The Roofless Church

Category: Wake Up

  • Bias By Us: How Our Unconscious Programs Us to Harm the Other

    Bias By Us: How Our Unconscious Programs Us to Harm the Other

    Black, White, or Other? “Pedro, Pedro, go back to Mexico.” “Pedro, Pedro, go back to Mexico.” “Pedro, Pedro, go back to Mexico.” Being Black and growing up in the South—between Virginia and Mississippi—with a name like Pedro Senhorinha Ramos Montero Silva brought in many unwelcomed experiences in my life. One of which was the othering…

  • Powerful Beyond Measure – Part 1

    Powerful Beyond Measure – Part 1

    I remember when I first received the email. I was sitting in my cubicle—a place that didn’t reflect my inner life. I don’t remember who the email was from. But, it was one of those inspirational emails that starts off lifting your spirits and then lets you down by saying that you have to send…

  • There is No Competition

    There is No Competition

    I might be going through a midlife crisis (MLC). A word that etymologically means, “the point at which change must come, for better or worse.” I remember that whenever I heard about MLCs growing up, I thought that whatever it was, it would never happen to me because the way MLCs are typically characterized, it…

  • Rise and Shine: Dispel the Darkness By Being the Light

    On November 15, 2016, a week after the election of DJT, two friends and I facilitated a mindfulness meditation on dismantling racism that we called, “Peeking Through the Blinds”. Kara Dansky, of One Thousand Arms led us through the meditations and Brian Rocheleau (aka Rosh), of The Blind Cafe, provided the music. I set up…

  • Doomed to Significance

    What follows is a message I delivered at Second Baptist Church of Boulder on October 30, 2016 for their youth Sunday. The premise of the message is that whatever we do or don’t do has an impact on the world. The message was inspired by the Sermon on the Mount and a conversation I had…

  • Raise Your Voice: Healing Society Through Conversational Risks

    Raise Your Voice: Healing Society Through Conversational Risks

    Living in Colorado, I see a lot of people taking extreme risks and pushing themselves to their physical limits. At least in the Boulder area, it is a way of life for many people.  If I drive up the canyon, I see people taking risks on a rock face. They get a hold on a…

  • In The Name of Justice

    In recent sermon, I chose to write a letter to my name in order to express to the congregation how in our society something as small as our name can be used by some people to discriminate. I further illustrated my point by giving them a list of famous people who changed their names because…

  • The Audience That Isn’t There

    Then Jesus called a little child to Him, set him in the midst of them, and said, “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.  Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom…

  • God Is Still Seeking

    “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in…

  • Switched At Birth

    For most of us, our name was the first lie we were ever told.  Many of our parents or guardians, good intentioned as they might have been, looked at us with their heads full of ideas of who we were and who we were to become and said, “Let’s name him or her _____.” And…