Beloved, Today Lent begins! We will gather in just a few hours for a Public Ashes “Drop-in” in Bates-Hendricks from 12-2pm (with a short service at 12:15pm), and we gather tonight at 7pm for a joint service with Spirit of Joy for a full Ash…
Reflecting on a Beautiful Congregational Meeting
Dear Church, Last Sunday we held our first congregational meeting, and to be honest, Fr. Ben and I were a bit concerned about it! We still had a couple budget decisions to make when we called a last-minute Vestry meeting last week. Then Fr. Ben…
Justice, Nonviolence, and the Way of Jesus
I’ve been thinking lately on Jesus’ command in Matthew 5:38-42: “You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you that you must not oppose those who want to hurt you. If…
How to “Examine Yourself” at the Eucharist
During our Sunday Eucharist liturgy walk through this past Sunday at 9:30am, someone asked an important question: “How should we ‘examine ourselves’ when we come to the Lord’s Table?” The question arises from a direct quote of St. Paul from his correspondence to the Corinthians.…
How We Gather During the Week: Table Groups
You hear us speak almost every week about our Table Groups. I thought I’d take just a few minutes to describe what we are talking about when we say “Table Group”. 🙂 Table Groups meet in homes, over a meal, with space to encounter each…
Providing Housing For Asylum Seekers
I made a brief announcement this past Sunday (October 27) about our desire to partner with Anglican Immigrant Initiative to help host and sponsor asylum seekers who are currently living in detainment facilities. Check out their website to see some of their vision and explanation…
The Kingdom Comes In Us AND Through Us
What God does through us, he also does in us. Scripture describes this dynamic in organic metaphors: Good soil produces good fruit (Luke 8:11ff) Good tree produces good fruit (Matthew 7.15ff) Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks (Matthew 12.33ff) Branch cannot…
Evil and Suffering: Does God Really Care More Than We Do?
One of our axioms for Living a Sacramental Life is “God cares about (all of) it more than we do.” But when we start to think about this in light of evil and suffering in our world, it tends to open up a can of…
How to Be With the God Who is Here
To say that God is real is not profound… because if he isn’t real, what are we doing as a church? To say that God is so real he most fully meets us right where we really are is to acknowledge that God doesn’t fully…
The Eucharist is About Divine Union
We talked this past week in the first session of our Living a Sacramental Life class about it all comes down to love. Life is about divine communion in love. We mentioned quite a few Scriptures in our class, but one we didn’t read is…
