Where We Have Come in Five Years of Missional Community Life: An All Souls Message, Events, Prayer

 

Hi all. It has been a long time since my last letter from here.

Part of that has been because of all the project and partnerships and the presence we are making here in our area of far north Tulsa; a lot of that you will see just a glimpse of in the report of things going on today and in the coming days here; but it also continues to be a time of grief here and that has kept me busy too. During these past few weeks my mother has died after many years of Alzheimer's (she had spent her entire life here, and was bedfast for these past five years that so much has been happening by us here, and yet I know her presence has been with us and will be), and more suddenly our board member and community activist in north Tulsa Linda Taylor died, keeping as busy as possible in heart and mind and soul right up to the end with us and with O'Brien Park here where she had served for 35 years. We had wonderful celebrations of life for both my mom and for Linda. With Linda's death, we have lost two of our board members recently; I am pleased to report that Elaine McDondle, one of our partners in the McLain high school area who has started Sarah's Residential Living center, for seniors who thrive on a small home setting, will be joining our board in Gwen's position; we will be looking for another board member this month too in Linda's position. As we approach All Souls/All Saints Day, we keep them especially in our hearts, and all others who have gone before us, but left so much with us, and for us.

Tonight, Saturday Oct. 29, we have our annual big community celebration we offer each year for Halloween; this will be our first time in our new and still being renovated space at 5920 N. Owasso Ave.; but we have a great haunted house and will have scary food, costume contests, treats and more; come between 6 and 8 pm. Pass on this news and our other coming events below. And see the commentary afterwards.

1. Food Pantry, Food Justice, and Sustainability Space Open Every Tuesday and Thursday, 3 to 6 pm at the community center. Excited to be recertified in our new space and even though the food bank has been hit hard with a drop off in donations, we are working to develop several new streams of donations; and we are planning for a visit from the Mobile Food Van in December and we hope in months after that as well. Besides giving out food, we will give out information on nutrition, on growing healthy food, recipes and more.

2. Turley Area Leadership Planning Group: working on creating the Disaster Response Network, Incorporation, and Infrastructure planning: Friday Nov. 4, 2 pm, every First Friday at the community center. This is our deep connections and keeping the important before us, and not just the constant urging needs. We have lost so much in school and post office closing and fires and businesses that we need these times to go deep in our planning and look for ways to plant seeds for generations to come beyond us. All welcome.

3. TownHall and Community Connections Meeting with State Rep. Seneca Scott and other officials, Friday, Nov. 4, 5:30 pm, Tulsa Comm College NE Campus, Apache and Harvard

4. McLain High School Homecoming Game and Events Friday, Nov. 4, 4949 N. Peoria Ave. We had a great 400 plus turnout for the Taste of North Tulsa; we have wonderful plans for the new McLain Foundation for the Spring. We need to show our support for the school and no better way than an old fashioned rooting for the team at homecoming. McLain last Spring had 89 of 104 seniors accepted into college, an amazing turnaround record, but this year with new graduation standards and testing requirements we are looking at many students and families being hit hard and possibly not being able to graduate at all. To that end we in our welcome table community are one of the major sponsors this year of a GEAR UP event at McLain Thurs. Nov. 17 6:30 to 8:30 pm for parents and students and staff to focus on what will be needed to be able to respond to the new guidelines that have come down from Oklahoma City.

5. What To Do with Cherokee School building? Community Forum and Workshop with OU Graduate Design Studio, Sat. Nov. 5, Noon to 4 pm at the community center with Free Lunch For Participants. This will be our big monthly event for November. Need a big turnout as we dream of what we can do as a community with this newly abandoned property complex in the heart of our community and not just wait for what the school district may have planned. We had a great tour of the building with OU and with a representative of an area health care center looking at grant possibilities. We are also working to make sure the alumni reunion for Cherokee can still take place. Many ideas still to explore not only for how this can be a turnaround for our community but how this wonderful resource can be a miracle for the whole Tulsa area.

6. Community Fall Festival, Sat. Nov. 19, O’Brien Park Recreation Center. This is a testament in action to Linda Taylor. Because of her illness and death she was unable to lead the usual fall festival in October so her colleagues in the wider park system are grouping together to offer this to our northside community. Show up and keep Linda's spirit alive. Several of us from our community are also on the Park Advisory Board and we have been working in the garden Linda started and looking at other ways to help keep her grassroots spirit and service going.

7. Movie Night, Tuesday, Nov. 15, 6:30 pm at the Center, “Restrepo” documentary on the War in Afghanistan through soldiers’ eyes, and discussion of Veterans issues and creating a veterans support room at the Center.

8. Turley Area Alliance Against Crime: Personal, Home, and Neighborhood Safety meetings Thursday Nov. 17, 6:30 pm at the center. This group has been active in getting the word out this past month in the news media about neighborhood watch.

9. Turley Area Public Town Hall Meeting and Community Association, Tues Nov. 29, 7 pm O’Brien Park Recreation Center, 6147 N. Birmingham

10. Community Garden Taste and Teach Gatherings Free Every Saturday 9am, the Welcome Table Community Park, 6005 N. Johnstown Ave. Keep coming to see the ongoing transformation of this blighted area into a place of beauty, connections, healthy food, and recreating community space. We are giving firewood away too. We hosted yesterday a visit to the park by the North Tulsa Leadership Development Council to share our visions and needs; we hosted a visit by a couple touring the country looking at healing in abandoned places through sustainable agriculture and community.

11. Recovery 12 step Saturdays, 5 pm Jerks Anonymous, 7:30 pm, Alcoholics Anonymous, community center

12. Turley Water Board Public Meeting, LAST WORKING DAY OF MONTH 8:30 AM AT THE WATER DEPT. 6108 N. Peoria Ave.

13. Turley Fire Dept. Meetings THURSDAYS 7 PM, Fire Station, 6408 N. Peoria.

14. The Welcome Table Missional Community, Sundays beginning 9:30 am, conversation on progressive Christianity and justice for the poor, community service, communion, common meal, other worship and prayer classes coming up; look for vespers, for a series on the beatitudes as a call for social justice, an Advent series from Jim Wallis and Sojourners. This past Sunday we did some guerilla gardening and work on the food pantry in between Saving Jesus video and discussion and our worship and meal and afterwards too. Worship here is more like a party than a program and so drop in anytime as something will most likely be happening. In November 11-13 I will be at the fall leadership training conference in Texas co-teaching a track on exploring and engaging with your mission field; if you are interested in coming with us let me know; should be fun. For more go to www.swuuc.org.

15. Call about Thanksgiving Meal. 918-794-4637. Not sure what we will be doing again this year; we often provide a meal the Sunday before Thanksgiving and/or on Thanksgiving itself too. I do know we are planning two things for the Nov. 20 Sunday kicking off Thanksgiving Week: a special worshipful meal and conversation on how to make all our community or personal meals done in the spirit of gratitude and justice, facilitated by Christy Moore, one of our missional progressive partners here; and we will have our annual Reverse Offering Sunday when we give back money to those in worship to use between then and Martin Luther King Jr. Sunday when we will give reports on how we spent the money to make the radical loving and liberating spirit of Jesus more visible in the world, which is our simple mission.

We have also been planning and working with our neighbors Greeley Elementary School as our partner here now once Cherokee closed, and we are paying for its monthly student of the month lunch programs; plus we have been working with OU Graduate Social Work partners on our service learning projects for the Spring semester here, so look for more events during the winter months; which means we have to get that $1000 gas deposit paid for and all the heating equipment ready to go. For your partnership with us to make all of the above possible, and all that is coming, we thank you. Donations to us can be made at www.turleyok.blogspot.com. We don't send out thank yous nearly often enough and for that we apologize, but know that each one received is a prayer we hear from you, and a prayer we give back to you.

Commentary

I just wanted to close by saying it was five years ago this month that I began to get a vision after listening to you all in our community, a vision refined at a workshop I was in with Reggie McNeal, a Southern Baptist missional church leader from South Carolina, a vision about turning our church inside out and becoming an organic missional community; by Spring a few months later we had moved out of our then first space here in Turley on North Peoria and were in our then much bigger space also on North Peoria, wondering and worrying how we would ever pay its higher rent and utilities, creating then our library and clothing room and food pantry and computer center and simple meeting space. We had first talked about what we thought our community needed, and then we transformed ourselves so that we could help our community be transformed. Five years later we have lost so much more than we could have even back then envisioned as we were listening to people talk about how much had already been lost in our area; and yet five years later we can write of the things we have just written about above; amazing; we have changed the spirit of our community, not fully, not ever fully, maybe only in many ways just a drop in the bucket, a drop of God's "reign" in the bucket, as we have created a space for building a spirit of abundance and not scarcity, we have connected partners, we have celebrated and partied amid the ruins, and we have surprised even ourselves. We keep failing our way to success. We have been, for five years, to coin a current phrase, Occupying Turley and Far North Tulsa. So much of our time together is spent in dealing with the urgent daily stuff that comes up around us, and spent on all of our projects, but it will all be for nothing if we ever forget that we are blessed to be, to be here in this place, to be here in this place even now, to be here in this place even now with one another, to be here in this place even now with one another for others.

Because of all our grief of late, and the many losses, and because it is coming up on All Souls/All Saints Day, All Hallow's Eve, here are a few excerpts of prayers for these weeks that come from the book Praying by Heart by Tulsan Kay Northcutt that have spoken to me of late:

"Great, living God, for all the families of this world, we ask your abiding and steadfast love: that father, mother, stepparent, sister, brother, child, might be to one another an ever-present help in time of need; that we might know strength in time of sorrow, encouragement and joy in daily relationships and work...Abide with us in health and in illness as we abide with one another. Embrace us in our mourning and fears. Strengthen us, that we might know your strength and sustenance in danger and safety, in laughter and in sorrow. Be with us, God. Be our rest...Abide with us as we attend to the falling of leaves, watching the faithful turning of your creation earth in its cycle of life, birth, fulfillment, and death. We long to be as faithful in our lives as your creation is in its turning to you...Let Wisdom build herself a home in which our hearts can heal and be healed from wounds, heartaches of those we have sinned against, and our pain from those who have broken our hearts. God, we will never understand illness and suffering; and so, failing understanding, we will bring our presence to bear like the Marys at the foot of the cross. But you must bring the light unto our path as we go, or we will not carry your comfort in our visit. For it is your peace that heals, your rest that quiets our hearts...Amen.

Portals To The Welcome Table Church

A Variety of Portals and Welcome Statements About The Welcome Table Church. Free Universalist Christian Missional Community. see also www.missionalprogressives.blogspot.com

I.
Following the radical Jesus in deeds not creeds; though we may gain much wisdom from the historic creeds, we are not bound by them. Join us in service to our community throughout the week. That is the primary way we become church. Our Welcome Table of Worship is open to all who welcome all, regardless of belief or denomination, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical abilities, economic status, or political affiliations. We don’t think Jesus would have it any other way.

Free because God works in freedom so we are non-creedal. We don’t give theological tests for admission, but encourage you to test us and try us to see if this way is for you. Universalist because we believe God is Love and All who abide in Love abide in God, and God’s love is for all for all time. Christian because the generous compassionate way and story of Jesus, is our primary pathway opening up to God. Missional because we are sent to serve others more than ourselves, building up God’s beloved community more than our own, putting our time talent and treasure more into the world than into our own organization. Community because we are made not to be autonomous individuals but to be a people of God.

We are a simple church, but it can be a deep struggle to live toward true freedom, to practice God’s love for all, to follow the liberating Jesus who was crucified for his radical ways of hospitality and justice, to live for and serve others more than self, and to put community first. We invite those who wish to struggle with us, to fail with us, and to continue struggling with us. Worship gatherings and common meal are our times to refresh our spirits for the service of God.

II.
Here is a rewrite of the principles from The Center for Progressive Christianity, signalling our approach to religion.

1. The radically loving and liberating Jesus is central to our community's experience of God.
2. Jesus isn't the only way to experience God. It is good to let other experiences of God into our lives.
3. Communion is the way we worship, and is about God's welcome table for all, and our committment to a life of hospitality and justice throughout the week.
4. We will worship and work with anyone toward creating a just and more loving world; we don't give theological tests for being with us.
5. How we live in love deepens and reveals our faith more than our particular beliefs do. We honor the uncertainty, and change, of beliefs, but also the risk of committment.
6. Freedom is rooted in community, not in individual likes and dislikes, and must be nurtured in community.
7. We are called to resist evil done against Creation and against all of the most vulnerable, and must look to our own blessings and privileges of life that are contributing to injustice.

III.
The Covenanted Community, adapted and extended from Tich Nhat Hanh:
1. We show up.
2. We pay atttention
3. We speak truth in love
4. We stay focused on mission, and flexible on how to accomplish it
5. When we fail at 1 through 4, We show up.

IV.
The five smooth stones, adapted and altered from James Luther Adams and several sources:
1. Truth and meaning is ever being revealed anew, but this can mean also finding truth and meaning in forgotten or neglected or discarded ways.
2. Our relationships rest on mutuality and free consent and persuasion, not coercion.
3. Our committments are aimed at a just community.
4. Goodness must be incarnated in life if it is to be real.
5. We acknowledge the power of evil but believe hope and love and an abundant Universe are ultimate.

V.
The Three R's of Christian Community Development:
1. Relocate to the abandoned places of Empire (or remain, or return)
2. Redistribute goods and The Good
3. Reconcile peoples who are divided, broken, separate.

VI.
The Four Paths of Missional Church: World, We, I, God
1. First, Scatter out into the world beyond ourselves and Serve others. We are Sent People because God is a Sending God.
2. As we do the first, next Grow loving community, in order to do the first path more fully, and to reflect that God is always a Relational God.
3. Then focus on Growing Your Soul, in one's heart, mind, body, and spirit. The more we grow personally the more we have to give along the second path of community.
4. Finally, Respond with Worship: Gather together in Gratitude for being able to walk the first three paths and for the Renewal of self needed to sustain our walk with God found in all of these paths.

VII.
The Six Spiritual Practices of our Missional Community
1. Pray daily
2. Worship at least weekly.
3. Check in spiritually with another at least monthly
4. Go on Retreat at least annually.
5. Commit to going on a once in a lifetime pilgrimmage.
6. Practice random acts of kindness and beauty daily.

VIII.
The 3 Characteristics of an Emerging Church
1. Focus on the life of Jesus.
2. Blur the artificial boundaries and places of the secular and the spiritual
3. Live in Community.

Creation Sabbath Justice Bible Study in the GardenPark: using new translation of Genesis and Exodus

For tomorrow's 10 am bible study on creation sabbath spirituality, being held in the community kitchengardenorchard miracle among the ruins park we are creating at 6005 N. Johnstown Ave., I am going to be using this translation from Everett Fox of Genesis 1-2:4a, otherwise known as the first creation story but the last genesis one composed, and of Exodus chapter 16; what do creation and sabbath have in common, and how are they ways we focus on living justly, in liberation solidarity with those most vulnerable, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God? feel free to stop by and join in and for our communion in the garden and our common meal.

Here is the Fox translation of these passages from The First Five Books of Moses. Fox is a Hebrew bible scholar; I like his poetic scholarly approach.

Genesis
Chapter 1
Genesis 1:1 At the beginning of God's creating of the heavens and the earth,
Genesis 1:2 when the earth was wild and waste, darkness over the face of Ocean, rushing-spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters-
Genesis 1:3 God said: Let there be light! And there was light.
Genesis 1:4 God saw the light: that it was good. God separated the light from the darkness.
Genesis 1:5 God called the light: Day! and the darkness he called: Night! There was setting, there was dawning: one day.
Genesis 1:6 God said: Let there be a dome amid the waters, and let it separate waters from waters!
Genesis 1:7 God made the dome and separated the waters that were below the dome from the waters that were above the dome. It was so.
Genesis 1:8 God called the dome: Heaven! There was setting, there was dawning: second day.
Genesis 1:9 God said: Let the waters under the heavens be gathered to one place, and let the dry land be seen! It was so.
Genesis 1:10 God called the dry land: Earth! and the gathering of the waters he called: Seas! God saw that it was good.
Genesis 1:11 God said: Let the earth sprout forth with sprouting-growth, plants that seed forth seeds, fruit trees that yield fruit, after their kind, (and) in which is their seed, upon the earth! It was so.
Genesis 1:12 The earth brought forth sprouting-growth, plants that seed forth seeds, after their kind, trees that yield fruit, in which is their seed, after their kind. God saw that it was good.
Genesis 1:13 There was setting, there was dawning: third day.
Genesis 1:14 God said: Let there be lights in the dome of the heavens, to separate the day from the night, that they may be for signs-for set-times, for days and years,
Genesis 1:15 and let them be for lights in the dome of the heavens, to provide light upon the earth! It was so.
Genesis 1:16 God made the two great lights, the greater light for ruling the day and the smaller light for ruling the night, and the stars.
Genesis 1:17 God placed them in the dome of the heavens
Genesis 1:18 to provide light upon the earth, to rule the day and the night, to separate the light from the darkness. God saw that it was good.
Genesis 1:19 There was setting, there was dawning: fourth day.
Genesis 1:20 God said: Let the waters swarm with a swarm of living beings, and let fowl fly above the earth, across the dome of the heavens!
Genesis 1:21 God created the great sea-serpents and all living beings that crawl about, with which the waters swarmed, after their kind, and all winged fowl after their kind. God saw that it was good.
Genesis 1:22 And God blessed them, saying: Bear fruit and be many and fill the waters in the seas, and let the fowl be many on earth!
Genesis 1:23 There was setting, there was dawning: fifth day.
Genesis 1:24 God said: Let the earth bring forth living beings after their kind, herd-animals, crawling things, and the wildlife of the earth after their kind! It was so.
Genesis 1:25 God made the wildlife of the earth after their kind, and the herd-animals after their kind, and all crawling things of the soil after their kind. God saw that it was good.
Genesis 1:26 God said: Let us make humankind, in our image, according to our likeness! Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the heavens, animals, all the earth, and all crawling things that crawl about upon the earth!
Genesis 1:27 So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God did he create it, male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:28 God blessed them, God said to them: Bear fruit and be many and fill the earth and subdue it! Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the heavens, and all living things that crawl about upon the earth!
Genesis 1:29 God said: Here, I give you all plants that bear seeds that are upon the face of all the earth, and all trees in which there is tree fruit that bears seeds, for you shall they be, for eating;
Genesis 1:30 and also for all the living things of the earth, for all the fowl of the heavens, for all that crawls about upon the earth in which there is living being- all green plants for eating. It was so.
Genesis 1:31 Now God saw all that he had made, and here: it was exceedingly good! There was setting, there was dawning: the sixth day.
Chapter 2
Genesis 2:1 Thus were finished the heavens and the earth, with all of their array.
Genesis 2:2 God had finished, on the seventh day, his work that he had made, and then he ceased, on the seventh day, from all his work that he had made.
Genesis 2:3 God gave the seventh day his blessing, and he hallowed it, for on it he ceased from all his work, that by creating, God had made.
Genesis 2:4 These are the begettings of the heavens and the earth: their being created.

They moved on from Elim, and they came, the entire community of the Children of Israel, to the Wilderness of Syn, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day after the second New-moon after their going-out from the land of Egypt.
Exodus 16:2 And they grumbled, the entire community of the Children of Israel, against Moshe and against Aharon in the wilderness.
Exodus 16:3 The Children of Israel said to them: Would that we had died by the hand of YHVH in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots, when we ate bread till (we were) satisfied! For you have brought us into this wilderness to bring death to this whole assembly by starvation!
Exodus 16:4 YHVH said to Moshe: Here, I will make rain down upon you bread from the heavens, the people shall go out and glean, each day's amount in its day, in order that I may test them, whether they
will walk according to my Instruction or not.
Exodus 16:5 But it shall be on the sixth day: when they prepare what they have brought in, it shall be a double-portion compared to what they glean day after day.
Exodus 16:6 Moshe and Aharon said to all the Children of Israel: At sunset you will know that it is YHVH who brought you out of the land of Egypt;
Exodus 16:7 at daybreak you will see the Glory of YHVH: when he hearkens to your grumblings against YHVH- what are we, that you grumble against us?
Exodus 16:8 Moshe said: Since YHVH gives you flesh to eat at sunset, and at daybreak, bread to satisfy (yourselves); since YHVH hearkens to your grumblings which you grumble against him- what are we: not against us are your grumblings, but against YHVH!
Exodus 16:9 Moshe said to Aharon: Say to the entire community of the Children of Israel: Come-near, in the presence of YHVH, for he has hearkened to your grumblings!
Exodus 16:10 Now it was, when Aharon spoke to the entire community of the Children of Israel, they faced the wilderness, and here: the Glory of YHVH could be seen in the cloud.
Exodus 16:11 YHVH spoke to Moshe, saying:
Exodus 16:12 I have hearkened to the grumblings of the Children of Israel- speak to them, and say: Between the setting-times you shall eat flesh, and at daybreak you shall be satisfied with bread, and you shall know that I am YHVH your God.
Exodus 16:13 Now it was at sunset a horde-of-quail came up and covered the camp. And at daybreak there was a layer of dew around the camp;
Exodus 16:14 and when the layer of dew went up, here, upon the surface of the wilderness, something fine, scaly, fine as hoar-frost upon the land.
Exodus 16:15 When the Children of Israel saw it they said each-man to his brother: Mahn hu/what is it? For they did not know what it was. Moshe said to them: It is the bread that YHVH has given you for eating.
Exodus 16:16 This is the word that YHVH has commanded: Glean from it, each-man according to what he can eat, an omer per capita, according to the number of your persons, each-man, for those in his tent, you are to take.
Exodus 16:17 The Children of Israel did thus, they gleaned, the-one-more and the-one-less,
Exodus 16:18 but when they measured by the omer, no surplus had the-one-more, and the-one-less had no shortage; each-man had gleaned according to what he could eat.
Exodus 16:19 Moshe said to them: No man shall leave any of it until morning.
Exodus 16:20 But they did not hearken to Moshe, and (several) men left some of it until morning; it became wormy with maggots and reeked. And Moshe became furious with them.
Exodus 16:21 They gleaned it in the morning, (every) morning, each-man in accordance with what he could eat, but when the sun heated up, it melted.
Exodus 16:22 Now it was on the sixth day that they gleaned a double-portion of bread, two omers for (each) one. All the exalted-leaders of the community came and told it to Moshe.
Exodus 16:23 He said to them: It is what YHVH spoke about: tomorrow is a Sabbath/Ceasing, a Sabbath of Holiness for YHVH. Whatever you wish to bake-bake, and whatever you wish to boil-boil; and all the surplus, put aside for yourselves in safekeeping until morning.
Exodus 16:24 They put it aside until morning, as Moshe had commanded, and it did not reek, neither were there any maggots in it.
Exodus 16:25 Moshe said: Eat it today, for today is a Sabbath for YHVH, today you will not find it in the field.
Exodus 16:26 For six days you are to glean, but on the seventh day is Sabbath, there will not be (any) on it.
Exodus 16:27 But it was on the seventh day that some of the people went out to glean, and they did not find.
Exodus 16:28 YHVH said to Moshe: Until when will you refuse to keep my commandments and my instructions?
Exodus 16:29 (You) see that YHVH has given you the Sabbath, therefore on the sixth day, he gives you
bread for two days. Stay, each-man, in his spot; no man shall go out from his place on the seventh day!
Exodus 16:30 So the people ceased on the seventh day.
Exodus 16:31 Now the House of Israel called its name: Mahn. -It is like coriander seed, whitish, and its taste is like (that of) a wafer with honey.-
Exodus 16:32 Moshe said: This is the word that YHVH has commanded: An omer of it for safekeeping throughout your generations, in order that they may see the bread that I had you eat in the wilderness when I brought you out of the land of Egypt.
Exodus 16:33 Moshe said to Aharon: Take a vat and put an omer of mahn in it, and put it aside in the presence of YHVH, in safekeeping throughout your generations.
Exodus 16:34 As YHVH had commanded Moshe, Aharon put it aside before the Testimony, in safekeeping.
Exodus 16:35 And the Children of Israel ate the mahn for the forty years, until they came to settled land, the mahn they ate, until they came to the edge of the land of Canaan.
Exodus 16:36 Now an omer-it is a tenth of an efa.

Where In The World Is The Church? The Stillwater Sermon, with readings

Readings:

From Jorgen Moltmann's "The Source of Life"...Moltmann saw the devastation first hand of whole communities in Europe during and after World War Two:
The ideology of “there is never enough for everyone” makes people lonely. It isolates them and robs them of relationships. The opposite of poverty isn’t property. The opposite of both poverty and property is community. For in community we become rich: rich in friends, in neighbours, in colleagues, in comrades, in brothers and sisters. Together, as a community, we can help ourselves in most of our difficulties. For after all, there are enough people and enough ideas, capabilities and energies to be had. They are only lying fallow, or are stunted and suppressed. So let us discover our wealth; let us discover our solidarity; let us build up communities; let us take our lives into our own hands and at long last out of the hands of the people who want to dominate and exploit us.
From John Perkins, Welcoming Justice:
“So what does it take to make beloved community happen? I really believe that it begins with a place. I’ve preached relocation all my life because the communities I’ve been a part of have been abandoned. Everybody left, so I called them to come back. But my real concern is for the place. If the church is going to offer some real good news in broken communities, it has to be committed to making a good life possible for people in the place where we are.
It may sound simple but I think you’ve got to have neighbors you talk to and get to know before you can love your neighbor as yourself. As we commit to our communities, we also need to learn how to see them as economic places. It’s not enough to just move into a place, plant some flowers and be nice to your neighbors. All of that is good, but that won’t address the brokenness of people’s lives because the structures of the community are broken. People need work, good housing, education and health care. So the church has to invest its resources in developing the community. We also need to use our influence to get businesses and government to invest in the community. ..I wish churches spent more time thinking about how their members could love one another and share a common life by working together as a community. Part of the reason our churches are so individualistic is that we just accept the economic systems of our culture without question. We assume that the people who can get the good jobs should go wherever they have to and the people who can’t get the good jobs should just take what they can get. But churches that want to interrupt the brokenness of society ought to be about creating jobs in the community and giving neighbors an opportunity to work together. If we take our communities seriously as economic places, we’ll spend more time thinking about creating good work than we spend thinking about more relevant worship styles or bigger church buildings."
Matthew 16: 24-26
24Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?

Sermon: Where in the World is the Church?

Where in the World is the Church? This question itself carries within it the seeds of the future that is emerging now for the church.
The questions used to be how to get the world into the church. So we produced a “come to us” church based on the model of the Marketplace, the dominant culture and myth of our time; the question was how do we attract and keep more people so we can build bigger buildings and more staff to attract and keep more people, or to even just stay the same, all so we can get more and more people in tune with our message, get them thinking like us, which we believed would change the world.
Now the world has changed all right, into an unchurched postdenominational, definitely not one size or kind fits all world, and the churches that will be sustainable and influential in the new environment are those who either have loads of resources to compete in the come to us religious marketplace culture, where rewards are fewer and fewer all the time at higher and higher costs, or they are ones who are changing from a “come to us” church to being part of a “go to them” church, or even more radically, becoming “come out of them” church that erases distinctions between us and them.
These new, actually also ancient, kinds of church expressions in the world have different measures of success; instead of being about ourselves, they will be about others. Not how many do we count as part of us, but how many are we serving, and serving with, beyond ourselves.
The new measures of success will be more aligned with what have been called the Three R’s of Community Development, which I think are also the Three R’s of a Spiritual Life. Instead of how many people come to our place, the first R is about how are we relocating ourselves to the places where there is the most suffering and wholeness needed. Instead of how big a budget and building and staff and programs for us can we create, the second R is about how many ways are we working to redistribute goods, and The Good, to those without. Finally, instead of making religion foremost about what an individual thinks and feels, about what one believes, and about getting that into a marketable message to get others to think and feel like us, the third R is about how much Reconciliation is going on, about how are we, as a finite imperfect in process hurting broken people ourselves, engaged with the problems and issues and histories and messiness of ourselves and others as a people, for the mutual healing and transformation of all of us.
These Three Rs of Relocation, Redistribution, and Reconciliation come out of the life and work of John Perkins. He was born some 80 years ago in rural Mississippi into his poor African American family. His father left when he was very young trying to find work; as a young man, John saw his older brother, a returning WWII veteran, killed while standing in line, unarmed, at a movie theater, gunned down by a white police officer. John was full of anger, a ticking time bomb; he also hated church because it seemed to do nothing for the community in the face of such injustice. He had had quit school at third grade to work. He married but continued to drink and party. His family, seeing his anger and despair and fearing for his life, managed to send him out of Mississippi to work in California.
There he began to settle his life and became part of the black middle class of the time and in that place; then through his young son Spencer he began attending a church, one that had a prison ministry; and there in meeting with the inmates and encountering the bible for really the first time in depth he began taking seriously a new Jesus he was meeting for the first time. A prophetic Jesus that calls out for justice for the poor and oppressed, and who goes where they are rather than waiting for them to come to him.
This was in the late 50s, in the thick of the growing civil rights era in the South, but the Jesus he was now following, who calls us to pick up crosses, to risk all for justice for the poor, this Jesus now pointed him back home to rural Mississippi, back away from the relative safety of California. At first he was only going back to teach this new understanding of the Bible and its justice mandate, primarily to the youth, he told himself, so they would get the message earlier than he had when he lived there. But soon the needs of the community, and the voice of this Jesus, were calling out to give the people more than a message:
So the church began a community center and then a farm, food was distributed, health care given, child care provided, adult classes begun, and worship held, and civil rights supported. But then the more public his ministry became the more it was seen as a threat by the powers of the status quo. One night he and a van full of youth coming back from a rally were stopped on a rural road by police who arrested him for contributing to the delinquency of minors and took him to jail where he was beaten and tortured near to death.
There, In the hospital, in the caring response of a white nurse coming so soon after his treatment by white jailers, he received an epiphany that helped him to put his hatred into a larger vessel of God’s love, and gave him a new focus or aim to his work, reconciliation, especially among the races.
It all begins with the realization that Where We Are Matters.
Our church couldn’t do what we have done and what we will do if we had stayed in the fast growing suburb where we began, where certainly there is a need for a spiritually progressive message, but where our meager resources were dust in the wind at even trying to get that across to a culture that likes their churches like their box stores, fully equipped from the get go. And besides, more importantly, was that the Mission that most needed us? When nearby was the far northside Tulsa area. A healthy food desert where 55 percent worry about how much food they have and 60 percent say they can’t afford healthy food. Where Our average household income keeps going down and is now just barely above $20,000; where our life expectancy is the lowest in our metropolitan area, fourteen years lower than the highest area that is just six miles to the south of us along the same Peoria ave.
If church is about finding and gathering in people like us, then this is the last place to be; but if church is about being sent to serve among others and finding ourselves there, then this is the first place to be.
A phrase has sprung up to describe places like where John Perkins lives and where we live, the abandoned places of Empire. It harkens back to the Roman Empire, there at a time when the Empire was crumbling, and new communities on the edges were being created as small alternative socieites with values of cooperation instead of conquering. But now The Empire we feel at odds with is a contemporary American Consumer Entertainment Marketplace with dominant cultural values that champion Appearance, Affluence, Achievement, Uniformity, Coolness, Convenience, Comfort, Strength and Safety. And above all, perhaps, this Empire prizes personal autonomy full of choices never ending. This Empire says the good life, even the spiritual life, is found in being surrounded by the so-called best things, smartest people. The goal of this Empire is for places like ours to exist only as places people leave, as places where people live as a kind of punishment for not being able to buy into all the Empire provides us.
John Perkins says think of the shame people fall into who have remained with constant reminders they have not been good enough or smart enough or lucky enough or young enough to leave as they should. That shame breeds a paralysis that makes it hard for people to become active with others for their own and their community’s behalf. It makes it hard for them to see the counter-truth, that as theologian Jorgen Moltmann says, the opposite of poverty is not property but the opposite of both poverty and of property is community.
Our mission as church responding to the world, rather than expecting the world to respond to us as church, our mission is to initiate and imitate beloved community in places and people others abandon.
What might these “go to them” or “emerge out of them” churches look like and do?
Well, If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the photograph of me that was on the cover of this past Spring issue of the Unitarian Universalist World magazine answers much better and more completely that question, and captures the essence of our mission on the northside of Tulsa, and of the missional reformation of the church underway.
The cover photo showed a room inside a building. The building is an abandoned rundown exposed to the elements vandalized woodframe ruin. It used to be a parsonage, the home for the ministers of the oldest church in our community on the northside of Tulsa. The parsonage sets on a corner of the same property as that church’s former building, a redbrick complex itself having likewise been abandoned, rundown, exposed, vandalized and foreclosed.
And as the church had once been near the actual center of the community, one of the largest and oldest of buildings of the community, it is no surprise that the community itself has in large measure become abandoned, rundown, vandalized, and closed. Since the magazine issue was published just a few months ago, our community’s oldest school across the street has been closed, and our post office has been ordered closed.
The photo shows the room with broken and boarded up windows, and a recliner which has either been left behind by a previous owner, or equally possibly, it is one that had been dumped on the road and left for months until someone decided to drag it into the old parsonage to use as they camped out there. It is the only piece of furniture in the building.
The photograph is both a literal representation of a real place in our community, and it is a metaphorical representation of the whole community, evoking its history and evoking its current state, and I hope a little of its future too. Because there in the photo I sit on the recliner, looking very much at home, a representation of our group’s hopeful presence in the ruins.
There are a lot of homes and businesses in that kind of shape where we live, but the photograph was taken there because our church, our missional community, and the nonprofit foundation we created to better reach out to our neighbors, was at the time in the process of buying the house and the old church building. We have since moved in and we are, amid the still vandalized structures, relaunching our community center, food pantry, clothing room, computer center, library, and health hub there, and soon we hope a room dedicated to veterans and their needs, and perhaps even becoming a postal home, and perhaps a school of sorts, filling in the gaps of what has been closed.
And the center is just one of the projects we are engaged in. With the help of many others, our small group also bought an acre of abandoned homes nearby and are actively turning that space into a community kitchengardenpark where we have recently added a 40 fruit tree orchard. And we have other sites nearby that we are turning from blight to beauty, and we have partnered with the University of Oklahoma on a radical new health care for the poor initiative, aimed at training some residents of our zipcode to be medical mentors, or master patients, and connect them with others in their neighborhoods who are repeat and unwarranted users of the emergency rooms. It is a way to turn medical clinics inside out the way we have turned our church inside out.
And with other partners we are addressing other aspects of the life and death matters in our zipcode. For example, this week we host another meeting trying to organize people and resources to bring some simple things like sidewalks and better street lights to our area where a neighbor was recently killed by a truck while he was pushing a shopping cart load of groceries in Peoria, which is also a state highway where we are, at twilight. We have families where the mother or father is in a wheelchair and they are without transportation except for it and whole families, including children, often walk around the mom or dad in the motorized wheelchair in the lane of Peoria on their way to the store or other businesses.
To us this is being church; we talk about all our community work as the body, the arms and legs, hands and feet of the church, what we do with people of many different faiths or none at all, with our own worship time in a small group as the heart of the church. The important thing to me is that we have done all this with no paid staff, some of us have jobs elsewhere and some of us have no jobs, and we have usually just from four to fourteen in worship on Sunday mornings. It is always enough. We are always enough. Sometimes in fact you need to become smaller to be able to do more to change the world.
It is all part of the new missional reformation of the church; something we as participants in the original radical reformation of the church in the 1500 and 1600s should know something about. Or as our theologian James Luther Adams once wrote, our church history is a history of always reforming. The church is dead. Long live the church.
The new reformation says the church should not worry about itself and its own life but worry first and foremost about the life of the world dying around it; not worry about having a mission and trying to create a statement to describe it in order to attract people to come to an organization and building called the church; instead, it should worry if a Mission has it, and if that Mission is worthy of the precious lives that will be called to serve it, and if that Mission is dedicated to serving others in the world, including those who may never seek to become its members, and especially those most vulnerable, most abandoned.
A reformation that asks not how can a church get more of the world to come to us and become like us, but ask where and how, in the world, is the church finding and making and sharing itself? A Reformation that even says don’t talk about the church and its problems before you talk about the world around you and its problems; because they will then lead you into the kind of church you need to become.
Here is what we need to remember: The church is not, at heart, or need to ever be, fundamentally, a 501c3 nonprofit religious organization; it can and has existed, ancient and emerging times, without bylaws, boards, budgets, and buildings, and clergy. Church does not have to be thought of as “a” church, that one “goes to” on the corner of this and that, and is even named a certain thing—what the modern culture made its dominant traits--but church can be lived out organically as a way people, two or more at a time, participate as expressions of “the church.” Imagine. Church anywhere, anytime. Random acts of Church.
For some groups in order to become church, become disciples of love and justice, means having no name, fearing, with some cause, that even naming inevitably turns us toward ourselves and turns us more into an organization than an organic movement.
My favorite story in this category comes from Australia where a young man named Sean had grown up having a hard time, as a sufferer of ADD, sitting still in worship every Sunday in the spectator-manner of his church, and so when he became a young adult he decided that he didn’t have to keep “going to church” and so one Sunday he followed the invitation of a friend to go out on the lake in a boat; while out there, in a lull from swimming, his old habits reared up and he felt guilty for not “being in church” and he asked his friends if he could say part of a psalm and then say a short prayer, and his friend said sure, and he asked his friends if there was anything he could include in his prayer for them, and he did so. And he went back swimming and partying. Next Sunday the same thing happened, but this time he had also brought a Bible with him, and after a short time reading and praying they kept on partying. Gradually more and more friends were joining them. Gradually the prayers had more things mentioned. Soon they were spending time at the lake helping tow boats that had broken down, and were cleaning the park, looking for other ways to do random acts of kindness. They began to take time out for more bible reflection and they held communion on the picnic tables, and they kept partying before and during and after. Pretty soon worship was more party than program. And all the while his worried family kept bugging him to “come back to church.” They thought church is something you attend; but it is something you become.
Now imagine Sean hadn’t accidentally created this way of being church, but if he and others had been intentionally sent by his church to the lake to serve, create community, and celebrate. Some churches now tell some of their members to stay away from church and take their money away from the established church for a year and go build relationships and serve and be the church outside of their worshipping community, perhaps in apartment complexes, one of the most unchurched places of culture, or a garden in a food desert, or a school where the children have many strikes against them, and they only ask them to then come back and share their stories of how community has been formed and their church has been renewed and grown outside of itself.
Another time there was a church of 80 members and it had of late always struggled to grow, to make building expenses, to pay a minister; it just seemed stuck, and turned inward, turning on itself. Then one day the minister called them all together and divided them up into eight groups of ten based on where they lived. Then announced that he was downsizing and simplifying and moving into a poor part of town and going to work part time at a body shop where he could make the money he needed in his new environment, and he told them to look around at their group, and he announced this was their new church; they were to meet in homes and where they could near where they lived and worship together weekly and serve their neighborhood and one another, and he would be their minister and help coach and connect them and they would come together as they had just every so often, now to hear and celebrate their stories in worship.
Reggie McNeal, author of Missional Renaissance, writes: “An explosion of missional communities…will occur…They will range in size from a handful of participants to a few dozen. Gatherings will take place in homes and restaurants, bookstores and bars, office conference rooms and university dorm rooms, hotel meeting space and downtown Ys, and yes, even churches. Their community life will center on an intense desire to grow spiritually and to aid the community. Some will be connected to churches; many will not be.”
I hope some of these communities seeded by churches or networked as grassroots missions by groups of two or more people will be from our free churches, because we have a tradition and faith stance of openness and embracing freedom and abundance and hope for all that others could be enriched by, especially others in abandoned places and abandoned times in their lives when reactions of not having and being enough, and feelings of fear, so often rule how their world is seen.
But first, like John Perkins, like Sean, like those who Jesus said would follow him, we must go to the deserted places, and there be willing to be changed without knowing into what, trusting when we do the counter-intuitive, when we let go and turn ourselves and our churches and other groups inside out, that this is when new life comes, when crosses become communities with a cause.

To help go to this link....see post below for more.

To help us replace the air conditioning in the building, which wore out from the use during the fire response and heat wave, or to help with the replacing of the computers and phones and television and a volunteer's guitar that were stolen after we were open as a red cross center during the fires, or to help in general with our food pantry and purchase of bottles of water to hand out, or for the plumbing work, or the community celebrations and community health project, or the kitchengardenorchard park project, and more, go donate easily and safely at...

www.turleyok.blogspot.com for our community foundation, A Third Place Community Foundation, and our mission of renewing community, empowering residents, growing healthy lives and neighborhoods, all through small acts of justice done with great love....

A Ministry of Presence in the Fires and Heat Wave

CBS Radio just interviewed, after AP did yesterday, about our church and community center response during the heat wave, fires, and all here in our community lately; not sure I do well with sound bites and blurbs that fit though so not sure what all will be used because once you get me wound up :)....


about life in poverty areas especially when heat wave makes it even tougher on folks without ac, without cars, without access to malls, who walk without sidewalks to grocery stores and schools, and then the shutting down of post office coming after shutting the school, and the fires and home losses and depletion of resources for the fire department and the community center....and those with AC, like our situation, are having theirs breaking down and not able to replace; fortunately schools going back here this week so kids will have a cool place, though for many walking back in the heat is tough.


and then our center which acts as cooling station in afternoons and provides water, food, TV computers, games, etc. has its own AC wear down from so much use and eventually this past week wear out, plumbing breaks, and the breakin after the fires takes computers, phones..

....so with all that hard to contain to a cute blurb and hard to shut me up, but I do appreciate very much of the national news and attention, helping people perhaps to see what they don't in normal run of their day see or experience; like how hard it is for people in the heat wave who work day labor outdoors and rely on mowing lawns and small day jobs, working in heat or not being able to find work like they used to; worrying about paying electric and water bills so not eating but very little to save up for the bills to come....


but like we said at worship in the park this morning, being here is what counts, and doing things poorly but doing them is what counts and what lasts; so tomorrow we will be taking again the ice chests of bottled water out to the streets, and hope to get AC replaced asap and then find ways to pay for it later....and to learn from this summer and disasters how to be present even more and better; we will be meeting at the center thursday sept 1 at 2 pm, if AC gets replaced, with area leaders and those from Tulsa Partners about the disaster response plan ideas and process for next time we have mass evacuations from fires or possible floods tornadoes etc. And we are still out promoting all community events like the fund raiser for the Turley Fire Dept. Sat. Sept. 3 noon to 5 pm $5 per person bean dinner at the fire station 6408 N. Peoria; don't want to miss that chance to help and get some good food....And we will keep hosting community celebrations to remind us of the abundance of life together even in the midst of the things that try to drive us to thinking only about ourselves; and we have a community history and heritage lunch planned at the center for noon on Sat. Sept. 17 after a morning of service cleaning up our community. and our Sept. focus will be on educational justice, and our movie will be "October Sky" Wed. Sept. 28 6:30 pm.


...we will continue to look at the deeper systemic issues of justice at the same time we do the daily response of one to one needs that comes up; we will be talking Tuesday Aug. 23 at 1:30 pm with politicians about trying to get the post office to work with us to staff our own postal center with their help here in the center or with a local business interested in it ...On Wednesday Aug. 24 we keep our focus on Community health month here with the movie "Sicko" and discussion and free food at 6:30 pm and hope we can do it in the center but if AC not replaced by then will find another place for it...Then thursday evening Aug. 25 we host the local neighborhood leaders safety and watch meetings of the turley area alliance against crime...


....and speaking of community health month, we found out we can extend for a few more weeks our summer health survey program with OU where we give out to local residents gift cards to use for their time taking the surveys with us; so we get more data, can reach more areas of the community, and pump more money directly back to the people here in our neighborhoods, and build connections to our projects and one another at the same time; we hope to have more health events at school, community meeting, and again at the north tulsa farmers market to reach people living here on the northside....another reason to get our AC replaced in time for our the community meeting next week and the community leadership meeting....


...Even when the Center is shut down because of the AC out we take the Center to the Community as we did this past Wednesday providing a pizza and salad lunch for all the teachers at the Horace Greeley Elementary School, now our closest school; it was a time to promote reconciliation of teachers from two schools that had merged due to the closing of Cherokee school; allowing teachers time and place to eat together and visit all together is a rare thing for a school where schedules and more keep all so busy and apart, but we want to do more of this and find ways to promote teachers building relationships with one another in order to help foster that among the students who are going through all the changes of closed schools and new schools too.


....finally while all of this is the arms and legs hands and feet and body of the church being the church int he community for the community and with people of varying faiths and no faith communities, our worship circles, like this morning at the park in the relative cool of the early morn, are the heart, and we have real, relaxed, and relational times, sharing life, getting in touch with all that sustains us, so that we can share and be the church in many ways while we are out in the world....So this Thursday we will be sharing worship with Phillips theological Semianry, 905 N. Mingo, at 11:30 am followed by lunch as some of us in the Unitarian Universalist sphere provide the chapel liturgy for communion. You also get a good homily from PTS President Gary Peluso-Verdend....Then next Sunday The Welcome Table Universalist Church will go on the road to Stillwater as I will be preaching at the UU Church there; we will carpool and caravan and then have some fun in Stillwater after the fun of worship of course.

will try to post more links and updates at www.turleyok.blogspot.com and www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com

The Fires and More: Our Lives, Our Spirit, Our Mission

Hi to all. When you see the stories below you will know why we haven't written lately...But let me put it in a few words: Because You Have Been With and For Us, from wherever you are, near or faraway, We Have Been Here For Others The Past Few Days in a Deep Way....so thank you...

On Tuesday afternoon, when the temperature was setting record 115 temperatures, our community began burning from grassfires that spread to homes and several hundred were ordered evacuated. The fires were concentrated two blocks from the community center but were moving the other way so within an hour we were the first home for the first response with red cross and fire officials and others setting up in our community center; we helped supply cold water and a cool place for all, including the bedfast who were brought here too. One of our volunteers who coordinates the clothing room, an 81 year old widow, lost her home; the first fire trucks responding ran out of water and her house burned before other trucks could arrive; others had their endangered and worked with the firefighters for hours to keep it from spreading. We were here through the evening and held a board planning party previously scheduled even amidst the response; by night the red cross had moved to a church with shower capabilities we don't yet have, thanks Antioch Baptist Church; we had planned a catered dinner for our board members and other volunteers for that evening already and so, in loaves and fishes style, we offered it to all who were at the center; thanks to Elote Restaurant for catering our event; it went much further than we had intended. We supplemented it with a free pizza dinner we purchased from our local pizza place.

On Wednesday we took ice and water out to the burned home area where folks were congregating, and on Thursday we dedicated most of our monthly area planning group here at the center with State Rep. Seneca Scott and Fire Chief of our volunteer fire dept and others to the fires and response and to launching a community wide emergency response so we can do even better the next time this or something like it happens. We will be collecting food and personal supplies here at the center and coordinating more with the Red Cross for followup, especially in the weeks after the immediate emergency response is over....We also continued our planning toward a small area plan involving the community, and moving toward incorporation of our community to give it more of a voice.

But during all the emergency response of the first days, we also had people come into the center and unlock doors we keep locked and don't check as often as we should, and they came back in during the night and stole a volunteer's guitar and our computer center equipment and a phone. One of the things we were glad to offer people on the day of the fires was the ability to get on computers and communicate with others.
Also the constant use of the air conditioners during this heat wave now in to its third month has caused our airconditioning unit to break down this weekend. Thanks for our partners who helped us with big oscillating fans on the day of the fire for the areas of the center we didn't have ac yet. And thanks to all of those of you who were able to find ways past the roadblocks to get here to the frontlines and bring assistance.

Also on Thursday we were able to pause and celebrate up at the kitchengardenpark, where the orchard has been planted too, as we received our $25,000 grant for the park and our production and distribution of healthy food in our zipcode here which has the lowest life expectancy of any area, by a wide fourteen years, in the Tulsa area. We look forward to it also being an economic stimulus for our community as well as a place for community connections. Thanks to Channel 6 News for covering the event. Last summer we were furiously trying to raise funds to just buy the abandoned homes on the acreage; this summer we are celebrating having bought the land, having cleared the homes, having planted garden beds and an orchard and kept both alive and productive in the worst summer in a long long time, and now with funds to keep the transformation going, with more to come in what we rightly call our Miracle Among the Ruins.

This week we are also keeping going our summer free daily lunch program for all under 18 years old, being held at Cherokee School. It was scheduled to have closed down on Friday but the Tulsa Schools asked us to keep it going because we are serving more children than any other area, and have been throughout the summer and not just when school is in session as at most sites; so it is costing us extra but we are keeping the program going an extra week and will finish on Friday, Aug. 12, closing down the last program in Cherokee School, the historic school for Turley which dates back into the early days of the 20th century but has been closed by school officials. We should find out this week Wednesday or Thursday if anyone has made a bid to the school district to buy the Cherokee building; if so we will begin evaluating that bid and its positive or negative effects on the community; we also are hoping the school district will work with us to allow us to keep up the grounds we have planted at the school in hopes it will decrease vandalism as the school sits empty in the heart of our community. Three summers ago I was writing about how kids in our area were going hungry in summer because they received free breakfast and lunch throughout the year at school but without school their families were not able to compensate in budgets; now we are feeding more than anywhere else, and even with Cherokee School closing, we are hoping to open up not just one but two more feeding sites for next summer.

We are into the thick of our efforts this summer for community based health in our area. We held our first focus groups this past Thursday, and this coming week we have three major events: Wednesday (note date change) Aug. 10 from 2 to 5 pm we will be doing our surveys on health with University of Oklahoma at the North Tulsa Farmers Market, inside at Tulsa Community College Northeast campus, giving our quick trip gift cards to those who participate; then Thursday, Aug. 11 we will have more focus groups at the Center (assuming we get AC fixed), and then we will finish with a Community Health FunFest of information and surveys and live music and garage sale and family fun and more at the center on Sat. Aug. 13 from 9 am to 1 pm. 5920 N. Owasso Ave. Come be a part of it, especially if you would like a table to set up info on a health related topic or group. Or to bring food clothing or donations. A year ago we were struggling to keep open our health clinic; now we are helping to develop and begin a radical health concept that will keep people out of clinics in the first based and use communities themselves again to foster health.

For the past few weeks we have been trying to let the public know that the Post Office is set on closing our local post office, even though it wasn't listed in the nationwide list of closures released through the media recently and which caused people here to celebrate falsely; finally the Tulsa World was able to track down a document proving the planned closure and stating publicly what had not been stated publicly before; only post office box holders had been made aware of,a possible closure. I had called officials in Oklahoma City and been told we definitely were being closed; the story that came out in the paper on Saturday seemed to leave open doubt or possibility they wouldn't be closed, but ours has been definitely determined to be closed on Sept. 10 regardless of any response from a community just now receiving media notice; just now has anything official been posted on the door of the post office about the closure for the community to see; we have already submitted 25 pages of petitions to the postal authorities and federal legislative offices protesting the closure on moral grounds and on the grounds that the government should help those who need help the most, not those who live in areas where they have the means to access alternatives and they have alternatives like computers and UPS and FEDEX which we don't here; there are no offices of those anywhere on the northside, especially not in our zipcode areas. To save funds the post office should shut the offices in Utica Square where people who frequent there have the means to drive here and who have other alternatives nearby, but folks here don't have the means to drive there, and it is going to be hard for them to even get the four miles to the nearest office on Apache. At the least we want the post office to talk with us and other community leaders about putting in a village post office at the community center and letting us staff it; we are exploring ways to designate a room for box offices too.

We celebrated all of this today in worship held up at the gardenpark because of the AC off in the Center; we broke the bread of communion into separate pieces, each piece stood for a spoken suffering, then we dipped each piece into the cup of hope and blessing during communion and named the signs of hope and thankfulness we have experienced too, and retold the story of Jesus walking on water, and how our community was entering into the chaos and storms of the world around us, called from our times of renewal and rest in summertime, how we were following a vision and trying to walk on water too and doing so, but also sinking down in the stormy waters, but how other hands were pulling us back up, back into community and out of our own separate egos and individual visions, restoring us with community, and we sang about putting down our burdens, and we sang about roses that will open one day, and we sang Dona Nobis Pacem, and Shalom Havyreem, and to Go Now in Peace, and we prayed the prayer of Jesus together, and then left our hilltop space around the picnic table and went to eat together and share more of our lives and our plans together for service together.

Social ethicist James Luther Adams wrote that the power of an organization is for the organization of power, to which I add, for the powerless. We are a pretty poor organization, in many ways here, but that vision of concentrating our abilities for the sake of those without power has shown itself lately to be a strong indicator of a strong organic community that exists not for itself but for its Mission, lifting up lives and neighborhoods, particularly those whom others have abandoned, and doing it through small acts of justice done with great love, all of which is how we strive to make visible in the world the spirit of the Sacred we find most definitely, though not exclusively, in the loving and liberating free radical Jesus way. We have so much still to develop here, in small and big ways, but we have been tested and we know the Spirit is deep and moving among us. And that each of you all is a part of that Spirit.

blessings, from all of us, and special thanks to the communities where I have been guest preaching lately, at Bay Area Unitarian Universalist Church in Houston, and Hope Unitarian Church in Tulsa; looking forward to preaching later this month at the UU Church of Stillwater OK, and to the start of a new semester at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa, to a ministerial study group in the Dallas Fort Worth area next week, to friends from Pathways UU Church in DFW who came to help, to all those in my Missional Progressives Reimaging the World (and then the Church) workshop at the Southwest UU Summer Institute at Western Hills Lodge east of Tulsa, where next year I will be program director and where colleague Rev. Thomas Schade will be theme speaker, coming from First Church in Worcester, MA to Western Hills July 22-27, 2012, and where Rev. Tony Lorenzon of Pathways in DFW will be the Sunset Preacher. and as always, more to come,

Ron
www.turleyok.blogspot.com
www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com
www.missionalprogressives.blogspot.com
www.uuchristian.org

The June issue Good News Online: Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, General Assembly Communion, Revival in D.C., Retreat at Glastonbury Abbey

Here is a link to the latest monthly online Good News issue from the Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship for Pentecost and Trinity Sunday and General Assembly and more this month. Latest news on all the exciting changes and programs for Revival 2012. Feel free to share with others.

http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=kzvsopdab&v=001XkDsT0Wlq8Gacw36jDlTwheUW0rcZ3AyznoI-2V7TCPZ-Hcyg_hq7oW0CAW7YfMO8SyLpI2NJH7yrWsDKzsw-VY6u02cCrZZAAGne7I-CkQYAIdBh7j1J1ZvN7FZ7aO5lRIHWQk-vbutEn1uBs8FWIAqiGJTIIjtB2vT1LPj2eJmuNn3dPjX8a5lZJXgH89AuupsLJzyGSCWKiQcMlFchBfAZjqU3P87cZ-cSlo6Okvg1mT0e_aISXNUl4EC6SBN7vwnzAmpxhBG1HLxYLqHngJJYvkKe0LYtOvcPdFI9wg64-HvxnWjwZZksSW6eBGc7ChQBWZtiefJEQ5GwQgGFgP0YtE_Vl0_ERIkmHHFWqi9lor6_MXe9Q%3D%3D&id=preview

Plus here is more on Pentecost Sunday and the liturgical season of Pentecost/Ordinary Time we have entered into, where the accent is on The Spirit moving into and through unexpected people and places...including sermons on progressive interpretations of Pentecost:

Pentecost
On Sunday, June 12 the church celebrated the Day of Pentecost and we entered the long liturgical season of Pentecost, or Ordinary Time. There has been, it seems, a resurgence of interest in the religious observance of Pentecost even among many different UU congregations. Many are coming to see what a powerfully particularly universalist message and story that we have been left in the Second Chapter of Acts. There are elements of our touchstone of continuous revelation, of visions and the ability to prophecy coming to all kinds of people, the affirmation of unity in diversity, and the yearning for a covenanted community focused on meeting real needs in the here and now, inspired by a Transcendent Spirit.

Here are just a few links to sermons and blogposts that delve into the spirit and the story of Pentecost in UU settings.
http://www.all-souls.org/sermons/20040606.htm"Found in Translation" by Rev. Rob Hardies of All Souls Unitarian Church of Washington, D.C.
http://www.frsuu.org/serm172.htm "Tongues of Fire" by the Rev. Harold E. Babcock at First Religious Society UU of Newburyport, Mass.
https://serenityhome.wordpress.com/tag/pentecost/ blogpost on Pentecost Day and Unitarian Universalism by the Rev. Fred Hammond, a UU minister in Mississippi and Alabama.

UUs Look at The Trinity

Here are some resources used by Pathways UU church in the Dallas Fort Worth area which looked at the new ways to view the Trinity. For Trinity Sunday coming up; see post below. This class is a good lens to see how theology can still engage us, and help us engage the world, and shows how UUs bring a nice wide lens to look at issues of christology.

The Trinity for Unitarians - Week 1, Overview and Method
Rev. Tony Lorenzen

Method

“You might say that unitarianism has become dogmatic for us — the Trinity being something that a "good" UU simply cannot believe in because we are, by default, anti-Trinitarians. I'd suggest instead that UUs celebrate theological liberalism as a method rather than as a set of theological conclusions.” – Chris Walton, Editor UU World (Philocrities).

Biblical Studies – historical critical method and the use of reason become the hallmark of anti-trinitarian theological method, yet many if not most of the Unitarian, Universalist and other “heretics” we encounter will use an “uncritical” approach to scripture in their justification for theological positions, even using “proof-texting” or citing scripture texts uncritically to support their views, well into the 19th century.

Heresy/Hertics

Heresy comes from a greek work meaning “to choose.” A heretic is someone who has not given up the right to choose what to think or what to believe. Heresy is measured in juxtaposition to orthodoxy or “right” thinking.

Arianism - from Arius (256-336) north African priest (leader). Believed Christ was of a different essence/nature (ousia) than God. Denied the doctrine of homousias, that Christ is of one being with “the Father” eternally begotten of the father.” Christ is a lesser created being. Jesus is “more than human,” but not one with God from the beginning. This is Channing’s Christ. Does not deal as well with a theology of the holy spirit, but we’ll get that in week four.

Adoptionism – Not the same thing as Arianism. Jesus is born of human parents (Joseph and Mary) and adopted by God as son at his baptism. This is argued by some scholars as being the view of the author of the Gospel of Mark's view and Saint Paul's view. Also seen as the view of many early Jesus communities by some. This is the view of the non-canonical Gospel of Hebrews, Gospel of Ebionites and Gospel of Nazoreans.

Socinianism – named after Laelius Socinus (dies 1562) and his nephew Faustus Socinus (died 1604) Socinians presage the Transcendentalists. Their teaching led to the Rakovian Catechism in Poland (1605). They insist on interpreting scripture with the use of reason. Deny the doctrine of justification and atonement of the cross and reject the idea of hell and see sacraments as only symbols. God can not be completely omniscient and there can not be a pre-existence Logos (or Christ), therefore Jesus is human, although as a divinely appointed mediator (savior), he can be worshipped. The holy spirit is a power of God, not another entity. Socinians refused to bear arms or hold public office.


Resources

1. Philocrities - Isaac Newton's anti-Trinitarianism in the news. Sunday, July 29, 2007 - http://www.philocrites.com/archives/003651.html
Discussion on blog post at web site by Chris Walton, editor of UU World Magazine. Blog is now inactive, but Chris keeps the site up as a reference and it’s a great reference for all types of matters and things UU related. This discussion is on the Trinity from a UU perspective. The comments thread is wonderful.

2. Progressive Church Planting - The Welcome Table, a free universalist christian missional community “Trinity Talk”- http://progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com/2007/08/trinity-talk.html
Blog of Rev. Ron Robinson, Executive Director of the UU Christian Fellowship.
This entry cites the Philocrities blog and names other resources for UU discussion of the trinity.
3. Park, David B. The Epic of Unitarianism. Beacon Press, Boston,1957. Out of Print.
4. Wintersteen, Prescott B. Christology in American Unitarianism: An Anthology of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Unitarian Theologians. UU Christian Fellowship, Boston, 1977. Out of Print. Copies still Available from the UUCF.
5. Ballou, Hosea. Ancient History of Universalism. Biblio BazaarReproduction Series. Originally published through Universalist publishing house, Boston, 1872.
6. Borg, Marcus. Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time. Harper Collins: New York, 1994.
7. Gulley, Phillip. If Grace is True. Harper Collins, New York, 2003.
8. The Church Fathers - http://www.ccel.org/fathers.html - an online free library of all the early Christian Church writings.

The Trinity for Unitarians – Part One
Jeff E. Harris
(November, 2010)

The Christian Trinity

Traditional Christian theology asserts that God’s identity can be described as “three persons in one Godhead” (Guthrie, 1994, p. 71).

Christians came to believe that Jesus was God. “The first Christians could not talk about the God if Israel who was their God too without talking about a man named Jesus” (Guthrie, 1994, p. 78).

Christians came to believe that God was also the Holy Spirit who descended on Jesus at his baptism (Luke 3:22) and filled Jesus’ followers after his death on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2-1-4).

“The same God who is God over us as God the Father and Creator, and God with and for us as the incarnate Word and Son, is also God in and among us as God the Holy Spirit” (Guthrie, 1994, p. 80).

“Trinitarian theology ‘assigns’ or ‘attributes’ different works to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit...”
• “When we think about God the Father…we think about God’s work as a powerful Creator, just Ruler, Protector, and Preserver of the world and all living things in it.”
• “When we think about God the Son, we think of God’s loving, self-giving work in Jesus Christ to reconcile, save, and liberate needy, sinful creatures and the created world.”
• “When we think about God the Holy Spirit, we think of God’s work to renew and transform human beings, human communities, and our whole natural environment…” (Guthrie, 1994, p. 85).

It is important to remember that a theology of the Trinity emerged over centuries of reflection and debate. The Christian scriptures only hinted at this view of God. After Jesus’ resurrection, the Gospel of Matthew describes the way Jesus commissioned his disciples with these words, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28: 19, NRSV)

A Trinitarian theology was formalized in the Nicene Creed in 325 CE but, at this time, the role of the Holy Spirit was not clarified. The Nicene Creed was a compromise between debating factions that pleased Emperor Constantine, who wanted a unified theology to unify his empire. Theologically, the Nicene Creed resolved one problem but created another. “Now at Nicaea the Church had opted for the paradox of the Incarnation, despite its apparent incompatibility with monotheism” (Armstrong, 1993, p. 113).

The role of the Holy Spirit was more fully developed by the Cappadocian bishops later in the 4th century: “God had a single essence (ousia) which remained incomprehensible to us—but three expressions (hypostases) which made him known” (Armstrong, 1993, p. 115).

For many Christians, particularly in the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches, “the Trinity only made sense as a mystical or spiritual experience” and these believers find that “the contemplation of the Trinity is an inspiring religious experience” (Armstong, 1993, p. 117).

A Hindu Perspective on Multiple Images of God

Huston Smith suggests that Hinduism uses polytheistic images to imagine God while also remembering that God cannot be imagined.

“Hinduism’s myths, her magnificent symbols, her several hundred images of God, her rituals…are matchmakers whose vocation is to introduce the human heart to what they represent but themselves are not” (Smith, 1991 ,p. 34).

“A symbol such as a multi-armed image, graphically portraying God’s astounding versatility and superhuman might, can epitomize an entire theology” (Smith, 1991, p. 34-35).

Here’s a Hindu prayer that Smith (1991, p. 34) uses to capture the tension between polytheism and monotheism:

O Lord, forgive three sins that are due to my human limitations:
Thou art everywhere, but I worship you here;
Thou art without form, but I worship you in these forms;
Thou needest no praise, yet I offer you these prayers and salutations.
Lord, forgive three sins that are due to my human limitations.

An Early Unitarian Viewpoint

In 1819, William Ellery Channing preached a famous sermon entitled, “Unitarian Christianity”, in which he made the following claims:

“We believe in the doctrine of God's UNITY, or that there is one God, and one only…

“We object to the doctrine of the Trinity, that, whilst acknowledging in words, it subverts in effect, the unity of God.”

“With Jesus, we worship the Father, as the only living and true God. We are astonished, that any man can read the New Testament, and avoid the conviction, that the Father alone is God.”

“Having thus given our views of the unity of God, I proceed in the second place to observe, that we believe in the unity of Jesus Christ. We believe that Jesus is one mind, one soul, one being, as truly one as we are, and equally distinct from the one God. We complain of the doctrine of the Trinity, that, not satisfied with making God three beings, it makes; Jesus Christ two beings, and thus introduces infinite confusion into our conceptions of his character.”

http://www.americanunitarian.org/unitarianchristianity.htm
A Contemporary UU view of the Trinity
Rev. Roger Bertschausen preached about the Trinity in April, 2000 at Fox Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, Appleton, WI. Here’s what he said:
“The strong, almost visceral reaction many Unitarian Universalists have to the Trinity sometimes mystifies me. Certainly this strong reaction is grounded in the roots of our faith: Unitarianism was, as its name boldly states, originally a strong reaction to the Trinity. But when I hear a strong UU reaction to the Trinity today--at least a good century or two removed from when the Trinity really mattered to most Unitarians--I'm perplexed. Don't you get it? I wonder. For most main-line Christians at least, the Trinity is a metaphor. It's a metaphor, a symbol. Just like the interdependent web is a metaphor for many of us Unitarian Universalists. The Trinity, like the multitude of Hindu gods, simply acknowledges the complexity of the divine and the need for humans to view the divine from multiple angles. One angle can't completely capture the divine. So often, though, we Unitarian Universalists take the Trinity literally, forgetting that it's a metaphor. When we take the Trinity literally, I think we make exactly the same mistake some fundamentalist Christians make when they take the Trinity literally.”
http://www.fvuuf.org/component/option,com_docman/task,doc_download/gid,192/Itemid,127/
One implication of this view is that it suggests that we can deconstruct and reconstruct theology in a way that is most meaningful and helpful for us.
Our Personal Response

How do you see the Trinity?

What do you want to do with the Trinity?
• Affirm it as an essential truth
• Reject it as an outdated doctrine
• Embrace it as a spiritual mystery
• Modify it in a personal way that makes it more useful


Over the next three weeks, we are going to look more closely at three images of God. We will be encouraging you to decide what you want to do with each of these images of God. You will have the opportunity to affirm, reject, embrace, or modify each of these images.

Part Two – God as Loving Parent

• A brief history of monotheism
• The Judeo-Christian Image of God as Father
• Advantages of this Metaphor
• Disadvantages of this Metaphor
• Alternative images – goddess, maya
• How can we modify this image?

Part Three – God’s Incarnation into Humanity

• A brief history of Incarnation Theology
• Other religious perspectives
• Advantages of this metaphor
• Disadvantages of this metaphor
• Alternative images – suffering servant, teacher
• How can we modify this image?

Part Four – God as Indwelling Spirit

• A brief history
• The Spirit in World Religions
• Contemporary Images
• Advantages of this metaphor
• Disadvantages of this metaphor
• Alternative images – emptiness, interbeing
• How can we modify this image?

The Trinity for Unitarians Week 2 – GOD
Rev. Tony Lorenzen


Unitarianism - God is One
The Shema (Dueteronomy 6:4) The Jewish “profession of faith”
Sh'ma Yis'ra'eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad. - Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.
Excerpts from Samuel Barrett, 1825 – Scriptural Arguments for Unitarianism:
1. 1.Because Jesus Christ is represented by the sacred writers to be as distinct a being from God the Father as one man is distinct from another.
2. 94. Because there are in the New Testament seventeen passages, wherein the Father is styled one or only God, while there is not a single passage in which the Son is so styled.
3. 95. Because there are 320 passages in which the Father is absolutely, and by way of eminence, called God; while there is not one in which the Son is thus called.
4. 96. Because there are 105 passages in which the Father is denominated God, with peculiarly high titles and epithets, whereas the Son is not once denominated.
5. 97. Because there are 90 passages wherein it is declared that all prayers and praises ought to be offered to Him, and that everything ought to be ultimately directed to his honor and glory; while of the Son no such declaration is ever made.
6. 98. Because of 1,300 passages in the New Testament wherein the word God is mentioned, not one necessarily implies the existence of more than one person in the Godhead, or that this one is any other than the Father.
7. 100. Because, in a word, the supremacy of the Father, and the inferiority of the Son, is the simple, unembarrassed, and current doctrine of the Bible; whereas, that of their equality or identity is clothed in mystery, encumbered with difficulties, and dependent, at the best, upon few passages for support.

Michael Servetus (1511-1553) – Burned at the stake by John Calvin in Geneva in 1553 for heresy for his On the Errors of the Trinity (1531). – Servetus is an Arian. His chief argument is with the ousias of the Nicene creed: “And so I admit one person of the Father, another Person of the Son, another Person of the Holy Spirit, three Persons in one Godhead and this is the true Trinity. But I should prefer not to use a word foreign to the scriptures, lest perchance in future the philosophers have occasion to go astray. And I have no controversy with the earlier writers because they employed this word sensibly.” Servetus doesn’t like the Greek ousias, implying God, Jesus and Holy Spirit share one BEING or ESSENCE. This concept is not found in the New Testament.

Francis David (1510-1579) – Transylvanian champion of Unitarianism. Studied for Catholic priesthood then converted to Lutheranism and Calvinism, before becoming Unitarian in theology. Was theologian to King John Sigismund and instrumental in the Diet of Torda (1568), establishing Unitarianism.
“Outside of God there is no other God, neither three, neither four, neither in substance, neither in persons, because the scripture nowhere teaches anything about a triple God.”
However, for David God gives Jesus divinity and Jesus is Christ is begotten by the holy spirit.


Universalism – All are Saved

Universalism is deeply and intimately tied to the idea of trinity, for there used to be a time (and for some it is still true) that if you didn’t believe in the Trinity the “right” way, God (all three parts of it) would damn you to hell forever. Universalism counters this with a God that seeks to save or love everyone and/or does away with the idea of hell. Thus the idea you have of the trinity isn’t as important as the experience you have of God.

“We assert that the Word, who is the Wisdom of God, shall bring together all intelligent creatures, and convert them to his own perfection, through the instrumentality of their free will and of their own exertions.” – Origen 185-254

“In the liberation of all, no one remains a captive.” Didymus, 309-395

“In the present life, God is in all, for his nature is without limits, but is not all in all. But in the coming life, when mortality is at an end and immortality granted, and sin no longer has any place, God will be all in all.” Theodoret the Blessed, 387-458

Since love in him was perfect and since love hates or envies no one, but includes everyone, even though we were all his enemies, surely he would not wish to exclude anyone.” Hans Denk, 1495-1527

“Every man has a measure of true and saving grace” – Robert Barclay, 1648-1690

“Give them not hell, but hope and courage. Preach kindness and the everlasting love of God” – John Murray, 1741-1813

“As to the justice of endless punishment, minds enjoying the liberty of free inquiry could easily detect the diabolical character of such justice as it is the exat opposite of the Divine nature, which is love. Such justice is evidently predicated on the false principle and ungodly practice of rendering evil for evil.” – Hosea Ballou 1771-1852

“Only when we se that we are part of the totality of the planet, not a superior part with special privileges, can we work effectively to bring about an earth restored to wholeness.” – Elizabeth Watson

The Trinity for Unitarians Week 3 – JESUS
Rev. Tony Lorenzen


Jesus - Christology – “Who do UU Say that I am?”

Mark 8:27-30
Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that I am?’ And they answered him, ‘John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.’ He asked them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Peter answered him, ‘You are the Messiah.’ And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.

No where does Jesus claim that he IS God.

Stepping Stones to a Human Jesus and today’s liberal or progressive Christianity

Calvinism: John Calvin (1509-1564) French Protestant writes Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536). Calvin’s theology is summarized by TULIP – interestingly, a TULIP is a response to the Arminian challenge. T-total depravity. U-unconditional election, L- limited atonement, I-irresistible grace, P-perseverance of the saints.

Arminianism: Dutch theologian Jacob Arminius (1560-1609) - God calls all people to Himself through Christ, whether or not this call is effectual depends upon the individual’s libertarian free will. Still the doctrine of the atonement, but it Christ on the cross was universal (for everyone) and each person is the decider of salvation based on their free will acceptance of grace and salvation. Channing is an Arminian (and then also a Unitarian). “The Arminians condemned equally the orthodox insistence on creeds and confessions of faith of human origin and the deistic confidence in natural reason unassisted by divine revelation.” – Wintersteen pg. 6

Unitarianism:
The Orthodox Unitarians: William Ellery Channing (April 7, 1780 – October 2, 1842), Andrews Norton (December 31, 1786-September 18, 1853), Henry Ware, Jr. (April 21, 1794 - September 22, 1843). They are all basically Arians.

“We believe firmly in the divinity of Christ’s mission and office and that he spoke with divine authority...we believe God dwelt in him, manifested himself through him, taught men by him and communicated his spirit…In Christ’s words we hear God speaking, in his miracles we see God acting, and in his character and life we see an unsullied image of God’s purity and love….” HERE IS THE SPLIT WITH THE ORTHODOX…”We say that the son can not be the same being as his own Father; that he, who was sent into the world to save it, cannot be the living God who sent him.”
- William Ellery Channing, “Objections to Unitarian Christianity Considered,” 1819


The Transcendentalists: Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), Theodore Parker (August 24, 1810-May 10, 1860).

“It is hard to see why the great truths of Christianity rest on the personal authority of Jesus more than the axioms of geometry rest on the personal authority of Euclid or Archimedes. The authority of Jesus, as of all teachers, one would naturally think, must rest on the truth of his words, and not their truth on his authority.” - Theodore Parker, The Transient and the Permanent in Christianity, 1841

The Moderns: Clayton Raymond Bowen, William Wallace Fenn, Charles E. Park.


“The resurrection stories in our Gospels are one and all legendary. The earliest faith in his resurrection, which is amply attested for us is in the Letters of Paul, conceived his spirit or personality to have escaped from the underworld of the dead on the third day (which soon came to be taken quite literally) and to have risen into the heavenly life with God. This did not involve any reanimation of the dead body and had no concern whatever with the grave.” - Clayton Raymond Bowen


The Progressive Christians: Marcus Borg, John Shelby Spong, the Jesus Seminar, The Search for the Historical Jesus and Progressive Christianity - “What Manner of Man is This?”

“I began to see Jesus as one whose spirituality-his experiential awareness of Spirit – was foundational for his life. This perception became the vantage point for what I have since come to understand as the key truth about Jesus: that in addition to being deeply involved in the social world of the everyday, he was also grounded in the world of the Spirit.” Marcus Borg – Meeting Jesus Again for the The First Time pg 15

Borg sees Jesus at a “Spirit Person”

God’s Incarnation into Humanity
The Trinity for Unitarians – Part Three
Outline prepared by Jeff E. Harris (2010)

Reflection Questions
• Who was Jesus? What were you taught growing up? What do you believe now?
• Is Jesus similar to or different than other religious founders like Moses, Buddha, or Muhammad?

Christianity – God Becomes Human
• Orthodox Christianity claims that Jesus is the only Son of God, existed in a spiritual form before his human birth, was conceived in a spiritual and not a biological way, and returned to be with God the Father after his death and resurrection.
• Jesus is seen as fully God and fully human. Jesus’ identity as Son of God is unique in history.

A brief history of Incarnation Theology
• The church’s view of Jesus’ grew gradually over time.
• In the earliest Gospel (Mark), when Jesus asks, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter declares, “You are the Messiah” (Mark 8:29).
• When Matthew retells the same story a couple decades later, Peter declares, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16).
• By the time the fourth gospel (John) was written, Jesus was described as the “the Logos” (the word). “The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
• It was not until the council of Nicea (325 A.D.) that a majority of church leaders agreed that Jesus was divine and equal to God the Father. Even then, not everyone agreed. Here is what the Nicene Creed says about Jesus:
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.

Other Religious Perspectives
• “In Hinduism, an Avatar means the form of a deity and usually refers to an incarnation of God or His aspects…” Hindus recognize ten primary avatars of Vishnu including Krishna who taught about the nature of the Supreme Being and the different processes of yoga. Some Hindus believe that the Buddha was another avatar of Vishnu. (www.hinduwebsite.com)
• The Bahai faith sees Jesus as one of many Manifestations of God. “Bahá'u'lláh explained that God, the Creator, has intervened and will continue to intervene in human history by means of chosen Messengers. These Messengers, whom Bahá'u'lláh called ‘Manifestations of God ,’ are principally the Founders of the major revealed religions, such as Abraham, Moses, Buddha, Zoroaster, Jesus, Muhammad, and so forth.” (info.bahai.org)
• Muslims recognize Jesus as an important prophet but firmly reject an incarnation theology and consider the Christian view of Jesus’ divinity as blasphemous. Allah has no son. (Qur’an 18:4-5).
Contemporary Scholarship
• Liberal New Testament scholars believe that Jesus “did not understand himself to be God, or God the Son, incarnate” (Hick, 2005, p. 27).
• Stephen Patterson (1998) described the experience of the earliest Christians: “In this person they had come to know who God is.” “The gospel writers saw in the events surrounding Jesus’ life a significance deep enough to be called ‘Immanuel…God with us.’ (p. 9)
• John Hick suggested that we can understand the incarnation as a metaphor demonstrating “that Jesus was a human being exceptionally open and responsive to the divine presence” (Hick, 2005, p. 105) indicated in these three ways:
o God was acting through him on earth and was in this respect ‘incarnate’ in Jesus
o Jesus ‘incarnated’ the ideal of human life in openness and response to God
o Jesus ‘incarnated’ a love that is a finite reflection of the infinite divine love
• Marcus Borg pointed out that all Christological affirmations are metaphors:
o “Jesus was not literally a door, a vine, a light, or a loaf of bread…
o “Jesus is the Word of God, Wisdom of God, Son of God, lamb of God, light of the world, great High Priest…
o “It is not that one of these is literally true and the rest ‘only’ metaphors. Rather, all are metaphors” (Borg & Wright, 1999, p. 150).
• Exclusive Christological claims about Jesus can be seen as “love language.” “And like all love language, it made spontaneous and abundant use of superlatives and exclusives: ‘You’re the most beautiful person in the world.’ ‘You’re the only one for me.’” (Knitter, 2009, p. 124)
• When Christians claim that Jesus is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14.6) this can be seen as the church’s love language.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Incarnation Theology
• Incarnation theology makes God more tangible. It may be easier to imagine and love God in human form compared to an ineffable divine mystery.
• If Christians follow the only religious leader that is really God, they have an advantage over other religious traditions.
• If Jesus is seen as unique and superior, Christian’s may not be open to spiritual wisdom from other traditions.
• John Hick (2005) pointed out that exclusive claims about the superiority of Christianity have been used to support religious persecution, imperialism, and sexism.

Personal Response – What do you want to do with the idea of incarnation?
• Affirm it as an essential truth
• Reject it as an outdated doctrine
• Embrace it as a spiritual mystery
• Modify it in a personal way that makes it more useful

References
Borg, M. J. & Wright, N. T. (1999). The meaning of Jesus: Two visions.
Hick, J. (2005). The metaphor of God incarnate: Christology in a pluralistic age (2nd ed.).

God as Father
The Trinity for Unitarians Part Two – Outline prepared by Jeff E. Harris (2010)

Reflection Questions
• What does God look like? When you imagine God, what do you picture in your mind?
• Where do these images of God come from? How have they changed for you over time?

A Brief History of Monotheism
Egypt – A failed attempt to recognize a single deity
• Most ancient religions were polytheistic, worshipping many gods and goddesses, each performing different functions.
• The first attempt to create a monotheistic religion occurred in Egypt during the reign of Amenhoptep IV who became pharaoh in 1379 B.C. “The pharaoh changed his name to Akhenaten (the glorious spirit of Aten) and, in a ‘great Hymn,’ proclaimed Re-Herakhte, whose symbol is Aten, the solar disk, to be the ‘Sole God, like unto whom there is no other!’”(Stark, 2007, p. 157).
• “Re-Herakhte was not just a Supreme God ruling over a pantheon of lesser divinities, but the One God” (Stark, 2007, p. 157). Akhenaten’s theology stressed God’s goodness and his blessings. The new religion did not include a moral code but expected people to be grateful.
• Akhenaten shut down temples that worshipped other gods, put powerful priests out of work, and did away with popular religious festivals and public holidays in a way that “alienated the public as well as the elites” (Stark, 2007, p. 161).
• After Akhenaten’s death, pharaohs restored the old gods and goddesses, temples were rebuilt, and the polytheistic priesthood was restored (Stark, 2007). Monotheism was a failure.
Persia – Dualistic Monotheism
• Zoroaster was a prophet from Persia who may have lived in the sixth Century B.C. He was trained as a priest in the prevailing polytheistic religion but had a vision of Ahura Mazda at about age 30.
• “Having summoned Zoroaster to serve him, Ahura Mazda revealed that there is only One God—that he, Ahura Mazda, is the eternal creator and ruler of the universe” (Stark, 2007, p. 164).
• “Zoroaster’s revelation confronted the problem of evil—God is engaged in a battle with the inferior Angra Mainyu, the ‘Fiendish Spirit’ who causes calamities and leads human into evil” (Stark, 2007, p. 164-167).
• “Many regard dualistic monotheism as the most important contribution made by Zoroastrianism to the evolution of religion” (Stark, 2007, p. 165). Dualistic monotheism posits a good God struggling with another spiritual being who is evil. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam may have inherited dualistic monotheism from Zoroaster.
Judaism – From polytheism to monolatry to monotheism
• Early Judaism was polytheist. The Hebrew scripture depicts Yahweh competing for the attention of polytheistic gods like Baal. I Kings 18 records a show down that the prophet Elijah arranged between Baal and Yahweh (the LORD). Baal is unable to produce fire but Yahweh is able to answer Elijah’s prayer and consume a burnt offering with fire. After this contest, 450 of Baal’s prophets were killed.
• Afterwards, in I Kings 19, Elijah meets Yahweh on a mountaintop. Elijah experienced wind, an earthquake, and a fire, but Yahweh was not in these elements. And then Elijah experienced “a sound of sheer silence” (I Kings 19: 12 NRSV), representing Yahweh’s presence. “Unlike the pagan deities, Yahweh was not in any of the forces of nature but in a realm apart” (Armstrong, 1993, p. 27)
• Judaism came to advocate monolatry—allegiance to a single God. “Elijah wasn’t necessarily claiming Baal didn’t exist (the monotheistic position), just that he didn’t deserve the respect of Israelites” (Wright, 2009, p. 132).
• The late Jewish prophets—like Ezekiel and Isaiah—became monotheistic and described Yahweh as the only God, the creator of the universe, and often depicted him as a king.
• Jewish monotheism may have been heavily influenced by Zoroastrianism during the exile in Babylon. (Stark, 2007, ch. 4)

God as Father
Judaism
• Describing God as father is a very late development in Judaism.
• “For you are our father, though Abraham does not know us and Israel does not acknowledge us; you, O LORD, are our father; our Redeemer from of old is your name.” (Isaiah 63: 16 NRSV)
• “Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us? Why then are we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our ancestors?” (Malachi 2:10 NRSV)
Christianity
• Jesus taught his followers to pray to God as father: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven…” (Matthew 6: 9-10)
• In many of his parables (such as the prodigal son in Luke 15:11-32), Jesus encourages us to think of God as a loving father.
• Father became the dominant image of God in Christianity. Paul follows Jesus’ lead in referring to God as our father: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (I Corinthians 1:3)
Advantages of Imagining God as Father
• Imagining God as father makes God more tangible. Most of us were cared for by loving parents. It is hard to relate to an ineffable divine mystery.
• Modern Americans don’t readily relate to the Jewish image of God as king.
Disadvantages of Imagining God as Father
• Imagining God as father is a form of anthropomorphism–attributing human features to a nonhuman.
• What is you did not grow up with a loving father? If your father was distant, absent, or abusive, imagining God as father may distort your image and create a barrier to spirituality.
• Imagining God as father encourages us to think of God as male rather than female.

Female Images of God
• Ancient religions often worshipped female deities like Gaia, the primal Greek earth goddess.
• Feminists like Merlin Stone (1976) believe that patriarchal religions like Judaism and Christianity replaced earlier Goddess religions throughout the ancient world. Matriarchal religions may have treated women better than patriarchal religions. How we imagine God may influence how we treat one another.

Our Personal Response
• What do you want to do with the image of God as father?
• Do you want to modify this image in a personal way that makes it more useful?

References
Armstrong, K. (1993). A History of God. New York: Ballantine.
Stark, R. (2007). Discovering God: The origins of the great religions and the evolution of belief. New York: HarperCollins.
Stone, M. (1976). When God was a Woman. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace.
Wright, R. (2009). The evolution of God. New York: Little, Brown and Company

Knittter, P. F. (2009). Without Buddha I could not be a Christian.
Patterson, S. J. (1998). The God of Jesus: The historical Jesus and the search for meaning

God as Spirit
The Trinity for Unitarians – Part Four
Outline prepared by Jeff E. Harris (2010)

Reflection Questions
• What is a spirit? What does it mean to you to be “filled with the spirit?”
• What does it mean to have a spiritual awakening or a spiritual encounter?

Popular Culture: Star Wars
Obi-Wan Kenobi teaches Luke Skywalker about the Force
• The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.
• A Jedi can feel the Force flowing through him... Let go your conscious self and act on instinct... Your eyes can deceive you. Don't trust them... Stretch out with your feelings.

God’s Spirit in Hebrew and Christian Scripture
• Genesis 1:1-2. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.”
• Isaiah 11:1-2. “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.”
• Luke 3:21-22. “Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” (
• Acts 2:1-4. “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.”
• One way to interpret the Pentecost story is to see that each of us can be filled with God’s Spirit in the same way that Jesus was.
Hokmah and Sophia
• In the Hebrew scripture, Hokmah was seen as a feminine personification of wisdom.
• The Jewish idea of Hokma may have evolved into the Christian idea of the Holy Spirit.
• In both Hebrew (Hokmah) and Greek (Sophia) the word for wisdom in feminine.
• The Spirit of God (pneuma tau theo) is seen by some as the feminine aspect of the Trinity.

Other Religious Sources
Hinduism
• Hinduism uses the word Brahman to name the absolute, outer, transcendent source. The word Atman is used to describe the human self.
• Wayne Teasdale described the relationship between Brahman and Atman in this way: “Through higher states of meditation, mystic seers contact Brahman, which opens the way to inner awareness of self, or Atman, the immanent presence of the Brahman within all beings and every particle of reality. Atman is Brahman and Brahman is Atman.” (Teasdale, 1999, p. 53)
• “Each of us can arrive at this same self-knowledge about our ultimate identity in God and as God—as Brahman….The mystic ‘hears’ and ‘feels’ God’s self-awareness, and shares in it to the level of declaring, with Brahman, ‘I am Brahman.’” (Teasdale, 1999, p. 54)
Buddhism
• The Buddhist term Sunyata can be translated as Emptiness (being able to receive) or as InterBeing. “It’s the interconnected state of things that is constantly churning out new connections, new possibilities, new problems, new life.” (Knitter, 2009, p. 12)
• Paul Knitter asked, “Is Emptiness or InterBeing an appropriate symbol for God? …Such a God of Emptiness and InterBeing is closer to what Christian mystics try to talk about when they describe their experiences of God.” (Knitter, 2009, p. 18)

Progressive Christianity
• Elizabeth Johnson (1992) described the Biblical view of Spirit: “When the Bible wants to speak about the transcendent God’s creative presence and activity in the world, it turns to words that carry the connotation of divine outreach, terms such as spirit, angel, wisdom, and word. Spirit, literally meaning a blowing wind, a storm, a stream of air, breath in motion, or something dynamically in movement and impossible to pin down, points to the livingness of God who creates, sustains, and guides all things and cannot be confined. Divine Spirit is not understood to be independently personal…but is the creative and freeing power of God let loose in the world.” (p. 82-83)
• Marcus Borg (1997) suggested that Spirit can be used as a primary image for God (rather than King/Lord/ Father): “As a root metaphor for the sacred, Spirit images God as a nonmaterial reality pervading the universe as well as being more than the universe. As used in the Bible (and as used here), its meaning is broader than the specific Christian doctrine of ‘the Holy Spirit’ which sees it as one aspect of God. But in the Bible, Spirit is used comprehensively to refer to God’s presence in creation, in the history of Israel, and in the life of the early church. Its meaning is sufficiently broad to make it a synonym for the sacred.” (p. 72)

Advantages and Disadvantages of Imagining God as an Indwelling Spirit
• This image allows God to be within us and we can let God work through us.
• God as Spirit is less anthropomorphic than images of “father” or “son.”
• It may be harder to relate to God if this Spirit can not be pictured in our mind.

Our Personal Response: Primary and Secondary Images of the Divine
• The Christian Trinity offers us three images of God. Do you want to personally embrace any of these as a primary image of the divine?
• Do you want to add images from other sources to complement or balance your primary image?

References
Borg, M. J. (1997). The God We Never Knew. New York: HarperCollins.
Johnson, E. A. (1992). She who is. New York: Crossroad.
Knittter, P. F. (2009). Without Buddha I could not be a Christian. Oxford, England: Oneworld.
Teasdale, W. (1999). The Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World’s Religions. Novato, CA: New World Library.