Six New Things – Week of July 12, 2021

How do we emerge from Coronatide, racism, and environmental devistation? Here are resources to support healing: through hybrid worship and through work on peace, grief, racism, and… emerging from pandemic(s).

ONE

Our Summer Worship Series: Liberation #2 is ready! Let it be an excuse to share a prophetic sermon – from the perspective of a rural pastor; authentically experience a new art form; experiment with a new style of engaging liturgy; or, just take some time away from worship planning!

This service, Everyone’s Chains Came Off – Reflecting on Paul & Silas’ Liberation from Prison, features:

It’s free for member congregations, who have unlimited access to it through the middle of September! Request your access here.

TWO

As violence erupts within our communities and across the nation, Elizabeth Corrie’s Youth Ministry as Peace Education: Overcoming Silence, Transforming Violence (Fortress) feels excruciatingly timely.

Pair it with Rosalind Hughes‘ Whom Shall I Fear? (Upper Room) for the adult set and selections from Doing Good Together‘s Picture Books for Peace Makers collection, and you’ll have an intergenerational study essential for these unsettled times.

THREE

Help folx work through the fear and trauma of these days with “tools for prioritizing wholeness, humanity, and inherent divinity”, found in Finding Refuge: Heart Work for Healing Collective Grief (Penguin).

FOUR

Take the conversation further and deeper – like towards making lasting changes that lead to lasting justice and peace – with Christianity in Blue: How the Bible, History, Philosophy, and Theology Shape Progressive Identity (Fortress)…

FIVE

…and/or White Too Long (Simon & Schuster), a “provocative examination of the unholy relationship between American Christianity and white supremacy [which] issues an urgent call for white Christians to reckon with this legacy for the sake of themselves and the nation”.

SIX

If emerging from Covid is the focus for your congregation, Kay Kotan‘s Being the Church in a Post-Pandemic World: Game Changers for the Post-Pandemic Church (Market Square) is “a tool, not an instrument of judgement or criticism” offered from a “heart full of love for the local church” in the hopes of generating congregational vitality in the post-pandemic world. It’s not exactly “new”, but it definitely fits our “emerging” theme for this week!