Lenten Series and Supper-2011

Lenten Series: The Gospel According to…YOU!

Where do you find the Good News of Jesus Christ in the nitty-gritty truth of your life? Many of us struggle with our baptismal call to proclaim the gospel because our own faith is relatively undefined. Fr. Matt, drawing on his personal story and classic theological resources, will lead us through a series of workshops designed to help us define and proclaim our passion for God – that is, our own “Gospel.”

Fr. Matt will begin each session by making a presentation on his own gospel, covering major topics that each of us must answer in order to find our passion for God. Issues to be explored will include: Death and the Afterlife, Authenticity and Worship; Other Religions; and Scriptural vs. Personal Authority. After Fr. Matt’s brief presentation, participants will be encouraged, through journaling and small group discussion, to articulate the essential elements of their own gospels.

Lenten Supper—6pm-6:50pm

You are warmly invited to share a delicious and simple meal with us before the Lenten Series. Come and enjoy some good food and great company as we break bread with one another in the fellowship and community of God’s Holy Spirit.

Lenten Series—7pm-8:30pm

March 16 The Gospel of Christian Existentialism
Confronting death and the courage to live; featuring a film clip from “Man On Wire.”

March 23: The Gospel of Openness
Other religions vs. our core beliefs. Featuring a conversation with the Rev. Chris Bell, pastor of the First Unitarian-Universalist Church in Santa Rosa.
March 30: The Gospel of the Blues
Music, emotional authenticity, and worship: what kinds of music opens your soul to the presence of God?
April 06: The Gospel of Church
Why go to church? How does the gospel speak through the Body of Christ? Ann Eng will lead us through a study of 1 Corinthians as we explore our notions of church and our place within it. Listen to the talk.
April 13: The Gospel According to You
Each participant will have a chance to make their own Gospel Proclamation.

Lenten Series and Supper-2010

Lent: A Season of Reconciliation, Forgiveness and Hope

Feb. 24 : Movie Event: As We Forgive
March 3: Identifying Discontent
March 10: God’s Holiness and Grace
March 17: Sin, Death and Hope
March 24: Forgiveness

Movie Event: As We Forgive

SYNOPSIS

Could you forgive a person who murdered your family? This is the question faced by the subjects of As We Forgive, a documentary about Rosaria and Chantal—two Rwandan women coming face-to-face with the men who slaughtered their families during the 1994 genocide. The subjects of As We Forgive speak for a nation still wracked by the grief of a genocide that killed one in eight Rwandans in 1994. Overwhelmed by an enormous backlog of court cases, the government has returned over 50,000 genocide perpetrators back to the very communities they helped to destroy. Without the hope of full justice, Rwanda has turned to a new solution: Reconciliation.

But can it be done? Can survivors truly forgive the killers who destroyed their families? Can the government expect this from its people? And can the church, which failed at moral leadership during the genocide, fit into the process of reconciliation today? In As We Forgive, director Laura Waters Hinson and narrator Mia Farrow explore these topics through the lives of four neighbors once caught in opposite tides of a genocidal bloodbath, and their extraordinary journey from death to life through forgiveness.