Category: The Roofless Church
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Tools for Creating Greater Belonging
Belonging is an essential need for every person. And, creating greater belonging is the main ingredient for community thriving and healthy democracy. But what do we do when our ability to foster belonging reaches its limits? Or when we are frustrated with being excluded from the communities that profess to be welcoming?
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Is This the Face of Fear?
Someone responded to a poem I wrote by saying I was an ignorant religious person, divisive, and a bad writer. I’m not fishing for compliments. So, don’t worry about filling my bucket. Rather, I’m just wanting to look at this philosophically. What I’m thinking about is the question of how or if one should try…
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The Alpha and the Omega: Why Endings Are as Important as Beginnings
Endings matter because the final moments of a group’s togetherness can substantially influence the entire experience. The ending can modify the experience, make it better or worse, embed it deeply in memory or, absent a strong close, can dilute an experience into something that happened, but mattered little. Tim McNamara – https://sweetunrest.com/ending-well-treating-classes-like-gatherings-part-three/ One of the…
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Gender and Pay Equality is Not a Threat. And yet…
Whenever I think about gender and pay equality, I think of my highly intelligent mother who was never treated fairly in any workplace that she ever worked in outside of a family business. And even when she decided to determine her own destiny, by creating her own business, JoSi and Sons, I saw people try…
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Employment, Engagement, and Empowerment: The Way of Enough
When I entered seminary back in 2009, it was because, after working on a very disappointing Diversity Recruiting project with a certain company, I became convinced that a seminary degree would be just what I needed to “evangelize” the good news of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging in organizations. After all, at their best, I…
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Don’t Lose the Vision When You’re in the Valley
Many times in my life, I’ve come to the top of a mountain, metaphorically speaking, only to realize that my journey is leading me to yet another mountain. For years, I’ve tried to articulate this path in a way that is both descriptive and prescriptive for those who may also find themselves on a precipice…
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Take This Life w/ Lyrics
This song is essentially a prayer and was written to express a desire to live as fully into the light of the Creator’s Love as I can. The youth at the church I used to serve challenged me to perform it in front of our congregation which has a predominantly white membership after hearing me…
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Indigenous Peoples’ Day – Bearers of the Way
In many ways, this was one of the most taxing messages that I’ve delivered. Working on it compelled me to stare into a the pain of proselytizing and missionary activity around the world where people were robbed of their lands and culture and often left with nothing more than the very Bible that was used…
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Healing Nightmares
All of my life I have had really intense dreams, many of which are so solid feeling that when I awake, I initially can’t tell if I was dreaming or actually had the experience. Historically my dreams increase intensity until I listen. In recent weeks, l have had some really heavy ones. I am certain…
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The Case for Living Loveward (Full Sermon)
There’s something about the illusion of the better and easier and more predictable yesterday that often keeps us from going toward the unpredictable but more liberating future that awaits us just on the other side of doing something different. And it is toward this that I believe is the call of living Loveward.
The Roofless Church 