How do we mark our experience of time? Perhaps it is appropriate to say “Happy New Year” (and I do wish you the best in 2010) but the church calendar began this year on Nov, 29- the first Advent Sunday. Most of us experience time as regulated by the academic calendar and draining cycle of the 40 hr work-week. Ancient agricultural societies marked time by the seasons of harvest and planting. Both of those are cycles defined by what Abraham Heschel calls the realm of “space.” [Read more →]

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. [Read more →]

An invitation: This Friday, a few artists from our community will be doing this with Church of the Beloved. It’s a great place to find quality, local and affordable art for Christmas gifts. Come on out! [Read more →]

This is a late invitation to join us for what is left of the Advent season, the beginning of the church calendar. Advent is a season marked by longing, anticipation and hope as we live between the times- Christ has come and will come again. What does it mean to navigate the time that the theologians call “the already-not-yet”? What does it mean to be a people pregnant with a redemption that is not yet complete? It is no irony that the Advent season begins only days before Dec. 1st- World Aids Day- we have the experience of war, suffering, struggle and death. Yet death is not the end of the story- we wait and bear the hope of fools. We would be delighted to have you join us.

Phil Nellis, pastor.

by Phil Nellis

Have you ever reflected upon the meaning of the sequence of Holy Week? One can say that it is perhaps the story at the very center of the Christian’s life. And because we process life through the categories of narratives and sequences, it is within the story-structure of Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday that we can engage our own stories in such a way that the meaning we create around our experience of life is reflective of truth, goodness and beauty. (click here for more)

I found this story about how a church planter in Boise, ID encouraged generosity and charity in his community to be inspiring!  I met Dusty at a recent meeting of pastors and he is a kind, resouceful and creative individual.

Some highly creative and generous friends over at Church of the Beloved have recorded a fantastic set of worship music. It is encouraging to see this work that has come out of a faith community that is deeply in touch with their creativity. Thanks for sharing it with us!

Hey. This music is free for you.
Of course it was a lot of hard work and cost a lot of money for us to make this album. But for you, it’s free, because we have been shocked by God’s grace… that is to say, God’s gift; because we are discovering what our community’s gifts are; And because we want to give. - Ryan Marsh, Beloved Architect

“Can you really have thought that love and joy would always be at the mercy of frowns and sighs?  Did you not know they were stronger than their opposites?”  C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce.

For about two months I have gone back and forth about saying something as your pastor about the upcoming presidential election.  On one hand, I wanted to buck the movement that suggests that because the church has a tax-exempt status it ought to not comment on politics (whether the church has that status in a culture or not, it’s certainly not defined by that).  And on the other, I have found the political theater of the past eighteen months so sticky.  We are currently re-visioning what American politics actually consists of with the heightened level of destructive rhetoric we are seeing.

But I have decided at last to put some thoughts down.  Here they are. 

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Never prior in my life has enduring a difficult season felt more absurd than it does to me now.  Forces in my culture invite me, like siren songs, to reprieves that essentially amount to abdication and not to rest or delight.  Everything invites me to “escape”, “take a break” or “take care of myself”, even when that would amount to departing my station in life.

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