Position Statement: A Call By Communities of Faith to Welcome Syrian Refugees

By Derek Penwell

On December 8th, 2015 over 60 Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish, Hindu, and Christian faith leaders from across the Louisville Metro area gathered together at Kentucky Refugee Ministries for a press conference. Clare Rutz and I gathered with them to proclaim our support for the welcome of Syrian refugees.

We issued a Position Statement, which over 175 faith leaders have now signed (see below). The joining together of so many voices concerned to welcome the stranger and protect the most vulnerable is an exciting thing for our church and our city.

LOUISVILLE (Dec. 2, 2015)  Faith leaders from across the Metro Louisville Community, whose religious traditions contain explicit teachings about welcoming the stranger, and who collectively have decades of positive experience with the refugee community, wish to express our solidarity and pledge our support for those fleeing war and brutality—particularly, those seeking to escape the conflict in Syria. That being the case, we recognize as a moral imperative the continued need to welcome refugees. And though we acknowledge the anxiety present in our culture, as people of faith we resolve not to live in fear. 

Therefore, we announce our intention to continue raising awareness of the plight of Syrian refugees by the means available to us not as potential threats to be feared, but as sisters and brothers deserving of our compassion and protection.  

We also announce our intention to encourage our separate faith communities to work together to provide the financial and material support necessary to the local agencies whose priority of care extends to the refugee community.

In addition, we call upon our neighbors and fellow citizens to join us in demonstrating compassion and hospitality to refugees, and upon our civic leaders to support such demonstrations of compassion and hospitality.

Without question, much of what binds us together as representatives of various religious communities is our shared commitment to advocating on behalf of those who are most vulnerable. Such a commitment expresses not only the most profound aspects of our faith traditions, but also our conviction that faith itself can bind us together in our common humanity, motivating us to pursue justice and peace for all God’s children.

A college parent (and Liberty alum) responds to Jerry Falwell Jr.’s comments on Muslims and guns - Think Christian

An interesting response Jerry Falwell Jr.'s stance on students, guns, and Islam.

Falwell, who is in a position to catechize young men and women on what the Bible says about life, death, love, hate and self-defense, instead adopted a posture best described as juvenile. Instead of taking the opportunity to lead young people through an exchange of ideas, he seemed to become one of them. The louder the students cheered, the more bravado Falwell displayed.

As a Christian, I expect more from an institution committed to following the Christ of the Bible. As a parent of college students, I would demand it.

Read the full article (via Rachel Held Evans)

The Disruption of Advent (Luke 3:1-6)

El Profeta by Pablo Gargallo

The Jesus who comes to us in Advent expects the mountains of oppression to be made low, and the valleys of depression to be filled—not just in some personal interior space where we harbor envy and bitterness and hatred, but also in the public space where 92 people die everyday from gun violence, where Syrian refugees running for their lives are met with crossed arms and closed hearts, where poor people stay up at night worrying whether the healthcare that’s saving their child’s life will be taken away by a bureaucrat in some leather covered seat of power, where young African American men die at the hands of those in control just because they happen not to have been born white.

---

Subscribe to us on iTunes!

Sermon text: web | doc

The Days Are Surely Coming (Jeremiah 33:14-16)

We live in ordinary time, seeing only ordinary days, but days filled with terror and avarice and hatred and despair nevertheless, days that threaten to go on and on. All we can see is the way things are presently ordered. We know how power is arranged in this world. It’s amazing what you can get used to. But the days are surely coming, says the Lord. The way the world is now is not how it must be; it’s not how it will always be.

It's Advent, that time when we peer into the distance for the one who will execute justice and righteousness in the land, who will redeem God’s children from ordinary days. We steel ourselves for the call to live as just and righteous right now, in anticipation of that day.

---

Subscribe to us on iTunes!

Sermon text: web | doc

Rally for justice with Mayor Fischer

In lieu of Beer with Jesus and Friends tonight, we're going to be going downtown to stand with Mayor Fischer and other Louisvillians in a rally of solidarity.

Mayor Greg Fischer is calling on residents to join a community rally Tuesday to show Louisville's solidarity with victims of recent terrorist attacks while welcoming immigrants fleeing those same extremist groups.

The mayor is lending his voice to the event in the wake of Congress' bipartisan vote last week to halt the resettlement of refugees from Syria and Iraq to the U.S. amid growing security concerns about the immigration vetting process.

This is really important.

6 p.m. Jefferson Square Park. We'll see you there.

The Question Isn't "Where?" but "What?" (John 18-33-37)

But Jesus doesn’t deal with others first as threats to be feared; he embraces them as sisters and brothers created and loved by God, and therefore, deserving of our profoundest attempts at love and welcome.

So, when Jesus says his 'kingdom is not from this world,' he ain’t kidding. The kind of realm over which Jesus reigns appears unintelligible to a world that believes threats are to be eliminated (by violence if necessary). Any kingdom that takes as its guiding principle the need to 'love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you' is bound to appear alien to our current world.

---

Subscribe to us on iTunes!

Sermon text: web | doc

How you can help refugees

A refugee crisis is defined by helplessness. Helplessness of those fleeing their homes, families, and lives; helplessness of aid workers to feed and shelter them; helplessness of governments to stop the violence; helplessness of those living in safe lands to provide those in crisis safe passage and a new home; it lingers like a fog.

Our helplessness as people of faith can cause us to lash out, decrying those who speak and act from fear rather than compassion. But we are not entirely without agency, and there are productive ways to help. We can reroute that energy into programs dedicated to helping refugees and immigrants find food, shelter, and the tools they need to rebuild their lives here in Kentucky.

Americana Community Center

Americana Community Center is a non-profit organization which provides a spectrum of services for the many diverse residents of Louisville Metro. These services enable people to discover and utilize resources to build strong families, create a safe, supportive community and realize their individual potential.

• Donate Funds
• Alternative contributions

If you have anything else you'd like to offer, you can contact Clare Rutz for more info.

Kentucky Refugee Ministries

Kentucky Refugee Ministries, Inc. (KRM), a non-profit organization, is dedicated to providing resettlement services to refugees through faith- and agency-based co-sponsorship in order to promote self-sufficiency and successful integration into our community. KRM is committed to offering access to community resources and opportunities and to promoting awareness of diversity for the benefit of the whole community.

• Donate Funds
• Donate Items

Catholic Charities: Migration & Refugee Services

The mission of Migration & Refugee Services (MRS) is to provide refugees with the support and assistance they need in order to become self-sufficient. The role of Migration & Refugee Services is to involve, organize, and bring together the agency, church, and community resources necessary for successful resettlement.

• Donate to Catholic Charities

Or, of course, you can give to our general fund here at DBCC, which has been used to support many organizations seeking justice for the disenfranchised.

The best way to help those in need is to support the people and organizations who are committed to doing so. Let's share our wealth and help them make a difference.

If anyone has organizations or people to add to this list, please email Geoff, who will work to get them up quickly.

Rumor Has It (Mark 13:1-8)

Brian Cubbage in the pulpit today. Always excellent.

Jesus reminds us in today’s text that we are not the walls we build. We are not the edifices we inhabit. There is life after stone tumbles upon stone. The birth pangs he identifies are not, or not just, for a new order of things, yet another set of walls, yet another house in which we try to trap God and, in the end, only trap ourselves. The birth pangs are ours: for the new selves that God seeks to birth in us; for the new creations God seeks to make of us.

---

Subscribe to us on iTunes!

Sermon text: web | doc

More Than All Those (Mark 12:38-44)

What if the point Jesus is making isn’t: Be more like the widow?

What if the point he’s making is: Don’t prop up systems that hungrily seek the last pennies of those who can afford it least?

Apologies for missing the recording of the scripture, which is sort of important. You can read it here.

---

Subscribe to us on iTunes!

Sermon text: web | doc

A Letter to My Youngest upon Wandering through a Graveyard

By Derek Penwell

Dear Dominic,

I want to tell you about a graveyard I wandered through today. It was rainy and chilly, which seems appropriate if you're going to wander through a place where dead people make their home.

A dry-stone wall rings this patch of land. The stones, which have soft moss colonizing an inhospitable world, are stacked in a way that first appears haphazard, but in reality has its own sense of order and purpose. I suspect that each of those stones has a story to tell about the world that formed them and the hands that laid them.

I'd like you to see what I see and hear what I hear as I wander. The train offers up a plaintive sigh in the distance, while birds perched on a broken branch occasionally provide their own commentary on the landscape we behold.

As you walk down the rows, between the gravestones, you can smell the musky scent of the creek that lies just beyond the far wall. You may also notice that a great deal of time seems telescoped into a very small space, neighbors from different centuries tend their sad homes side by side in this humble stretch of ground.

You may also notice that old people and young people reside next to one another, making their ages unimportant in ways apparently impossible for those of us who tread new paths on top of these old dwellings. But the gravestones, rather than a barrier, form a community whose requirements for membership do not extend to such unspeakably insignificant things as age (or race, or gender, or class, or religion, or sexual orientation, for that matter).

The whisper of the creek carries the muted voices of this particular neighborhood, muted voices anxious to tell a thousand different stories–stories that even the wise stones are not articulate enough to tell.

You cannot quite make out the details of the stories in the language the creek speaks, but you can imagine the tales the whisper wants to tell. And as the creek continues to unfold its watery narrative, you may begin to notice that the stories themselves are alive, that each piece of limestone that stands in the water's way, rather than prevent them, allows the stories to be told again and again–an eternal record of the community gathered.

You may sense the spirit of those buried joining together, an expectant company of those departed but still strangely present, hoping desperately for someone to stop and listen to lives that we often think have slipped quietly into the darkness, but lives that continue to speak nevertheless–even though it's true that most times the only ones there to hear already abide in this sacred community, among the broken stones that surround them and the rippling stream that gives voice to their longing.

I want you to wander through this graveyard with me, my son, so that you may recognize the muted voices of our own lives, which will one day also join this commonwealth and be borne upon the song of the waters. A strange joy to be welcomed home.

Love,

Dad

Where God Is (Revelation 21:1-6)

Our passage this morning about the new Jerusalem doesn't say that God's home is among mortals . . . except for, you know, the Muslims, or the atheists, or the Republicans (or Democrats, depending on your politics). God doesn't say, 'This place would be just perfect if we could get rid of the people who live on the other side of town, if we could just check papers for the undocumented, or the hoodlums, or the St. Louis Cardinals.' God says, 'Ok, so it's a fixer-upper. I'll take it. I'm going to do a little renovation anyway, but the neighborhood is just exactly my kind of people.'

---

Subscribe to us on iTunes!

Sermon text: web | doc

2015 Halloween Party

We had a great time at the Halloween party Saturday night! It was wonderful to have the women and children from Freedom House with us. Thanks to everyone who participated, and everyone who helped. Most of all, thanks goes to Jennifer Vandiver for organizing everything.

What Do You Want Me to Do for You? (Mark 10:46-52)

So when Jesus asks, 'What do you want me to do for you?' we believe we know how to respond. 'This or that,' we think, is what will enable us better to follow Jesus 'on the way.' A little tuck here, a pinch off there, and we’ll be good as new. We don’t need much. Already in pretty good shape.

But what if Jesus’ vision of what we need is different? What if Jesus sees a completely different road from the one we’ve been trained to expect? What if following Jesus is being given eyes to see that what formerly looked like failure is precisely the path down which we’ve been called?

---

Subscribe to us on iTunes!

Sermon text: web | doc

In Your Glory (Mark 10:35-45)

Popular Christianity promises a Jesus who only wants to be your pal, a Jesus who doesn’t want you to be inconvenienced, a Jesus whose real concern is that all your biases are continually reconfirmed for you. A Jesus who knows what true glory looks like. And, let me tell you, that would be a whole lot easier on me.

But unfortunately, I’m not good enough at this to give you that Jesus. Instead, I’m so incompetent at my job that all I can manage to figure out how to give you is a Jesus who seeks out the small, the irrelevant, and the marginal. I’m only skilled enough to show up on Sunday mornings with a Jesus who thinks glory looks like losing, sacrificing, and dying. I hope you’ll forgive me my vocational inadequacies.

---

Subscribe to us on iTunes!

Sermon text: web | doc

More than Love in Dreams (Mark 10:17-31)

Derek Penwell and his son, Dom. 

It occurs to me that what Jesus is suggesting here is that—far from being that which frees us from the worries and constraints of life—clinging to things, the accumulation of stuff is that which binds us . . . enslaving us, possessing us, mocking us, killing us. Far from liberating us from the cares and worries of the world, the accumulation of stuff ensnares us, adding link by link to the chain that shackles us to ourselves.

All that stuff, at some indeterminate point, switches places with us in the saddle, and starts riding us.

---

Subscribe to us on iTunes!

Sermon text: web | doc

What if I'm the Only Expert Available . . . and I'm Not an Expe

By Derek Penwell

I was on my way to pick up my two older kids from high school when my wife called to tell me she had a flat tire. She was stuck only a couple of miles away, so I said I’d pick the kids up and come over to help change the tire right away.

When we got there, I went through the pain-in-the-neck stuff associated with replacing a flat tire with a spare. As my wife and I were working, it occurred to me almost immediately that my two teenagers displayed an appalling lack of curiosity about the practice of tire changing.

But my purpose in writing is not to complain about my kids. Frankly, I’m not sure how interested I’d be if I were them either. It was hot outside at the end of an already long day. You know how it goes. Why go looking for extra work if you don’t have to?

Afterward, though, I thought, What if my kids had a flat tire and their mother and I weren’t around? Then, of course, I felt guilty about not helping give them more life skills when I had the chance.

Leaving aside my own inadequacies as a parent, their lack of curiosity makes a certain amount of sense, if you take into account the fact that our culture has become so specialized that we’re conditioned to expect there must be an expert to call on whenever we run into problems. Even the proliferation of DIY shows is a subtle reminder to most of us that we do a whole lot more watching of DIY shows than actually DIY-ing.

Unfortunately, our culture’s inexorable march toward ever greater efficiency through specialization means we have been lulled into thinking that most problems require an expert. And often, we’re content to wait until the expert shows up before doing anything.

But, as I suspect we all know, there are times when no expert is available, while there are things we could actually do ourselves. What do we do when we’re in a situation where there are no experts to call? It happens.

Perhaps better put: What if I’m the only expert available … and I’m no expert?

That seems on its face like a stupid question. If I’m not an expert, I’m not an expert—no matter how nice it would be if I were.

Ok. Let’s change the question then. What if the situation I’m in doesn’t require an expert, but merely someone willing to brave the fear of failure to try something they’re not expert at?

Because, let’s face it, most of the problems we encounter don’t require an auto mechanic, or a brain surgeon, or an attorney. We’re much more capable than we give ourselves credit for.

[Disclaimer: There are problems that require expert attention. Regardless of the movies, you’re probably not going to be able to land that 747 manually after the pilot has been rendered unconscious and the radio useless, using only your native intelligence and plucky can-do spirit.]

With what seems like the constant drum beat announcing the inevitable demise of institutional Christianity, the church often finds itself in the same boat, looking for an expert to help us fix what we’re convinced is fixable. But the enduring belief that what’s wrong with us is fixable by the right expert has two problematic assumptions that keep us mired in anxiety and brokenness.

First, not all problems are fixable—even if you lay all the experts end to end at the foot of them. Many factors that contribute to congregational decline, for instance, are beyond anyone’s control, let alone ability to fix. Population density. Traffic patterns. Demographic shifts. Geographic location. Quit punishing yourself for things you can’t control.

Second, often the “experts” are unavailable to you. They’re big and important, and, if you don’t mind me saying so, you’re not. (Neither am I, so don’t email me.) What if you’re stuck, having to change your own dang tire?

See where I’m going with this? Most of the time, what we need isn’t so much an expert as a group of people convinced that the challenges we face aren’t insurmountable, if we’ll risk failing and just get in there and do it. Often what congregations need has less to do with some mysterious cache of technical knowledge available only to experts than with cultivating a group of people who believe we already possess the fundaments that will allow us to face the challenge before us.

Waiting for an expert to fix your problem may be what you have to do. But more often than not, waiting for an expert to fix your problem is only justification for not trying because you don’t think you can, or because you’re afraid you’ll fail.

But for those who follow an unemployed revolutionary executed by the state, failure should be something we’re not only used to, but embrace.

Is It Lawful? (Mark 10: 2-16)

The easy thing, the seemingly natural thing is to secure the advantages of a world built with people like me in mind. But if we're concerned about participating in the world announced by the unfolding reign of God, the question we ought to be asking should never be: 'Is it lawful for me to disregard people who don't have the same advantages as me?' As followers of Jesus, the questions we must ask are: 'To what extent am I helping to build a community that welcomes the vulnerable and provides healing to the brokenhearted? How do I help to transform a world built for people like me into a place that thinks first of the powerless and those on the outside? How do I stand with Jesus against a world that too often tramples the best interests of women and the needs of children, that regularly ignores the plight of the hungry, the homeless, the addicted, the stranger, and the outcast?

---

Subscribe to us on iTunes!

Sermon Text: web | doc

Cracking Skulls for Jesus (Mark 9:38-50)

Derek Penwell and his son, Dominic. 

Don’t you see? I want everybody on the inside. As far as I’m concerned, there is no outside.

There probably will be, of course, since there are always folks who don’t want to be at a party if they know those people are going to be there. But just remember this: Hell is being determined to stand by the valet station outside of the greatest party in the world, while the host keeps poking a head out, pleading with you ceaselessly to come inside and have a drink. It’s an open bar, and the house is paying the tab.

---

Subscribe to us on iTunes!

Sermon Text: web

Remembering Diana Garland

We're saddened today with news of the passing of a wonderful human.

Rev. Diana Garland, founding Dean of Baylor University's School of Social Work, and friend to Douglass Blvd Christian Church passed away yesterday, ending her battle with cancer.

Her impact was significant, and we honor her life by continuing to strive to love those whom God loves.

She spoke here a few years ago. It was thoughtful and profound. It's definitely worth another listen.

---

The Urgent Hope of Ta-Nehisi Coates

. . . Coates’ cynicism is not simply cynicism for cynicism’s sake. The “hopelessness” identified by Anyabwile affects something in our minds and hearts, if we allow it.

What should this hopelessness inspire in Coates’ audience, particularly those of us who identify as Christians?

In a word, urgency.

Sojounrers

Great commentary on encountering Coates from the perspective of a people of faith. Basically, if you aren't reading Ta Nehisi Coates regarding people of color in the U.S., you should be reading Ta Nehisi Coates regarding people of color in the U.S.

Best thing about #BetweenTheWorldAndMe is watching Christians engage the work. Serious learning experience for me. https://t.co/Hze7mPVM8P

— Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) September 21, 2015