I grew up surrounded by Jesus stuff and church people. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know about God. I went to church every Sunday and went to Bible classes and chapel services during the week at the Christian school I attended; it even seemed like all my extra-curricular activities were somehow connected… Read more »
On April 26, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake devastated the country of Nepal. More than 4,000 deaths have been reported, and more than 8 million people have been affected. As a community, we are responding to this tragedy in two ways: prayer and relief. We are praying faithfully for the people of Nepal—for recovery, healing, safety, protection,… Read more »
We’ve been sharing lunch together as a community after the 11:00 service for a while now, and I love it. It can be difficult to set work and preoccupations aside, but a table (and a meal on top of it) offers us an invitation to just sit around in beautiful inefficiency with no agenda other… Read more »
After celebrating Father’s Day last weekend, I found myself thinking about a popular metaphor we use to talk about God: our Heavenly Father. Metaphor gives us relatable ways to talk about God, but often we assume a metaphorical way of speaking about God is literally true—like God is a father—and we forget anything we can… Read more »
In the Dark: thoughts on Good Friday
Good Friday might be the toughest Christian holiday to celebrate. I even feel uncomfortable saying “celebrate” because today we commemorate the gruesome, terrifying, scandalous death of Jesus. It’s a dark story. His friends betray him, desert him, and deny him. His enemies capture him, torture him, and crucify him. His death is excruciating and humiliating…. Read more »
“Being interrupted is my favorite.” Said no one ever. Except, right now, being interrupted kind of is my favorite. For Awakening Church’s 40 Days of Prayer, I’ve been receiving twice-daily texts with prompts to pray. Together, we are praying that God will work in us and through us as a community for our city, families,… Read more »
Confession: Sometimes I don’t totally get Jesus’s metaphors. This is a bit embarrassing because I’m a writer and teacher, fairly well-read and well-practiced in the art of language, so this kind of stuff is usually easy for me. But when it comes to shepherds and gardeners, masters and servants, and other particularities of ancient Hebrew… Read more »
I’m so excited for my neighborhood to be decked out in its full Christmas garb, and looking for the new additions to the scene is a kind of nightly ritual for me right now. Coming home from work I drive through my neighborhood extra slowly, craning my neck to see which house on my block… Read more »
A note to Awakening Church on our anniversary: Awakening Church, I cannot believe we have been together for a year. Well, longer if you include the time when I was just checking you out and you were just a dream… our flirting phase before we made our relationship Facebook official. In any case, it’s been… Read more »
The Lord’s Prayer At Awakening Church we are spending our Sundays during the month of August praying, which is a lovely continuation of a rhythm I’ve found myself in this summer while Jay Kim and I co-taught the Summer Study Theology track. As we journeyed through Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship, we started every… Read more »
I loved seeing our community at Awakening Church at one service this week, and while we were worshipping outside, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of togetherness. I never get tired of talking about community. I often viscerally respond to the presence of good community, even in the most ordinary experiences, like sharing an amazing… Read more »
Death: Our Reality But Not Our End
This season in the church calendar post-Easter but pre-Pentecost, gives us a chance to pause the story at probably the best part. Jesus is not dead—he is alive and is with us. Lent is five or six solemn weeks of sacrifice, contemplation, and repentance, where we experience the sufferings of Jesus: his forty days spent… Read more »