Recent Events

Fishing For People 
January 24, 2021

Last month I had the privilege of sharing some thoughts on Mark 1:14-21 with one of our local congregations here in Lewisburg, WV via Zoom.

Recommended Reading for February

Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own
by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • James Baldwin grew disillusioned by the failure of the civil rights movement to force America to confront its lies about race. In our own moment, when that confrontation feels more urgently needed than ever, what can we learn from his struggle?

NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY CHICAGO TRIBUNE AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND TIME • Shortlisted for the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice • “A powerful study of how to bear witness in a moment when America is being called to do the same.”—Time

We live, according to Eddie S. Glaude Jr., in a moment when the struggles of Black Lives Matter and the attempt to achieve a new America have been challenged by the election of Donald Trump, a president whose victory represents yet another failure of America to face the lies it tells itself about race. From Charlottesville to the policies of child separation at the border, his administration turned its back on the promise of Obama’s presidency and refused to embrace a vision of the country shorn of the insidious belief that white people matter more than others.

We have been here before: For James Baldwin, these after times came in the wake of the civil rights movement, when a similar attempt to compel a national confrontation with the truth was answered with the murders of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. In these years, spanning from the publication of The Fire Next Time in 1963 to that of No Name in the Street in 1972, Baldwin transformed into a more overtly political writer, a change that came at great professional and personal cost. But from that journey, Baldwin emerged with a sense of renewed purpose about the necessity of pushing forward in the face of disillusionment and despair.

In the story of Baldwin’s crucible, Glaude suggests, we can find hope and guidance through our own after times, this Trumpian era of shattered promises and white retrenchment. Mixing biography—drawn partially from newly uncovered interviews—with history, memoir, and trenchant analysis of our current moment, Begin Again is Glaude’s endeavor, following Baldwin, to bear witness to the difficult truth of race in America today. It is at once a searing exploration that lays bare the tangled web of race, trauma, and memory, and a powerful interrogation of what we all must ask of ourselves in order to call forth a new America.

Social Jesus Blog on Patheos

The Falling and Rising of Many (Part 1)

This is the intrinsic reason why our collective thriving depends on raising up some in society while those who have gained too much power, privilege, property, or profit must fall back down. Read more

The Falling and Rising of Many (Part 2)

A return to social equity always feels like “loss” for those who are privileged and powerful. Read more

The Falling and Rising of Many (Part 3)

These are questions worth wrestling with as we enter this new year. Read more

 

Articles posted each week at https://www.patheos.com/blogs/socialjesus/

 

 

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Weekly Zoom HeartGroup on Wednesday Nights

Each Wednesday evening, Glendale City Church will be hosting a Zoom-HeartGroup led by Herb Montgomery.  Our discussion each week will focus on the content in Renewed Heart Ministries’ weekly eSight articles and the Jesus For Everyone podcast published each Friday.  The time of each Zoom session will be on Wednesdays at 7:00 p.m. Pacific/10:00 p.m. Eastern.

For more information and for the link to participate each week, contact RHM here.

 

 

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A Special Message to Our HeartGroups

We are continuing to ask all HeartGroups not to meet together physically at this time. Please stay virtually connected and to practice physical distancing. You can still be there for each other to help ease anxiety and fears. When you do go out, please maintain a six-foot distance with others, continue to wear a mask, and wash your hands often to keep the spread of the virus at bay.

This is also a time where we can practice the resource-sharing and mutual aid found in the gospels. Make sure the others in your group have what they need. We are more interconnected than we realize, as this has proven. And we need each other during this time.

How many ways can you take care of others while we are physically apart?

 

 

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