Rev. Teresa 'Terri' Hord Owens, general minister and president of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), offers a sermon on becoming the church that Jesus has called us to be - fully committed to anti-racism. The Diciples of Christ are in full communion with The United Church of Canada.
Read MoreAward-winning author and preacher, Diana Butler Bass speaks with Rev. Jim Wallis about her latest book Freeing Jesus. Diana shares how her experience of Jesus has changed over the years and how the Christian that is she is today is much different than she was before.
Read MoreAsh Wednesday has traditionally been an important gathering in the Catholic church, and less so in the Protestant tradition. There is much to learn from its observance, for it is a thoughtful beginning to the Lenten season of repentance and contemplation.
Read MoreThe early community that followed Jesus was a community of practice. Jesus’ followers did not just sit around the campfire and listen to lectures on Christian theology. They listened to stories that taught them how to act toward one another, and what to do in the world.
Read MoreLent is a time of reflection. Here, to aid in your contemplation - a prayer, a theological video offering with Peter Rollins, two musical offerings, UCC Moderator Richard Bott’s Lenten message and a bumper sticker.
Read MoreSpirituals are uniquely American music, emerging as they do from the African American people who endured slavery. They were people who had their own native African spirituality taken from them, abruptly and violently, as though it were of no account. And then Christianity was forced upon them.
Read MoreAs people of the way we need to be able take into account many parts of an argument or situation, to have a voice that can hold two opposing ideas at once, without feeling the need to choose one against the other. It is a voice that is more interesting in nurturing than opposing, more interested in discovering than demanding, a voice that is more interested in serving, than oppressing. Jesus was such a voice. And it is a challenging one.
Read MoreBoth hope and the risk get summed up on Epiphany. The word means “manifestation,” or “appearance” or “revelatory moment.” Theologically speaking, epiphanies signal something new, but—at least for a lot of folk—something uncomfortable as well.
Read MoreWhen we look into the face of the other, truly look, we see them in all their vulnerability, in their unique beauty, in their richness of thought, their complexity. We see how easy it is to kill them in the many, many ways we can do this, and we see that they are asking that we do not.
Read MoreThe United Church of Canada holds many of tenets that are emerging in this new conversation on ‘what it means to be the church’. The conversations are important ones. Here below, Richard Rohn in a series of three audio talks - 45 minutes each - talks about just what the whole conversation is all about.
Read MoreRichard Rohr, speaking about his work as director and creator of the Centre for Contemplation and Action, talks about his thoughts on The Emerging, or Emergent Church. You will also find in the listening section, a series of three lectures on this subject recorded in early 2021.
Read MoreUnderstanding the concepts in the Emerging church is important for any churches in the 21st century who desires to provide a spiritual place of rest, reflection and intelligent theology for their local neighbourhood. Here Peter Rollins, Irish writher, Christian theologian and philosopher, talks about the Emergent Church in an interview.
Read MoreWe can never know the full essence of God, which is why throughout sacred scriptures and all other intelligent writings concerning the divine, similes and metaphors are used to describe God. To worship the metaphors is idolatry. To absorb them, imagine them, lean into them, is divine.
Read MoreHe weeps, the Centurion, for all he could not see, and when, too late, he realized his error. I weep too, for these many years later, my blindness is just as brutal. I like he am covered in the froth and fleck of the blood of the forgotten and maligned, those left to die alone, affliction branding their spirit with the hot poker of chance . . .
Read MoreEveryone loves the Sunday morning party of Easter – what’s not to love about waking up to a day that celebrates spring and new beginnings, with its playful motif of bunnies and Easter egg hunts, awash in shades of buttery yellow and palest mauve and the hope of some kind of confection before the day is through?
Ah, but the two days that proceed the Easter celebration are another matter.
Pete Enns writes in his blog a simple explanation about the ‘history’ of the Bible and how and when it was written. It is a kind of overview understanding, which may help, if this is a new idea to you. Peter Enns has written numerous books, including The Bible Tells Me So, The Sin of Certainty, and How the Bible Actually Works.
Read MoreAn awakening is holy geography. Awakenings imply new awareness, inner transformation, a change in heart and mind, and a reordering of priorities, commitments and behaviours. . . .Awakenings take work, as human beings respond to the promptings of God’s Spirit in the world.
Read MoreGod, as divine, is not a creature, not a created thing. God is not bound by time, not confined by space. God is not part of the continuum of human history as we are. We are not God, but we are of, and in God, enveloped by God, infused with God, our lives embraced, warmed by God.
Kenosis, imagined as holy intimacy, is the fruitful medium in which this rebirth may begin. In response to the gracious invitation of God it provides a hospitable space in order that our truest life may unfold, the life imagined, engineered, and created by divine will, an adventure we are urged to embrace.
Read MoreTrue hope does not move forward in time. Authentic hope stands outside of time, moving between the two parallels of eternity and history. This is brought about only in one way and that is through the compassionate movement of ourselves towards other – Other being God, and other being one another. Paradoxically, as we move towards the other, there is an embracing of our own humanity and a binding to the larger cosmos of which Other/God simply is.
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