Who Are We and What Has God Provided? - A Deeper Life Together

Who Are We and What Has God Provided? - A Deeper Life Together - 12 Sept. 2022

Published: Mon, 09/12/22

Resources for A Deeper Life Together
in our Churches and Neighborhoods

Curated by The Englewood Review of Books

12 September 2022

Who Are We and What Has God Provided?

Every member of our leadership team for the Cultivating Communities project has other initiatives to which they also devote their energies. One member, Jonathan "Pastah J" Brooks, is not only a pastor on the west side of Chicago, he is also a board member for the Parish Collective. In this role with the Parish Collective, Pastah J has helped create a series of resources that explore the parish dynamics of a congregation's engagement with their place. We're delighted to share these resources from the Parish Collective below, as well as other resources that help our congregations reflect on the vital questions of who we are and what has God provided for us?

Cultivating Communities works alongside cohorts of churches that are in close-proximity to each other, providing resources and helping them discern what it might look like for their congregations and their places to flourish. Our first cohort (in the mountains of East Tennessee) is now underway, and our second (on the south and west side of Chicago) will be launching this fall.

(Learn more about our cohorts and the Cultivating Communities Learning Journey)

Why am I receiving this email?
Either you are involved in some way with the Cultivating Communities project

(or our Facebook group), or you subscribed to the Englewood Review's Daily Book Morsel email (learn more about the transition of this list)

What does it mean for us to be a parish-minded church? Cultivating Communities leadership team member Jonathan "Pastah J" Brooks introduces this question, and a very helpful series of resources related to it that our friends at the Parish Collective have created. These resources guide us into a deeper and richer relationship with our neighbors and our place. (via Parish Collective)

The church is not broke. Yes, the church is in decline in some ways -- but religious institutions control billions of dollars of assets. What if we invested that money in mission? An interview with entrepreneur Mark Elsdon, author of We Aren’t Broke: Uncovering Hidden Resources for Mission and Ministry (via Faith & Leadership)

Ever since Jan. 6, 2021, the term “Christian nationalism” has proliferated in discourse, but the precise definition is up for debate. In their latest book, The Flag and the Cross, sociologists Samuel L. Perry and Philip Gorski explain Christian nationalism as a constellation of beliefs — that the founding of the United States was “divinely inspired” or that God is invested in the success of the U.S. — that manifest in political goals. (via Sojourners)
Click Here to read an interview
with these authors ...

If your church is like mine, whether it has an established anti-racism committee or not, it has various lay administrative committees which wield influence in carrying out or supervising the routines of the church organization. The new book Wait, Is This Racist?: A Guide to Becoming an Anti-Racist Church is structured to build a specific entry point of discussion into how each particular arm of church administration—building and grounds tasks, pastoral care ministry, music repertoire, liturgy crafting—has its own opportunity to perpetuate or to resist an active or passive culture of white supremacy. (via The Englewood Review of Books)

- Lectionary Poetry -

Birds of Prey
Claude McKay

Their shadow dims the sunshine of our day,
As they go lumbering across the sky,
Squawking in joy of feeling safe on high,
Beating their heavy wings of owlish gray.
They scare the singing birds of earth away
As, greed-impelled, they circle threateningly,
Watching the toilers with malignant eye,
From their exclusive haven — birds of prey.
They swoop down for the spoil in certain might,
And fasten in our bleeding flesh their claws.
They beat us to surrender weak with fright,
And tugging and tearing without let or pause,
They flap their hideous wings in grim delight,
And stuff our gory hearts into their maws.

(Selected to accompany Amos 8:4-7,
one of this week's Lectionary Readings)

Read all the Lectionary Poetry
selections for this week...
from The Englewood Review of Books

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