an open and affirming community of faith
n open and affirming community where faith is questioned and formed, as relationships are made and upheld.
“I love that this word comes from some guy who got kicked out of Chicago for being too much of a rock star. Can’t we see? Can’t we hear? The Gospel does not belong to the Church. It never did. It belongs to the world, to any and all who lift up their eyes, their hearts. Dave is a present day Magi.
”
This is just a taste of the awesomeness of Tripp Hudgins, otherwise known as Anglobaptist. This is from a sermon he wrote, which is linked above.
Christian Piatt, Director of Church Growth and Development at First Christian Church in Portland, OR, wrote a series of articles at the end of last year spelling out the biggest “Christian Cliches” in more traditional churches.
The Emergent Church (our categorization as such notwithstanding) has a very different set, that could be just as damaging in our interactions with others of faith and otherwise if we fail to acknowledge them.[1]
It is important to note that in none of these suggestions is he denouncing anyone's intentions when using these turns of phrase. He simply offers one an awareness of the kind of unappealing front one can put up to those outside one's own social circles. ↩
Imagine if your New Year's wasn't about fixing or improving, but about deepening and transforming, about embracing the holy mystery at the heart of the world.
Rachel Held Evans, author of Evolving in Monkeytown and A Year of Biblical Womanhood, has begun a new blog series for 2013 called Sexuality and The Church. Throughout the course of the coming year she will be discussing what scriptures have to say about sexuality, as well as inviting the stories of folks who have dealt with these themes in their own lives.
This is one of the good ones, y'all.
If you'd like to find out more about her, click here to visit her website. You can also follow her on Twitter at @rachelheldevans.
Rev. Penwell brings in the new year with a bang!
Do you see? Our ability to hear this passage has as much to do with where we’re standing when the message comes as with what the message says. There are a lot of folks here today who are pretty well situated. But there are other folks in the world who are trying to figure out how they’re going to make it through the week without their whole world falling apart.
Heavy.
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Instead of complaining that God had hidden Himself, you will give Him thanks for not having revealed so much of Himself: and you will also give Him thanks for not having revealed Himself to haughty sages, unworthy to know so holy a God.
Two kinds of persons know Him: those who have a humble heart, and who love lowliness, whatever kind of intellect they may have, high or low; and those who have sufficient understanding to see the truth, whatever opposition they may have to it.
Pascal, Pensées
I find it fascinating that in a faith, as complex and ambiguous as Christianity can sometimes be, there are people who are altogether too eager to claim that they have cornered the market on God. Even more fascinating, and perhaps more disturbing, is the grand certainty with which people make claims about that God—who God hates, for instance. There are people who can give you five steps to a better prayer life, eight steps to reaching the lost, three principles for ethical living, and ten days to a deeper faith. There are people that are too quick with an answer to tough questions: Why did my child die? Why do I need to pray? Why has Jesus not returned? Why are there hungry people in a world that produces more food than it can consume?
For Christians, faith is paradoxical. On the one hand, we find simplicity: We were separated from God because of sin, and God took pains through Jesus to reconcile us to God’s self. On the other hand, the way that that faith plays itself out in everyday life is vastly more perplexing: How am I to live as a Christian in the context of a cut-throat business environment? Are my loyalties to God or the country of my birth? How do I cope with the feeling that God is somehow absent? How do I hold love those who are different from me?
For those of us for whom it is not always possible to affirm that faith just “gets sweeter and sweeter as the days go by,” for those of us who don’t have the handy theological slide-rule that much of popular Christianity seems always at the ready to produce, providing a snappy answer to the faith’s toughest questions, for those of us for whom faith is oftentimes more a “Jacobian” struggle with God than a tender walk “to the garden alone,” we must remember that our job as Christians is not to produce trite sayings in the face of difficult questions, but to struggle together in humility toward the truth.
Humility and truth—it is next to impossible to find the latter without the former. Perhaps the three most important words in theology are “I don’t know.” Faith is an arduous journey, often through deep darkness, which frequently provides more questions than answers; it is not a sunny jaunt that requires nothing more of us than to memorize a few trite sayings. Don’t be overly alarmed, though, because the journey upon which we embark has as its solace the fact that we do it together, hand in hand, with Jesus ever near.
Rev. Bojangles Blanchard (Highland Baptist Church), Rev. Sherry Roby (Open Door Community Fellowship), and Rev. Derek Penwell (DBCC) at a public rally this summer.
The ordination of our good friend Maurice 'Bojangles' Blanchard was featured in the Courier Journal's Unforgettable Images of 2012. Of course, we already know he's a pretty unforgettable guy.
Here is the article he was featured in this summer.
Congrats, Bojangles!
We hope you've all enjoyed the Holidays with your loved ones. After a wonderful break for Christmas and New Year, we are ready to get back to delivering content and keeping you updated on all of the things going on here at DBCC, our community, and our world.
Merry Christmas!
Happy New Year!
Welcome to the year of our Lord, Two Thousand Thirteen. We're excited to be spending it with you.
"There is more to him than a mere warm-up act for the main stage appearance of Jesus. Still, I fear he will be remembered by Christians as a predictor rather than a truth-teller for his own time and ours. We would all do well to take him more seriously as a prophet who warns us that when the messenger of the covenant shows up, he will have more in mind for us than a sweet baby and a tinsel-filled tree."
“This morning we hold our pain and we look for something better. And maybe, just maybe, we see glimpses of the joy that not even the greatest violence can totally destroy.”
In our attempts to process the horrors of this world, we are reminded that the Peace of Christ lives in these moments of pain, suffering, and confusion. It trancends them all to create a light in our darkness.
Rev. Penwell in response to Friday:
“Help us to find the words to put to our rage and despair, to find the words to comfort those who need be comforted, to find the words to speak justice and peace to a world bent on filling graves with the bodies of children, to find the words necessary not to meet this violence with more violence.”
And all of God's children said, "Amen."
Adam Ericksen hits the nail on the head. Great commentary on the lessons of violence embedded in the story of David and Goliath, as well as the misuse of scripture as a beacon for glorified violence.
Rev. Penwell examines what "the Wilderness" really is, and gives insight to John the Baptist during this Advent season.
The website Religious Tolerance.org has listed us in their timeline for significant steps toward marriage equality!
Click here to see what they said!
Looks like we're in good company.
Mark your calendars, folks.
On January 26th from 9:30 to 11:30am, Donald Taylor of Louisville Youth Group (LYG) is going to be visiting Douglass Blvd. to educate us and the Highlands Community on suicide prevention.
Think of it as a CPR/First Aid course. The idea is to empower ourselves with tools to save lives in our everyday. If you'd like to know more about the program, check out the Kentucky Suicide Prevention Group website.
Well, the title pretty much speaks for itself, now doesn't it?
Rev. Penwell, folks.