always got sucked in. My favorites were the stories about some kid getting sent away to spend the summer in a dusty old mansion with some random elderly relative who was always described as smelling like soup—whatever that means. The characters would fill their days exploring the big, empty house, drifting from room to room with a rusty ring of skeleton keys discovering spaces and treasures no one’s seen in years. I sometimes think of my life as one of these old mansions, packed with more rooms than I could ever count, each representing an attitude or mode of thinking about my life. For the longest time, I was I was in control of it all. I was the only one who lived there. Then I met Jesus. I invited him to move in and live inside my life as well. It was as if I gave him the key to the front door. But the longer he lives in my life with me, the more rooms he wants access to. He wants all the keys—the whole ring. The trouble is: I’m a bit stubborn and there are some keys I don’t want to let go of. I want those rooms to myself. But what would happen if I gave God access to everything. What if I really let him snoop around the hallways of my heart and peek in every room? Join us for this new original Umbrella teaching series as we slowly unlock room after room and begin to ask ourselves what they would look like if God had his say.

• 01 Let Go
  Adam Smith / 06.17.07 / 39min
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• 02 The BATHROOM:
  How to Become Completely Self-Absorbed
  Adam Smith / 06.24.07 / 54min
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• 03 The CRAWL SPACE:
  Building a Good Foundation
  Tim Miller / 07.08.07 / 37min
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• 04 The MUSIC ROOM:
  Involving God in the Music We Make & Take
  Don Stevens / 07.15.07 / 47min
  Listen (16Mb)
• 05 The SHED:
  Wrestling with the Hard Words of Jesus
  Chris Misterek / 08.12.07 / 50min
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• 06 The BABY ROOM:
  What to Expect from Your Expectations
  Adam Smith / 08.26.07 / 13min
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• 07 The HALLWAY:
  Discovering God’s Will — Without the Use of a Magic 8 Ball
  Nate Thompson / 09.02.07 / 55min
  Listen (19Mb)
• 08 The DINING ROOM:
  The Dirty Truth About True Friends
  Adam Smith / 09.09.07 / 23min
  Listen (21Mb)
• 09 The LAUNDRY ROOM:
  Consistency in Connectivity
  Adam Smith / 09.16.07 / 57min
  Listen (52Mb)
• 10 The ROOF:
  Getting a Little Perspective
  Tim Miller / 09.23.07 / 40min
  Listen (54Mb)
• 11 Recapping Rooms:
  Student Testimonies
  Adam Smith / 09.29.07 / 10min
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Viva La Revolucion

At this very moment, as your eyes glide over the words on your screen, you sit in the midst of a mounting revolution: a desperate struggle between two versions of Jesus wrestling over the reigns of church in America: the Jesus of Nazareth and the Jesus of Suburbia. One is a fraud and one is the genuine article—one the Son of God and the other a figment of our imaginations. The trouble is, the counterfeit is much easier to follow than the real deal. It’s tempting to side with this invented “Jesus of Suburbia” because He expects nothing from me. He exists to make me comfortable and rich. He’s tame and inoffensive; His teachings are safe. In contrast, the version of Jesus outlined in the Bible isn’t safe at all. In fact, he’s insanely dangerous. He’s countercultural in every way. He actually promises that following him will lead to suffering, rejection and even poverty. He’s in direct opposition to everything the Jesus of Suburbia represents. And though the weapons of his rebellion are faith, love, grace, compassion and self-sacrifice, they so radically threatened the established order of things that he was murdered just to shut him up. In this series of messages, we challenge you to make a choice. Will you allow yourself to be swept up in the revolt of real Jesus into a culture-altering movement of God, or are you satisfied with the soothing familiarity of the counterfeit?

• 01 The Revolution of Immigrant Thinking
  Darrick Young / 06.04.07 / 60min
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• 02 The Revolution of In-Dependence
  Darrick Young / 06.05.07 / 64min
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• 03 The Revolution of Quiet
  Darrick Young / 06.06.07
  (Not Available)
• 04 The Revolution of Living Dead
  Darrick Young / 06.07.07 / 50min
  Listen (18Mb)
• 05 The Revolution of Infection
  Darrick Young / 06.08.07
  (Not Available)

Friendlationships

Believe it or not, though we may exude this amazingly suave, sophisticated and impressively mature exterior, all of us here on The Umbrella staff once awkwardly slinked through those uncomfortable teenage dating yearsÑjust like everybody else. We know what it’s like to spend your entire chemistry lab strictly analyzing the way “you know who” said “hi” to you in the hallway after third hourÑwondering if it was some subtle signal that they kind-of want to be “more than friends”Éor maybe it was nothing; maybe they were actually waving at that kid on crutches behind you. Was it a “love wave” or just your basic broken-leg “sympathy wave” that you accidentally intercepted? We even remember believing, at the ripe old age of 13, that we could reel in the love of our life if we could just get our hands on the right 6-step acne-cleansing product line or some sort of illegal South American miracle elixir that could stop us from uncontrollably ham-sweating whenever that “special someone” walks by. In fact, we’re exhausted just thinking back on it all. In this series we’re going to take a look at guy/girl relationships and all the weirdness that comes with them. We’re going to give you a peek into the frightening realm that is our teen years and compare the relational decisions we made to what the Bible has to say on the subject. So, take a deep breath, turn off whatever chick flick you’re trying to rip off romance tips from and, please, out of nothing more than good, old-fashioned self-respect, stop rubbing cologne samples on your neck from that card that fell out of Cosmo Girl. Instead of trying to tackle it on your own, join us as we take a look at the complex, relational world around us and challenge you to think about navigating this crazy, crush-filled, hand-holding, Axe-wearing, love ballad-listening dating scene in a whole new way.

• 01 Five Mistakes from My Dating History
  Adam Smith / 04.22.07 / 79min
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• 02 The Naughtiest 4 Letter Word in Church
  Adam Smith / 05.20.07 / 62min
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• 03 Notes on the “B” Word
  Adam & Gretchen Smith / 06.10.07 / 41min
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A Flashlight in the Attic

Attics have this strange magnetic allure to them. Or at least it seemed like it as a kid. To everyone else they were just this out-of-the-way place where they’d throw all the junk they didn’t want to think about or sort through. But to me, it felt like some sort of hideout for all the best secrets. As a kid, my friends and I would climb up the collapsible stairs hidden in the ceiling behind a pull string trap door, and poke around with weak, plastic flashlights. We’d always find all this amazing stuff: dented plastic lawn dwarves, dusty old pictures of our dads with ‘afroed’ hair and tight, Easter-colored pants; there were boxes of books that looked like they were 100 years old, faded coin collections in jelly jars and forgotten fragments of broken toys our parents promised they’d fix three years ago. At age 10, uncovering this kind of stuff was better than finding a Hefty sack full of free money. And it was crazy to me that everyone else seemed to be ok with not knowing what treasures were hibernating overhead. I wanted to know. It felt, in some weird way, like I needed to know. I’m just obnoxiously curious like that. And this curiosity of mine has a way of smuggling itself into every area of my life, especially my faith. I can’t just stroll by and not want to look up and explore “the attic” of Christianity. I have too many questions, questions about all the stuff that nobody seems to ever want to talk about in church. I want to know what God thinks about these things. And so, in this series, that’s just what we’re going to do: explore. We’re going to ask really hard questions. We’re going to shine a Biblical flashlight on the subjects that churches typically box up and shove out of sight and, in doing so, begin bringing to light a definition of love, so revolutionary, God took on human form and came to earth to personally demonstrate it.

• 01 Can We Trust the Bible?
  Adam Smith / 01.28.07 / 57min
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• 02 Capes and Cotton Mouth
  Adam Smith / 02.22.07 / 52min
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• 03 The Difference Three Days Makes
  Adam Smith / 02.24.07 / 52min
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• 04 What’s In Your Wallet?
  Terri Dawson / 03.11.07 / 30min
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• 05 The Addicting Addictiveness of Addiction
  Adam Smith / 03.18.07 / 43min
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• 06 Okay, I'm Totally Not Judgemental, But...
  Adam Smith / 04.01.07 / 60min
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Biting the Apple

If you barely crack open a Bible to the third chapter of the very first book, you’ll find the first temptation in the history of mankind. Adam and Eve are hanging out with this talking snake who wants them to eat some fruit from an “off limits” tree in this big beautiful garden. And they give in and do it. They bite the apple and everything in their world, sort of, slides down hill from there. This one event initiates a reoccurring cycle of temptation and sin that has a way of following us all around. The truth of the matter is, whether we want to admit it or not, we all struggle under the weight of being drawn to think or say or do things that, deep down, we know will wreck our lives and the closeness of our connection with God. Sometimes our sin tendencies feel so overwhelming that we can begin to wonder if can even help but give in. And what if we do? Some of us lay in bed at night sick with the guilt that we’ve messed up and God’s disgusted with us. Others of us just kind of do whatever we feel like, thinking that, in the end, God will just forgive us anyway. How does this whole grace thing work anyway? How do we distance ourselves from sin that keeps creeping in? Can we? Is it even necessary? In this series, we’ll be digging around the Bible to uncover what God really thinks about temptation, guilt and sin. Join us as we begin a journey inside our own hearts to ask the question: What will you do when temptation finds you.

• 01 Fighting Temptation
  Adam Smith / 12.31.06 / 58min
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• 02 Deciphering Guilt
  Adam Smith / 01.07.07 / 55min
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• 03 Avoiding Sin
  Adam Smith / 01.14.07 / 46min
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Rewrapping Christmas

Have you ever watched a baby unwrap a Christmas present? You’ve got this wide-eyed miniature, little person with this monstrous package towering over them, the shimmery foil wrapping paper glistening in true holiday form and this massive army of giddily, sweatered relatives on digital camera standby. Most often, you have to physically get their chubby, little hands started, but once they’ve had their first taste of how ripping paper makes the big people clapping, it’s on. And soon enough, their first big gift is well uncovered and strung out on the floor in front of them. It’s funny, because even though the gift is nice and expensive and entirely theirs, the kid seems vastly disinterested. And we all laugh as onlookers, joking about how funny it is that the baby’s more caught up in the colorful paper, the stick-able bows, and chewy, white packing peanuts than the gift itself. Yet, for most of us, that’s our Christmas too—so mesmerized with the way season’s been wrapped for us over the years, we often disregard the real gift inside—the truth, purpose and significance of God’s journey to earth—and instead become preoccupied with the nice, shinny trimmings. This holiday season, we’re going to peer below the surface of Christmas and uncovering the story behind the story—in ways that might surprise you—in hopes of fully embracing true bigness of the season. Join us as we begin the process of Rewrapping Christmas.

• 01 Unwrapping the Christmas Story
  Don Stevens / 12.03.06 / 60min
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• 02 Big Gifts
  Adam Smith / 12.10.06 / 58min
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The Misadventures of Color Page Jesus

Whether you've never set foot in a church or grew up with popsicle-stick manger pictures and construction paper Moses cut outs on your fridge, almost everybody's heard of Jesus. He's practically a modern day celebrity. His picture's plastered on magazine covers. He's in movies. Pop music icons wear t-shirts with his face felted on the front and give him acceptance speech shout-outs on MTV award shows. He's got his own action figure for crying out loud! He's even got a rotational guest spot as a halo-wearing, cartoon talk show host on South Park. Yet, even with this hodge-podge of recent publicity, do any of us really have an accurate picture of who Jesus truly is? In this original Umbrella series, we're diving head-first into the Gospels, pop culture, church tradition and ancient Jewish history to sift fact from fiction and come face to face with the real life Jesus and why his 33 years on earth did more than earn Him a place in Sunday School color page history, it turned the world upside down forever.

• 01 Jesus Definitions
  Adam Smith / 09.17.06 / 51min
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• 02 A Paintball to the Trachea
  Adam Smith / 10.01.06 / 51min
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• 03 Smuggling all the Good Candy
  Adam Smith / 10.15.06 / 47min
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• 04 How Do You Grow?
  Todd McIntyre / 10.22.06 / 57min
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• 05 A Biscuit to the Face
  Adam Smith / 11.05.06 / 66min
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• 06 OK GO
  Nate Thompson / 11.12.06 / 35min
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• 07 Follow Me
  Adam Smith / 11.19.06 / 56min
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