Sending the 70 | Speak out in Public Places We've finished our tour and are now settled in a hotel in Glasgow. There is so much to see! And we are tired! Just a few more days on the road. -Liz Be Church: Speak Out In Galatians 6:9-10 Paul urges us to do what is right, and to not grow weary of the work. We are to work for the good of everyone, especially, but not only, those in our faith family. Whenever we have the opportunity! I can't help but wonder if they had the opportunity less often...
1 day ago • 3 min read
Ezra Klein on Chaos | Small Churches Big Impact I'm still in Scotland! Here is an article from three months ago. I'll be back at it in July. -Liz Do! A Little! One important point is that the best reaction to the chaos is to take a deep breath and figure out how to do well things that churches do well. The name Act! Be Church Now is something I thought of in terms of the current crisis in our government, but Be Church and the idea Act! are essential to my ecclesiology.The internal work of...
6 days ago • 3 min read
Imperfect Allies | Overcome Your Fear of Mistakes We will spend today exploring Skye. If my nephew had been a girl she would have been named Skye. I was surprised to learn how important the Islands were to the early life in Scotland. You can see pictures of our trip at my facebook page. (I wrote this post before I left for vacation. Everyone on our tour is struggling to balance vacation and the idea that the US has bombed Iran. Ken is searching for BBC news. I have nothing to add except...
9 days ago • 3 min read
Preaching | Making Way out of No-Way I'm in Scotland for vacation. I love it, and also recognize that it probably isn't safe to travel for immigrants and trans people right now. While I'm seeing historical and geographical wonders, and listening to local music, I'm rerunning an article from March. -Liz Preaching To Be Church When bad things happen in our local community, and in our national news, there is always some social media that demands your outrage. "If you aren't preaching on this,...
13 days ago • 3 min read
Micro Practices for Justice | Being a Trans Ally Neither Jew nor Greek, Slave nor Free, Male and Female. Galatians seems like the obvious text for Sunday worship in this time. I mean, its kinda the whole point of our faith, right? Maybe I'm just tired, but I ended up with Elijah instead. -Liz Elijah Takes A Nap It's a hard time for prophets. Or maybe prophets always have a hard time. Elijah is desolate from the little change he sees when he is calling on his nation to do better. In biblical...
16 days ago • 2 min read
Just Getting Started | Trans support resources The hardest thing about community organizing is you don't really know where it will end up. It's about asking questions and letting the answers guide you to next steps. So today I wanted to share with you a church that is just getting started. Who knows where it will go? -Liz Just Getting Started Every ministry starts somewhere. It's hard to remember, when you have something big going on, that first it was just an idea. First it was just someone...
27 days ago • 3 min read
The Spirit Moves Us | The Power of the Collective The most important part of June is the arrival of Strawberries. There isn't a more perfect fruit. I'm impatient waiting for them -- in my neighbors garden, not mine, because I don't have the patience to tend to them. Sharing. It's delicious. -Liz The Holy Spirit Speaks Pentecost! The holy spirit comes down and fills us with the spirit. I've always liked this holiday. It's joyful and a little magical and speaks so directly to who we are today....
30 days ago • 3 min read
I'm off from preaching this holiday weekend, and the first thing I did was work a few hours. Oops. I did spend a lot of time quilting, which feeds my soul. -Liz Tips for Self Care There are so many things that we say are at the heart of christianity, forgiveness, salvation, certainly love and perhaps kindness. Righteousness. Justice. So I was somewhat surprised to find that Acts 1:3 the writer notes that in the resurrected Jesus’ forty days on earth he taught them about: the Kingdom of God....
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
My parents gave our family an outing to a Red Sox home game as a Christmas present. They were playing the Mets in inter-league play, and we grew up as Mets fans. At one point someone asked who was rooting for the Mets and a few family members raised their hands. One or two said instead "I cheer for great plays". One person wore a Phillies hat to the game. I promise you, we did not try to understand each other. And I promise you, all those other people were rooting for the wrong team....
about 1 month ago • 4 min read