(an email that became a pastoral letter)
They’ve come to be known as the “clobber texts.”
You know the one’s I’m talking about.
Those six texts – count them, there are six! ‑ that purportedly are about homosexuality.
Six texts in the whole Bible.
I don’t know, but somehow the more than 2000 texts in the Bible that address poverty and justice just seem to outweigh these six texts.
The Graduate Christian Fellowship invites you to:
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Romans, Home and Homelessness in the Empire
A Bible study and overview of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans with
Brian Walsh
Christian Reformed campus minister at UofT
(i.e. the other member of our campus ministry team)
(Note: Please try to read all of Paul’s letter for Thurs night – see below)
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Chaplain’s office, Wycliffe College (basement)
6:00 – Dinner / 7:00 (or so) – Something After Dinner – discussion, etc.
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Read more Graduate Christian Fellowship – Romans, Home and Homelessness in the Empire
Formation In and Out of the Academy
or How we come to be the people we are (or hope to be)
Thursday, September 20, 2012
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Dear Friends,
I’d like to start by restating the vision of this campus ministry:
The Graduate Christian Fellowship (GCF) seeks to challenge, mentor, and enable students to think, work, and live as Christian disciples in the academy and in their professions. Rooted in the confession that all truth is in Christ, we seek a radical Christian discipleship in all of life.
Read more Graduate Christian Fellowship – Formation In and Out of the Academy
“Paul, a slave of Jesus the Messiah.”
Seven words to open a magisterial letter and the author has already given notice.
He has, in these mere seven words set the agenda for his most extensive letter of subversion.
Seven words and the hierachically oppressive structures of Rome are thrown on their heads.
Paul … a slave.
Not Paul, a citizen of Rome.
Not Paul, claiming to have the legitimacy that is afforded by the empire.
Not Paul, enjoying his status as a citizen, a free man.
No, Paul … a slave.
Read more Wine Before Breakfast – ‘Seven Words’
You know that I think a lot about “home.”
Some folks think that next to “empire,” home is pretty much all I do think about.
Or at least that I’m likely to find either home or empire (or more likely both) under every verse of the Bible.
Guilty as charged.
But I am not sentimental about home.
I know all about broken homes,
homes of violence,
homes of exclusion,
homes of betrayal,
homes that are far from safe and far from sweet.
Read more Wine Before Breakfast – Coming Home in the Empire
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Church of the Redeemer Anglican (Avenue Rd & Bloor St)
7:30 – 9:30 pm
Reception to follow
For more information you can download the poster.
WBB, 9/11 … Ten Years Later
Dear friends:
Wine Before Breakfast was born while the smoke was still billowing from the ruins of the World Trade Center. Exactly one week after that fateful September 11, 2001 we gathered for the first time as a worshipping community at the University of Toronto.
No happy praise songs that morning.
No upbeat enthusiasm to gather in the crowds.
Rather, we began our life together as a community in lament.
And over these past ten years lament has never been far from our worship.
Ten years of war.
Ten years of escalating international terrorism.
Ten years of injustice.
Ten years of increased assault on this good creation and its most vulnerable inhabitants.
And the lament has got personal on all kinds of levels.
We have faced death in the community.
We waited and prayed while Jim Loney and three other Christian Peacemakers were held captive in Baghdad.
And our lament has also been deeply personal at times.
Broken relationships. Struggling faith. Deep disappointments.
But we have still been able to sing.
Read more Wine Before Breakfast Returns
Download it here!
Every fall the CRC campus ministries at York University (Logos Campus Ministry) and the University of Toronto produce a joint newsletter for distribution in Toronto-area CRC churches. The 2011 edition is hot off the press, and can be downloaded as a PDF document.
Special thanks to our colleague, Shiao Chong, for putting this newsletter together again this year.
[These reflections, collected and written down by Geoff Wichert over a couple of years, were first presented to the Graduate Christian Fellowship on Nov 25, 2010. They can also be downloaded as a Word document.]
These stories and reflections are rooted in the re-creation of the Graduate Christian Fellowship 5 yrs ago (Sept 2006). At that time we wanted to reshape the community, a change that we named in several different ways: a shift from program to community, from a focus on worldview (which is often primarily intellectual) toward character formation (a more holistic approach).
We noted that the Wine Before Breakfast community was characterized by a high level of personal investment, a sense of belonging, and strong loyalty/faithfulness, often showing itself in the enthusiastic invitation of friends and newcomers. We suspected this has something to do with continuity and rhythm, the routines and habits of discipleship cultivated in the regular weekly liturgies
We also supposed it was connected to WBB’s emphasis on hospitality – the regular practice of eating together. Over the years we had tried having “soup & bread” before GCF a number of times, but it was always optional, and never particularly successful. So we decided to make it central to our gatherings, and essential to what we did. We also aimed to establish other practices that would give the community a deliberately distinctive character and “feel”, such as our own weekly worship time.
Out of all that came the model of GCF that we have today. It has certainly evolved over the years, but one feature that has remained constant (for obvious reasons) has been the practice of washing dishes. Because it happened early, and was closely tied to deliberate reflection on the shape of the ministry, I have had plenty of opportunity to reflect on it, and these are some of the thoughts that have emerged.
There are 3 stories about the practical side of washing dishes: both FYI, but also presented here under the notion of “logistics as pastoral practice.” There is a biblical analogy from Jesus’ teaching, and finally a reflection on liturgical practice. Read more A Theology of Dishwashing
by Brian Walsh
Matt Redman’s song “Blessed be your name” is a powerful testimony to praise in the face of both joy and sorrow.
Blessed be your name
in the land that is plentiful
where your streams of abundance flow
blessed be your name
Blessed be your name
when I’m found in a desert place
though I walk through the wilderness
blessed be your name.
Redman has it right. Blessing the name of God is a radical act that happens whether the “world’s ‘all as it should be’” or we’re “on the road marked with suffering.” And so Redman invites us to sing:
Every blessing You pour out
I’ll turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say
Blessed be the name of the Lord …
But then in the bridge he pushes the song to a place that I seldom can go. Read more Remembering Gerald Vandezande: Prophet and Friend