This Sunday from 2:30-4:30 join the Education Roundtable for a discussion on school funding and our state’s budget crisis at Beloved.
Featuring information from Robyn Hyden (Alabama Arise) and Trisha Powell Crain (Alabama School Connection).
Click here to read an article about the meeting and hope to see you there!
Beloved Leah Clements leaves to go to Candler School of Theology at Emory University next week, and we will miss her dearly. Her sermon last night was a call to action for us all.
She preached on this text from Mark 4:35-41:
“On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, ‘Let us go across to the other side.’ And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him.
A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’
Continue reading Guest sermon from Beloved Leah Clements: How Will We Respond?
Each year, we celebrate our founding with music, worship, food and fellowship.
Sunday, June 7th, 2015
Service & celebration starting at 6 pm. Potluck supper to follow.
See you there, Beloved!
Click to buy an ad for the Commemorative 2015 Program
From a sermon read on Easter Sunday 2015
We tell the stories
Because they are our stories.
We tell the stories
To find ourselves,
To remind ourselves
Who we are
And whose we are.
We are made in God’s image, male and female. So says God in the first creation story in the book of Genesis.
Do we also make God in our image?
Maybe even more than we realize. The Biblical image of God seems two-faced: sometimes faithful, forgiving, peace-filled, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love – just as we are in our best moments.
At other times, God seems just as petty, jealous, violent and destructive as we can be.
Made in God’s image – that can be downright worrisome.
Continue reading Lenten Reflection from Rev. Angie Wright: Will the real God please stand up?
Thousands returned to Selma this weekend to remember God’s liberation of God’s people and to rekindle a sense of purpose and unity, to go back into the world with eyes and hearts and minds wide open to those things that stand between the people of God and the justice, mercy and abundant life promised by God
The Selma commemoration is act of remembrance, of gratitude to God and people of faith and courage. It is also an act of recommitment to be about God’s work in the world –
Bloody Sunday brought to light the American state-sanctioned violence against African-Americans and the liberating spirit of God to bring an end to that violence and bondage.
That is the liberating work of the spirit of God even now, and if it is God’s work, it is our work.
As John Legend said, “Selma is Now!”
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, two to three Black people were lynched every week in the American South. The same number of Black people are now killed every week now by white police officers; a Black person is killed every 28 hours at the hands of police.
To end this violence and bondage is the liberating work of the spirit of God today, and if it is God’s work, it is our work.
This we know: Nothing and no one will stand in the way of the liberating spirit of God.
I was stunned to read the results of an al.com poll about how people of faith should respond to the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and the failure to indict the police officer who shot him. Here are the results:
3.9% Hold a peaceful protest as a statement of solidarity
13.6% Work to prevent racial violence because it could happen in Alabama too
28.0% Pray for the Brown family and everyone who is hurting
54.4% This isn’t a faith issue. It’s a matter of law and order.
Over 54% chose “do nothing” (“This isn’t a faith issue”) over prayer (“Pray for the Brown family and those who are hurting”)!
Continue reading Lenten Reflection from Rev. Angie: Our Business
Concert starts at 7. Wine will be sold prior to concert.
All proceeds benefit Beloved’s community ministries.
Instead of New Year’s resolutions, I have something else in mind: New Year’s Revolutions.
A revolution is a radical change, a change at the root, a complete turning.
A revolution casts out forces of death and replaces them with forces that are just and life-giving. Continue reading New Year’s Revolutions
