blogs

Here’s where we can hold virtual hands and talk to each other along the way. We hope to connect as much as possible using available technology to bring us together in spite of our busy, distracted lives. In addition to our blog, here are a couple of external blogs by our staff.

Pastor Dave’s blog on various subjects dealing with faith and life and non-religious Christian spirituality. Look below for some recent posts and follow link for full archive.

theeffect Women is Marian Brisbin’s blog connecting women to events, activities, inspirational material, and to each other.

Holy Saturday

Holy Saturday: A Great Rest

For the Jews, a new day begins at sundown and lasts until the following sundown. As Jesus was crucified on Friday, with the approaching sunset, the sabbath would begin and burial would not be possible without breaking the sabbath code. But to leave a body unburied was also abomination to Jewish custom, so caught between converging points of Law, the scramble was on to get Jesus’ body into a tomb before sunset Friday. With hardly any time to grieve or even comprehend the events of that terrible day, Jesus was hastily wrapped in linens and placed in a new tomb owned by Joseph of Arimathea, a Pharisee sympathetic to Jesus.

The women closest to Jesus have no time to anoint his body before the stone is quickly rolled closed, so after sunset on Holy Saturday when the sabbath has passed, the women buy spices and ready themselves to go to the tomb at first light to complete Jesus’ preparation for burial. Even with all the time they had spent with Jesus over the years, loving him, listening to his words, believing who he said he was, what they find there that Sunday morning is still wildly beyond anything they could have expected…

 

Looking Among the Living

Sometimes we shake our heads at Jesus’ followers’ shock and surprise on Easter morning–that they were still looking for the living among the dead. We say that if only we could have walked with the Master, we would have faith that really could move mountains. And yet do our lives reflect even a little of that assurance? When the tragedies of life hit us, when the loss of someone or something cuts so deep that it takes our breath away, do we remember that new life is coming with the next dawn? Do we really believe deeply enough to quell the grief, or are we also shocked and surprised when life returns as it always will as long as our Father in heaven lives.

Doubt is a very human trait that we all share, one that endears us even further to our Father who of course understands. But even in the midst of our uncertainty, we can remain thankful that Jesus’ resurrection is always with us to remind that when our hopes and aspirations lie in the grave of our fears, new life is always waiting for the moment we’re ready to turn and see our God again as if for the first time.

Holy Saturday is a day of silence and prayer in the liturgical church. There are no services. The Eastern churches call it the “Great Sabbath,” when Jesus “rested” in the tomb.

Jesus in the tomb.
Matt 27:62-66Mark 16:1Luke 23: 56

We hope these readings and short comments help prepare you this week for Resurrection Day next Sunday. If you’d like to dig even further, here is a daily devotional for Holy Week with some really nice elements.

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Good Friday

Good Friday: Consummation

When Jesus relinquishes his own will and fears in the Garden of Gethsemane, the die is cast, and the events of Good Friday are set in motion. He will not shrink from those events or try to avert them in any way. He willingly allows himself to be captured and tried before a Sanhedrin with conviction a foregone conclusion.

But as Jewish religious leaders were denied imposing capital punishment by the Roman occupation, Jesus is bounced between Pilate and Herod, between Roman and Jewish political authorities to decide his sentence. When Pilate is finally persuaded by the threat of mob violence, Jesus is flogged and made to carry the instrument of his execution to Golgotha, a hill outside Jerusalem’s gates. Contrary to two millennia of images, Roman practice was not to have a prisoner carry the entire cross, but only the crossbar, which was later affixed to an upright already set in the ground at the place of execution.

Weakened by his beatings, loss of blood, and lack of sleep and food, Jesus stumbles under the weight of the crossbar along the Via Dolorosa (the way of sorrows), the way he was led through the streets of Jerusalem. Roman guards impress a Passover pilgrim, Simon from Cyrene, to help Jesus carry his burden, and together they reach the hilltop. The drama that unfolds on that barren hill has been rehearsed in billions of minds and hearts the world over ever since that first Good Friday…the cruelty of the Roman guard, the indifference of the crowd, the pain of Jesus’ mother and closest friends and family, the two zealots crucified with him, the seven recorded sayings of Jesus on the cross, the earthquake and darkness, the tearing of the curtain in the temple are all permanently etched in the minds of believers and non-believers alike.

 

No Greater Love

The cross is literally the crux of Western Christian theology, but if we understand it only as the means by which we can change an angry God’s mind about us–from destruction to salvation, hell to heaven–we are missing what this instrument of death is really showing us about life being lived right here and now. At Golgotha, Jesus is dying to show us the consummation of perfect love in an imperfect world–what that love looks like in human form.

Love requires vulnerability–the willingness to drop our defenses, be seen as we really are, and let the beloved in. We risk everything when we do this, which is why so few people really do it. And when we are hurt and heartbroken as every lover eventually is, how many of us are willing to remain vulnerable and ready to love again? Willing to be hurt again and again because love isn’t possible without the willingness to remain hurtable. On the cross, under the most excruciating and humiliating circumstances, Jesus never re-defends himself, never responds with blame, resentment, anger, retribution, but only says, forgive them, Father, they don’t know what they are doing. The ultimate expression of fearless vulnerability, of perfect love in human form.

Jesus said that no greater love can be expressed than to lay down our lives for a friend. There is nothing we possess greater than our own lives–to give our lives is to give all that we have to give. But Jesus isn’t just talking about dying here; he’s talking about living in the constant willingness to lay down everything we think we are for the sake of another. Jesus had been giving his life away to his friends, piece by piece, for as long as he had been living. Word by word and action by action, whether healing, teaching, laughing, washing feet, Jesus poured out on his friends exactly what Father had poured out on him. And on this Friday, Jesus gave all he had left. He held nothing back in his single-minded drive to unite us with his Father.

We can understand love only as it is pouring out of us onto the beloved. And we can understand perfect love only when we pour out all we have, holding nothing back and letting the mystery of the cross show us how we can pour out everything on Friday, and by Sunday find that nothing we gave was ever lost. It just changed form.

In the crush to get Jesus’ body into a tomb before sundown in accordance with Jewish law–and on this day, the beginning of the Jewish Passover Sabbath–Joseph of Arimathea, along with fellow Pharisee Nicodemus, petition the Sanhedrin to have Jesus’ body released for which Joseph donates his own tomb newly cut out of the rock face near the Golgotha hill. Time is so short, the women are not able to anoint the body before the sun sets, putting all the elements in place for the events of Easter Sunday, when the women arrive before dawn to finish the anointing only to find that despite all Jesus had told them, they were still seeking the living among the dead.

Crucifixion and burial.
Matt 27:32-61Mark 15:21-47Luke 23: 26-55John 19:16-42

We hope these readings and short comments help prepare you this week for Resurrection Day next Sunday. If you’d like to dig even further, here is a daily devotional for Holy Week with some really nice elements.

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Maundy Thursday

Maundy Thursday: A Busy Day

Maundy Thursday commemorates the events of the last supper and Garden of Gethsemane. It’s a busy day. At the last supper, Jesus washes his followers’ feet, institutes the Eucharist, and gives them a new commandment to follow. Before leaving the upper room, he prays for unity–that we all would be one as he and his Father are one–then arriving at Gethsemane, prays again that he might not have to pass through his coming crisis, even as Judas is on his way to deliver the kiss heard round the world.

But in the midst of all this activity, the name “maundy” displays the church’s emphasis for this day of Holy Week. When the scriptures, spoken in Aramaic and written in Greek, were translated into Latin for the western Church, Jesus is quoted as saying mandatum novum do vobis, which means a new commandment I give you. (John 13:24) When the Latin word for commandment–mandatum–is translated over a thousand years later into Old English, it becomes maundy. Maundy Thursday is focused on the new commandment–to love each other as I have loved you. With only a few hours left with his closest friends and followers, Jesus is still struggling to help them understand the crux–the cross–of his message and the meaning of his life with them.

 

The Master is the Servant

By washing his followers feet before their meal, Jesus shocks them by graphically demonstrating what he means by loving one another–serving instead of being served, and by extension [being one and in unity with his Father in heaven] that the God we all say we serve is really serving us…a humble, unassuming God who exists to care for us, to literally wash our feet. Just as Peter initially refuses to allow Jesus to wash him, most of us mentally and emotionally resist, even abhor such a servant God who doesn’t fit our theological narrative, but Jesus tells Peter and all of us we can have no part of the Father until we see and accept him as he is.

Driving the point further, he institutes the Eucharist, communion, using the most outrageous language a Jew can muster: to eat his flesh and drink his blood, both abominations under the Law. With these images, he illustrates the radicalness of taking into themselves all that he is–moving them toward the unity that will unveil the truth that liberates. And with his new commandment, he brings to crystal clarity and utter simplicity the whole of the Gospel–to love each other just as he had loved them so well.

All four previous days of Holy Week are driving us to the fulcrum of Maundy Thursday–the unity at the core of creation. To see past our own compulsive needs and fears on Palm Sunday, to see past the distraction and deceptions of the institutions and groups around us on Fig Monday, to learn to balance between anticipation of new life coming and immersion in the life that is now, and to balance between the agenda and accomplishment of our exterior lives and the vulnerability of being intimately connected in our closest relationships is to experience all that Jesus’ Father is. The unity of Maundy Thursday is the result of lives lived like this.

And to graphically illustrate what it all means, the love that Jesus had for his friends, and still has for all of us, leads him out of the warmth and safety of their upper room to the darkness of the garden to face the agony of his own human fears…and the kiss that will set the last three days of Holy Week in motion.

Washing of the disciples’ feet and the giving of the new commandment.
John 13:1-35

Institution of the Eucharist.
Matt 26:26-29Mark 14:22-25Luke 22:17-20

Jesus’ prayer for unity on the way to Gethsemane.
John 17

We hope these readings and short comments help prepare you this week for Resurrection Day next Sunday. If you’d like to dig even further, here is a daily devotional for Holy Week with some really nice elements.

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Don’t miss the latest news and updates from our faith community, designed to keep you inspired and motivated.

Spy Wednesday

Spy Wednesday: Judas and Mary

The readings for Spy Wednesday cover Judas Iscariot’s conspiratorial meeting with the Sanhedrin, Mary’s devotion to Jesus, and preparation for the Passover seder–the Last Supper. It’s Judas’ secret meeting to betray Jesus that gives Spy Wednesday its name, but it’s really the contrast between Judas and Mary that is the focus.

The Gospels record Mary taking expensive perfume and pouring it over Jesus’ feet to anoint them, wiping them dry with her hair, and filling the room with scent. Judas berates her, focusing on the cost of the extravagant act–that such money could have been saved and given to the poor. Judas is a complex character, especially laid against Mary’s single-minded devotion and free-falling love. We can almost taste the seething anxiety and mix of frustrations and jealousies Judas harbors. What were his motivations?

 

Judas, why?

Most likely, Judas fully expected and believed Jesus to be the warrior Messiah come to cut Israel free of the Roman occupation–that Jesus’ time was at hand, that he just needed the right mix of opportunity and motivation to spark the revolution. Perhaps he thought he was helping Jesus by forcing the conflict and bringing Jesus face to face with political power–or maybe he was just greedy. We’ll never know.

But what we can know for sure is that while Mary saw Jesus for exactly who he was and loved him with abandon, Judas never could. He saw only the possibility of his own nationalistic and personal aspirations, expectations, and desires laid out along the imagined trajectory of Jesus’ life. He never really heard Jesus speak or watched his life-mission lived out in every human encounter–he only saw what he wanted to see and despaired when he felt all was lost.

Judas and Mary are presenting the need for balance between the big macro, exterior issues in which we often get lost, and the vulnerability of intimate relationship. When Judas complains about Mary’s extravagance, Jesus is quick to bring him back home, saying that the poor–those big issues out there–will always be with us, but he himself–our innermost connections–will change over time and must be cherished. It’s a life long balancing act between doing and being, between agenda and accomplishment and simple presence and connection.

Judas simply never let himself fall in love with the man who sought only to end the occupation of his heart. An occupation that a thousand revolutions could never dislodge without his own consent.

Matt 26:1-19Mark 14:1-16Luke 22:1-13John 12:1-12

We hope these readings and short comments help prepare you this week for Resurrection Day next Sunday. If you’d like to dig even further, here is a daily devotional for Holy Week with some really nice elements.

Stay Connected!

Don’t miss the latest news and updates from our faith community, designed to keep you inspired and motivated.

Contemplative Practice, Ebook 2

You’ve heard a lot about meditation and mindfulness–two cornerstones of contemplative practice. But do you really know what they are and how they can help you live your best life? You can get the basics of contemplative practice in a series of five short videos from Dave Brisbin–what you should know and why you should care to engage, basic concepts and and specific practices.

Contemplative practice is an approach to spirituality and life that is experiential rather than intellectual (philosophical, theological, doctrinal). It’s a portable, non-religious spirituality that helps us step away from the noise of our conscious minds to develop the awareness and presence we need to see the connection in life and our relationships.

To dig further into contemplation, you can download two ebooks by Dave Brisbin that go into more detail than the videos. These ebooks are meant to follow on from the video series, so if you’ve not seen the series, you can find it here, but the ebooks will stand on their own as well. This second ebook details more of Contemplative Practice, the specific practices and techniques that can make contemplative experience a way of life. Click the image or text to view or download the .pdf.

If you ‘ve not read our first contemplative ebook, which details more of the Contemplative Experience, the concepts and benefits of engaging contemplative practice, you can click here to read Ebook 1. And for a quick start guide to Mindfulness Exercises, click here.

 

Contemplative Practice, Ebook 2

The Contemplative Experience, Ebook 1

You’ve heard a lot about meditation and mindfulness–two cornerstones of contemplative practice. But do you really know what they are and how they can help you live your best life? You can get the basics of contemplative practice in a series of five short videos from Dave Brisbin–what you should know and why you should care to engage, basic concepts and and specific practices.

Contemplative practice is an approach to spirituality and life that is experiential rather than intellectual (philosophical, theological, doctrinal). It’s a portable, non-religious spirituality that helps us step away from the noise of our conscious minds to develop the awareness and presence we need to see the connection in life and our relationships.

To dig further into contemplation, you can download two ebooks by Dave Brisbin that go into more detail than the videos. These ebooks are meant to follow on from the video series, so if you’ve not seen the series, you can find it here, but the ebooks will stand on their own as well. This first one details more of the Contemplative Experience, the concepts and benefits of engaging contemplative practice. Click the image or text to view or download the .pdf.

Once you’ve read this ebook, click here to read Ebook 2, which details more of Contemplative Practice, the specific practices and techniques that can make contemplative experience a way of life. And for a quick start guide to Mindfulness Exercises, click here.

The Contemplative Experience, Ebook 1

Fig Monday

What is Fig Monday?

Immediately following his entry into Jerusalem, we are told the stories, back to back, of the cleansing of the temple and the withering of the fig tree that gives Fig Monday its name. Although it seems harsh and uncharacteristic for Jesus to curse and wither a poor tree that did not have fruit to bear (especially as it was not the season for it), the two stories side by side give us the full meaning and message.

The fig tree and the cleansing of the temple are positioned together because the author sees them as connected, and it’s in that context they are to be understood. The fig tree was a symbol of Israel to the Old Testament prophets (Hos. 9:10Jer. 24:1-10, and Joel 1:7), so here both temple and tree now stand together as symbols of Israel’s withered state. Just as the tree Jesus sees from a distance has the look and promise of sustaining physical life, on close inspection it is without fruit, barren. In the same way, the temple system with its outward look and promise of sustaining spiritual life is also barren, having become just another busy marketplace.

 

Why Curse a Tree?

Jesus “cursing” the tree is simply his unmasking of its true withered state–just as he does when he cleanses the temple. If something is not able to fulfill its intended purpose, in Aramaic it is called “bisha.” Bisha is the word we translate as “evil,” but literally it can simply mean “unripe,” immature, unable to preserve life. Israel has become bisha in its religious systems and political culture. Jesus is unmasking the people and institutions in his time, and in ours, that deceive us into thinking they will sustain our spiritual lives, when they cannot.

Religion and spirituality are two very different things. When the religious institutions in our lives are bearing fruit, they are “taba,” ripe, good, able to sustain us and bring us into the direct experience of God’s presence. When they are not, when there is no fruit on the branches, no matter how devoted we may be to them, they starve us and keep us from the life we seek. Just as Palm Sunday showed us we need to look past our own fears and compulsions in order to see Jesus as he truly is, Fig Monday teaches that we need to see past the deceptions and limitations of the institutions in our lives, the ritual practice and belief systems to which we continue to cling that can no longer sustain and keep us from the fullness of the life God offers.

Cleansing of the temple.
Matt 21:12-16Mark 11:15-18Luke 19:45-48

The withering of the fig tree.
Matt 21:18-19Mark 11:12-14

We hope these readings and short comments help prepare you this week for Resurrection Day next Sunday. If you’d like to dig even further, here is a daily devotional for Holy Week with some really nice elements.

Stay Connected!

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Palm Sunday

Thoughts on Palm Sunday

Jesus’ final entry into Jerusalem on a donkey, the colt or foal of a donkey, with the people waving palm fronds and laying their outer cloaks on the ground before him, is commemorated on Palm Sunday. Well aware of the political storm gathering against him, Jesus has tried to prepare his closest followers for the inevitable as he rides directly into harm’s way to celebrate Passover as the Law of Moses dictated, fulfill the words of the prophets before him, and demonstrate the infinite extent of his Father’s love.

Symbolically, the donkey shows Jesus coming as a king of peace–in the ancient world, if he were coming to bring war, he would ride a horse. Jesus is fulfilling the words of the prophet Zechariah here, but also showing us once again the nature of his mission: to bring spiritual peace and liberation–not political or physical. The palms are the ancient symbol of triumph and victory; to the ancient Hebrews, the date palm was also the symbol of peace and abundance. To wave the palms before a king, to cover his way with cloaks and palm branches was to recognize his authority and power over his people.

 

Save Us Now!

The shouts of “hosanna,” or as transliterated directly from the Hebrew “hoshiia na,” which from Psalm 118 translates, “save us now, we beseech you.” The people were begging Jesus to save them. The question remains for them and for us–save us from what? Each of the principal groups of people watching this spectacle had their own agendas and expectations built over Jesus’ ministry. The Romans were concerned with maintaining peace and an unbroken flow of taxes and other resources from the region; the Jewish authorities were also concerned with maintaining the status quo and their own power base built on temple, law, and Roman permission; the Zealots and common people dreamed of liberation from Rome’s occupation; Jesus’ followers looked to securing places of honor and authority when Jesus established his own reign and Kingdom. If any of these groups had been really paying attention, they would have realized that Jesus was neither threat nor political savior. If they had taken to heart the significance of the young donkey he rode and years of teaching, they would have realized that Jesus’ kingdom was not of this world, but pointed in a completely different direction.

In order to enter the real Kingdom of Heaven, the life right herenow to which Jesus beckons, we must pay close attention and begin to see him as the savior he intends to be, not the one we expect or wish him to be. The tragedy of Palm Sunday two thousand years ago, as Luke narrates, is that the people did not recognize the hour of their visitation–they didn’t see Jesus as he was, but only as a reflection of their own desires and agendas. Their tragedy is still ours today. Jesus didn’t come to meet our expectations, but to give us an invitation to see, really see God as God is.

 

Meaning of Holy Week

Palm Sunday is the first day of Holy Week, and liturgically, each day of Holy Week has a name and Gospel passages traditionally associated with it that follow the story of Jesus’ last week in Jerusalem before his death and resurrection. But digging deeper, each set of Gospel passages has deeper meaning that follows Jesus’ and our own progress along his Way to Kingdom and Father. Here on day one, Palm Sunday, we find the call to see beyond ourselves, our egoic self, our agendas, desires, expectations, our programs for happiness and survival set in place early in our lives: all of which obscure the truth and reality of this moment, the only moment that exists, the moment of our visitation.

Why does Jesus repeatedly hammer home this concept to his followers in both word and deed and in different metaphors and imagery: sell all you have, lose your life, deny yourself, pick up your cross, the sign of Jonah? Because this first day, this first step along the Way, is the constricted gate that precedes the narrow Way to truth. Until the gate is negotiated, until we can see past ourselves and our obsessions and compulsions enough to be aware of this lived moment of visitation, no further progress is possible.

Every moment is Palm Sunday…Jesus is always riding into our lives with his radical invitation to see what is right before our eyes. Are we ready to see? We’ll only know for sure when we are ready to let go of every expectation and desire that blinds us to what really is–way, truth, life.

Matt 21:1-11; Mark 11:1-11; Luke 19:29-44; John 12:12-19; Zechariah 9:9-10; Psalm 118:24-26

We hope these readings and short comments help prepare you this week for Resurrection Day next Sunday. If you’d like to dig even further, here is a daily devotional for Holy Week with some really nice elements.

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Holy Tuesday

The Lamps of Holy Tuesday

Palm Sunday is about recognizing the time of our visitation–seeing God’s presence as it really is and not how we want it to be. Fig Monday is about not being deceived by the outward appearance of things, and Holy Tuesday is all about watchfulness and readiness.

The parable of the ten virgins and other parables about kings and servants point toward not knowing the time or day of the Lord’s return. In the case of the ten virgins–five of whom are prudent and keep oil in their lamps and five who are foolish and do not–the allusion is to the ancient Hebrew wedding customs in which after betrothal, the groom would return to his father’s house to prepare a room, a mansion, for his bride to come and live with him as part of his father’s estate.

The wait for the bride and her family could last up to two years, never knowing when the groom would return. But when he did, it was traditionally in the middle of the night. His groomsmen would blow shofar [ram’s horns] to tell of his coming, and the bridesmaids–all as young as 13 or 14 as would be the bride–would light lamps and run out to light his way to the bride’s home. The father of the bride would ceremonially turn his face as the groom came to steal his daughter out of the house and lift her up to carry her to her wedding and new home.

 

Living Now, Prepared for Then

Bride and bridesmaids must always be prepared and ready with their lamps, but at the same time, always living their lives as if each day were the last they may spend together as friends and family–because that very night may be the night of the groom’s return. Though today these parables are usually taken to be set in the context of the last days and judgment into heaven, Jews of Jesus’ day would have understood them to mean living here and now with both a breathless anticipation of new life at any moment and a heightened awareness of just how precious each relationship really is right herenow. This readiness is what it feels like to enter and live in Kingdom–living life immersed in continual relationship, but ready and watchful for the moment we are snatched away to a new life we can barely imagine.

The trick is to embrace both at the same time without compromising either: fully present to what is seen, fully aware of what is not–that’s what Kingdom is all about.

Matt 24:42-51Matt 25:1-30Mark 13:33-37Luke 21:34-36

We hope these readings and short comments help prepare you this week for Resurrection Day next Sunday. If you’d like to dig even further, here is a daily devotional for Holy Week with some really nice elements.

Stay Connected!

Don’t miss the latest news and updates from our faith community, designed to keep you inspired and motivated.

Each Other

A friend calls me to the hospital bed of her dying husband, and there in the room with her and him and his entire family, watching and being part of the dynamic and grief, I am hyper aware of the precious nature of all our relationships. A line from a Carl Sagan returns: that in all our searching, the only thing that makes the emptiness bearable is each other. When I first heard that line, I didn’t agree on theological grounds, but twenty years later, I’ve become convinced he was right. It has occurred to me that if God really is the unseen unity at the heart of all the diversity and separate form and function we see every day, then there really is only one relationship around which all our other relationships in life revolve. And all our relationships in life are really just different ways of looking at the one and only relationship that really exists. But does Jesus agree? Is he in different words saying the same thing and if we allow, how would that change everything about our everyday experience? Looking at the words of Jesus, James, and John, it certainly seems they are trying to help us see that the only way to experience the love of the Father in this life is through our love for each other.

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Stories from people who’ve experienced the effect of theeffect in their lives.

Everyone is recovering from something… Admitting this is the first step in spiritual life, because any unfinished business in our lives–trauma, unforgiveness, fear-based perceptions–fosters compulsive behavior and keeps us from connecting spiritually and emotionally.

Since we’re all recovering, we accept everyone right as they are—no expiration dates or deadlines. We don’t tell anyone what to believe or do. We present points of view that we hope will engage seekers in their own journey; help them unlearn limiting perceptions, beliefs, and compulsions; give opportunities to get involved in community, building the trust we all need to find real identity, meaning, and purpose. In other words, to engage the transforming Way of living life that Jesus called Kingdom…non-religiously understood from a first century Hebrew point of view.

 

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Embedded in the fun and laughter of each of our gatherings and events is the connection and accountability as well as the structure, discipline, and opportunity for service that authentic community is all about. We help create programs for physical support, emotional recovery, and spiritual formation that can meet any person’s needs. Such programs work at two levels: first to address a person’s physical and emotional stability—clinical, financial, relational,professional—anything that distracts from working on the second level: true spiritual formation centered around the contemplative way of life defined by an original Hebrew understanding of the message of Jesus.

Rather than telling people what to believe or think, we model and encourage engagement in a personal and communal spiritual journey that allows people to experience their own worthiness of connection and acceptance, to find the freedom from underlying fears that brings real meaning and purpose into focus.

 

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Seeing ourselves as a learning and recovery community that worships together, the focus isn’t on Sunday morning alone, but on every day of the week as we gather for worship, healing and support workshops, studies, 12 step meetings, counseling and mentoring sessions, referral services, and social events. We maintain a food pantry for those needing more support, a recovery worship gathering, and child care for those with little ones.

Our Sunday gathering starts at 10AM and our Recovery gathering on Tuesdays at 6:30PM. Both gatherings include worship with one of the best worship bands in the area. See our monthly calendar and our Facebook page to stay in touch with what is happening each week. You can also sign up on our elist for email enews updates.

 

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