Douglass Blvd Christian Church

an open and affirming community of faith

n open and affirming community where faith is questioned and formed, as relationships are made and upheld. 

Living What We Say We Believe (Matthew 23:1-12)

As the author of 1 John so eloquently points out, “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen cannot love God whom they have not seen” (4:20).

In other words, the very way we demonstrate love for God is by loving our neighbor. We reveal our beliefs as genuine not just by proclaiming them publicly, or by believing them really, really deeply in our own heart, but by pursuing a world in which all those whom God loves can flourish in the justice and peace God intends for everyone.

And to put an even finer point on it, loving those whom God loves, means more than feeling properly disposed toward them. Loving the neighbor means having our hands dirtied, our knees callused, and our backs bent in trying to see that everyone has enough to eat, a place to sleep, adequate healthcare, a world in which to be safe as they pursue their projects and goals with the ones whom they love.


Subscribe to us on iTunes!

Sermon Text

Q & A Informational Session on Transgender Issues This Sunday

Ever feel completely confused about gender identity? Wondering what your transgender friends might be going through? Want to know more on how to be an ally? Want to know what words like: “Gender queer”, “Non Binary”, “Non gendered” “Cisgender”, “Androgynous”, and other words like that mean? Curious as to why transgender people need a day of remembrance? Come find out after worship Sunday Nov. 2nd at Douglass Blvd. Christian Church. We will be having an open forum for exploring the complexities associated with the often misunderstood issues of gender expression. Dawn Wilson, and Debbie Richards will be hosting the forum in Derek's Sunday School classroom. Come and learn more!

Tim Cook Speaks Up

A link to Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm as surprised as you are.

I don’t consider myself an activist, but I realize how much I’ve benefited from the sacrifice of others. So if hearing that the CEO of Apple is gay can help someone struggling to come to terms with who he or she is, or bring comfort to anyone who feels alone, or inspire people to insist on their equality, then it’s worth the trade-off with my own privacy.

Pretty neat. But he's still a Duke fan. Baby steps.

Submit names of loved ones for All Saints Day

Sunday, November 2 is All Saints Day. Traditionally, we celebrate the lives of members of our own congregation who have passed on. But this year, we're taking a wider approach. We invite you to submit names of any friends or loved ones who have passed on whom you would like included in the service.

If you have someone you would like to include, please submit his or her name to Jennifer at jenavand@gmail.com no later than Thursday, October 30th.

The Meaning of Love (Matthew 22:34-46)

Sometimes love demands that we not keep quiet to preserve the peace. If something seems to undermine the prospects for our neighbors to live in the shadow of God's peace and justice, the loving thing to do is to speak the truth about it.

Love, as counter-intuitive as it might sound, walks hand in hand with truth, refusing to be silent when the truth is imperiled. Sometimes love looks angry—because true love envisions the world as God intended it, and refuses to accept less.


Subscribe to us on iTunes!

Sermon Text

Donate your unwanted shoes to Water Step

DBCC is hosting a shoe drive. Any shoes. They can be brand new. They can be worn thin. Just bring em' in. The shoes will go to Water Step, a non-profit based in Louisville helping make clean water available all over the world.

Logo-with-Tag-195x79.png

We are a nonprofit that provides safe water to communities in developing countries.

We train people in developing countries how to use safe water solutions like water purification, health education, and well repair, empowering communities to take care of their own water needs for years. We believe that the best solutions to water problems are rooted in simple tools and effective training.

There is a box located outside the church office. Bring as many as you can. We can always get more boxes.

Be sure to check them out.

Also: their website is nice. You have no excuses.

The Cost of Service (Matthew 22:15-22)

People have long brought the gifts of their lives to the church, and the church—for a variety of reasons—has often said, 'No. That’s ok. You keep it.'

Those who’ve stood outside with their noses pressed against the window, just trying to get a glimpse. They’ve come to the church on countless occasions. And how often have they been turned away, or made to feel as though the gifts they bring are inferior—not up to our high standards, not worthy to be in the presence of the Holy God?


Subscribe to us on iTunes!

Sermon Text

Reflections on Mexico

The Fellowship has returned. Last Saturday afternoon around 3PM, our comrades touched down in Louisville, a trail of dust and empty coffee cups swirling in their wake.

Sundays following the group's return is traditionally reserved for the reflections from those in the group who wish to share.


Subscribe to us on iTunes!

What If Small Is the New Big?

By Derek Penwell

Bookstores and Our Relationship to “Bigness”

As a kid growing up, almost all of the bookstores I knew about were found in malls—B. Dalton and Walden Books. You could expect to find one (sometimes two if the mall were big enough) in almost every mall. These bookstores didn’t carry an extensive inventory—mostly best sellers, coffee table books, children’s books, magazines, and so on. The experience was about buying—browse if you must, but find what you want, buy it, then get back to the rest of your business at the mall. They had no chairs, no coffee. It was a place to stop in and take a break from doing something else. The strategy wasn’t about great selection; it was about ubiquity: “We’re everywhere, and if we don’t have it, we can order it.”

As the 1990s unfolded, however, the ubiquity of mall bookstores began to decline. People’s relationship to books and the stores that sold them began to change with the increasing popularity of a couple of new chains, Borders and Barnes & Noble, and their imitators. These stores carried much more substantial inventory, and they appealed to people’s book buying experience. These new bookstores made an attempt to appear like a cross between a retail library and a coffee shop—come in, browse, relax, read a little, and have a latte. They provided comfortable chairs that they actually seemed to want you to sit down in, new and interesting music softly played, grad students with tattoos and multiple piercings, and a crap ton of books that allowed you to discover new authors and subjects you didn’t know about. The strategy was about great selection and an inviting experience—”We’ve got stuff you didn’t even know you wanted, which you get to explore at your leisure.”

But as the Internet realized popularity, a new kind of book buying experience emerged—online shopping, led principally by Amazon. Amazon and the other online bookstores boasted a nearly exhaustive inventory that could be accessed from the comfort of your own living room. What they gave up in ambience, they made up for in convenience. Not only could you order books and have them shipped straight to your door, you could order just about anything else—from TVs to hernia belts. The strategy centered on almost unlimited selection available with unbelievable convenience—”We’ve got just about everything, and you don’t even have to put down your Mountain Dew to get it.”

Things really started to change, however, with the advent of e-books. Amazon introduced digital books that gave people the convenience of online ordering coupled with instant online delivery. There was almost no waiting at all. You could have a new book in seconds, no matter where you were.

Still, after the big chain bookstores almost crushed them, and after Amazon and e-books almost crushed the big chain bookstores, some local independent bookstores have managed not only to survive, but to thrive. How do they do it?

Here’s where a really good writer might offer the winning strategy, distilled to its essence: The thing that makes some small independent bookstores succeed in the land of the giants is __________.

But if there is a strategy, distilled to its essence, I don’t know what it is. Of course, I have some ideas—an emphasis on niche marketing, an appeal to customer service, a local community atmosphere. I imagine all those things, and probably some others, have contributed to the success of certain small independent bookstores.

What I want to focus on is the broader reality of bigness. For years the roadmap to success appeared to wend its way through Mega-ville. Go big or go home, right? Walmart. Microsoft. McDonalds. Google. The New York Yankees. Hollywood blockbusters. Page views. Empire.

In fact, so closely did success seem to correlate with bigness that—at least informally, if not explicitly—that’s gradually how success came to be defined. Biggest is best.

When Big Became Small

But the narrative of bigness has bumped up against some difficult realities. For one thing, a market that is increasingly fragmented by the vagaries of demographic diversity—race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender expression … not to mention, the perennial issue of the range of individual taste—is difficult to dominate in a general way. When a culture is largely homogenous, generating broad appeal is much easier—you only need to get a couple of things right to saturate the market. When the market is fragmented, however, broad appeals are almost impossible, since whatever you offer will almost certainly exclude wide swaths of the population.

For another thing, with the increasing presence of the Internet, and it’s almost endless platforms for publishing and marketing, the signal to noise ratio is as high as it’s ever been. So, while it’s easier now than ever to get your message out, your message is one among millions. Being heard is both easier and more difficult, in that your message is easier to broadcast to a potential audience, but because there are so many voices, it can be more difficult to have your message actually heard. Time was you could craft a message, publicize it through traditional media, and have a reasonable chance of having it being heard by your intended audience. If you were quick enough, properly resourced, and sufficiently smart, you might run the table. Boom! Big. Nowadays, however, mass appeals untailored to highly specific audiences have difficulty making connections.

No question but that bigness still exists. And where it does, it’s really big … huge, in fact. (Think Apple, Walmart, Google, Comcast, Verizon, American Airlines). But it’s becoming rarer and rarer.

Small and local are also thriving (Think Farmers Markets, CSAs, Record Stores, Community Ministries). What we have less and less of is moderately big (Think Montgomery Ward, Circuit City, Newsweek, Borders, My Space). A large swath in the middle—including much that would traditionally have been called large—finds itself being squeezed on both ends.

So, maybe we need to rethink the endgame. Maybe our understanding of success needs recalibration.

* What if scrambling to be a monopoly is a waste of time?

* What if “mega” scares off more people than it attracts?

* What if, as Seth Godin has suggested, small is the new big?


I want to suggest that these are questions denominations and congregations should be considering just now.

When Words Aren't Enough (Matthew 21:23-32)

People will know they’re welcome in God’s house—not just because we tell them (as important as that is)—but because we show them . . . we keep throwing open the doors and inviting people to come in. We keep working on behalf of those who’ve been turned away by the very people who are supposed to be tending the vineyard—but who’ve proven themselves inadequate to the task by their continued failure to actually pull the weeds and dress the vines. Sometimes words aren’t enough, in large part, because those words have to bear at least a passing resemblance to the lives we live.


Subscribe to us on iTunes!

Sermon Text

Who Said Anything about Deserving? (Matthew 20:1-16)

Spending our lives identifying our value by any other measure is not only pointless, it’s a distraction, verging on sinful—because we’re ceaselessly grasping for something we don’t have, thinking that possessing it will finally make our lives worthwhile, when God has already said our lives are valuable, based on nothing more than the love God used in creating them.


Subscribe to us on iTunes!

Sermon Text

Blood Drive Tomorrow!

If you have blood in your body, and would like to donate it to someone else who needs it, you can do that here tomorrow.

The Red Cross will hold a blood drive at DBCC in the Family Life Center on Saturday, September 20th from 9:30 - 3:00. To schedule an appointment please call 1-800-RED CROSS. They also except walk-ins. Currently there is an urgent need for donations.

This is pretty important. We hope to see you around!

Mexican Dinner & Dessert Auction next week!

In the final stretch of our fundraising efforts for our group's annual trip to Casa Hogar de San Juan, we're having a Mexican Dinner on Sunday, Sept. 21, as well as a Dessert Auction immediately following.

These dessert auctions are thinly veiled excuses for some of our members to roll up their collective sleeves and do some world class baking, so it's likely something you won't want to miss.

We'd love for you to join us for worship on Sunday morning, but if you aren't able, you're more than welcome to hang out with us for the dinner at around 12:30pm.

Bring your stomachs empty and your checkbooks open!

If you're interested in contributing a dish, call or email the office this week to ask Jennifer what to bring.