Tag: inclusiveness
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Feb. 8 Gathering: Enslaved by Freedom?
As Americans, we enjoy the idea that we have broad guarantees to wide-ranging personal freedoms. In fact, there’s little we can imagine doing that we can’t do. Our individual rights are deeply ingrained in our psyches and our culture. But is it possible that our very freedoms are actually enslaving us? Is a social ethic…
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How we do what we do when we do what we do
There are so many different styles and elements to worship today that it’s hard to keep track. Trends rise and fall, and with them, often tensions. So what’s the difference? What is it about all the different ways we “do” worship that causes such anxiety? What’s the point in it all? Join us tonight as…
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January 11 Gathering: Religion vs. Jesus
A generation ago, only a very few people might have suggested that there might be a difference between being a follower of the Christian religion and being a follower of Jesus himself. But today, it’s one of the central questions of our faith, and perhaps one of the most divisive. It’s been two years since spoken word…
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December 14 Gathering: Christmas Love Feast
God loves you, and there’s nothing you can do about it. The “Love Feast,” or Agape Feast, is a practice that traces all the way back to the early church when believers would gather around a common table for a meal, fellowship, and conversation before hearing God’s word proclaimed and celebrating the Eucharist. A millennium…
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Nov 23 Gathering — Sex and the Bible: Guest Speaker Chett Pritchett
Have you ever wondered what the Bible says about sex? (Or maybe doesn’t say about sex?) Join Chett Pritchett, executive director of the Methodist Federation for Social Action, as he helps us explore assumptions about sex and sexuality found in Scripture (or not found in Scripture) and provides a different way of exploring bible…
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Nov. 9 Gathering: Christians and Culture Wars
We get angry when people wish us “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” We loudly bemoan the absence of prayer in public schools. We fight against the removal of Christian symbols from the public square. We flock to any movie with a “Christian” theme or title, regardless of how good (or bad) the actual film…
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Oct. 26 Gathering: “Unequally Yoked?” How should Christian communities engage other faith traditions?
“Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness?” 1 Corinthians 6:14 In our pluralistic culture, more religious and non-religious traditions exist within the same space than perhaps any time in modern history. Interestingly, even as many Christian communities bemoan this diversity of belief systems and worldviews,…
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Sept. 14 Gathering — When Community and Grace Collide
What happens when we embrace uncertainty for is healing power, and reckless love becomes a way of life?
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August 17 Gathering: Sacred vs. Secular — Two worlds in tension or one world in grace?
We tend to compartmentalize our lives in a number of different ways. Over the past century or so, Christianity seems to have become particularly obsessed with sorting out the sacred from the secular. In our effort to be “in the world but not of the world,” we have learned to isolate spiritual practices and personal…
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August 3 Gathering: Science & Faith: Mutually exclusive or inclusively mutual?
Does faith in the Bible necessarily mean we must reject the findings of science? Is the Bible meant to be an accurate description of the history of earth and humanity? Do we have to abandon our faith to embrace scientific evidence of origins? Or, is there a place where faith and science intersect, and reveal…