FTE Undergraduate Fellow ('09) and FTE Congregational Fellow ('11)
Candler School of Theology
October 21, 2011
Fifty years ago, someone would have guessed it was just a fancy
sandwich: LGBTQ. Now, it has become a global game of tug-of-war with
communion bread, inevitably creating a “winner” and “loser” dichotomy.
Churches around the world—and certainly across America—are spinning
themselves nauseous over what to do with lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) people, and I think it is
time we reevaluate things mid-spin.
The conversation about LGBTQ people and the church needs to happen in a
graceful space that is outside of the loom of legislative consequence.
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October 06, 2011
Live Blog from our 2011 Calling Congregations Conference
House for All Sinners and Saints
is a community of theologians of the cross. Of such theologians,
Martin Luther famously argued they were made “by living, nay by dying
and by being damned.” It is such a belief that informs HFASS’ ethos of
“anti-excellence, pro-participation.” We have become the church we are,
not through pursuing programs, but by living, dying, and yes, sometimes
being damned, through the messy, unclean, and ecstatically wonderful
task of being a church of producers, not consumers; participants, not
spectators; failures, not models.
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Adjunct Faculty in Voice and Studies in Contemporary Society
Episcopal Divinity School
October 03, 2011
In October 2010, I was sent to Atlanta to attend the Calling Congregations Conference with a small team of my colleagues from Life Together, the Episcopal Service Corps
young adult intern program in Boston. I experienced VocationCARE as a
set of practices that intend to enliven individuals and communities,
with the potential to deepen our relationship to God, to ourselves, to
each other and our communities.
Particularly within the context of the US, with its unique history of
white supremacy and the concomitant suppression of peoples’ relationship
to their own heritages and creation of a mythical US homogeneity, I am
excited and encouraged by FTE’s new commitment to thoroughly welcoming
the body and its wisdom and potential for transformation, coupled with a
commitment to anti-racist practices and learnings. These commitments
have...
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September 29, 2011
Last September, Arrington Chambliss and I attended FTE’s
VocationCARE: A Deeper Look retreat in Atlanta, GA. We had been invited
to learn about the VocationCARE work for churches and spiritual
communities. We were interested because of collaborative work we are
doing with young adults and congregations. We were learning the tools
of VocationCARE to carry back to our Life Together and Leadership
Develop Initiative teams that are working to revitalize church
communities through intentional community and team-based missional
leadership practices.
In one particularly memorable session, we were asked to envision what
the church of our dreams and strivings would look like. We were asked
to be specific—as if we were walking into this church for the first
time.
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September 26, 2011
I almost got stuck in a snow storm in Indianapolis back in February. On
my last day in town, with my flight home cancelled because of ice, I
found myself at an impromptu lunch meeting with Rev. Stephen Lewis. At
the time, Rev. Lewis was serving as Vice President of Program for the Fund for Theological Education (FTE), and he began telling us about the exciting work that FTE has done in developing what it calls VocationCARE.
As Rev. Lewis described how they developed VocationCARE, incorporating the brilliant leadership insights of Otto Scharmer and the spirituality of education activist Parker Palmer,
I was impressed and excited to see how we might be able to incorporate
what FTE has created into the overall offering we've been organizing for
Hope Partnership for Missional Transformation.
That chance meeting with Rev. Lewis led to...
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Student
Harvard Divinity School
Intern (2009-2011) at Life Together
September 22, 2011
The Church, the Gospel and Transformation
How striking and tragic is the contrast that the church often presents
to 12-step and other communities that hold themselves accountable for
transformation. I believe this is to the great detriment of its
vocation as Gospel-bearer. For what makes a more total, more dramatic
and clear call to transformation than the Gospel, with its summons to
metanoia—the about-face of one’s priorities, actions, of one’s very
heart and being? And who presents a clearer model of the transformed
human being than Jesus himself? Yet, in spite of their claims to “ultimate importance,” how often do we even hear our churches promising anything like transformation (the kind demonstrated within the Gospel stories themselves), with the courage and clarity of Alcoholics Anonymous?
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Student
Harvard Divinity School
Intern (2009-2011) at Life Together
September 19, 2011
A Lesson from AA
In his forthcoming book, Breathing Under Water, the Franciscan
theologian and spiritual writer Richard Rohr deems Alcoholics Anonymous,
“America’s most significant and authentic contribution to the history
of spirituality.” Rohr’s assessment offers confirmation from a far more
experienced observer of something that has been gnawing at me,
especially of late: the church has something essential, even vitally
necessary, to learn from AA.
Looking at AA, and a number of other twelve-step or focused self-help
programs, what strikes me is how clearly and unambiguously they make a
promise of transformation...
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