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November 3, 2016crc

Graduate Christian Fellowship – November 3, 2016 – MoveIn

This week at GCF we’ll be learning about “MoveIn”

“The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.”

(John 1:14, The Message)

I have heard about MoveIn from several GCFers over the years and I’ve been thinking for a while that it would be a good thing to learn about and discuss at GCF – I just needed to find someone who could talk about it! Well this week Jordan and Danielle have agreed to come, tell us some stories and have a conversation with us about their experiences living in St. James Town and other MoveIn communities.

Jordan writes:

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Are you interested in prayer, incarnational living, and the poor?

MoveIn is a movement of regular Christians prayerfully moving in among the unreached, urban poor. Locally and globally.

It’s mission is to see the church present and making reproducing disciples in more unreached, urban poor communities globally.

It’s a movement that I joined. I lived as part of the MoveIn team in St. James Town (Parliament and Wellesley) for 3 years. Danielle, my wife, joined the team after we were married in 2014, but before that, when living in Ottawa, she was part of the MoveIn team on Donald Street. Since then, Danielle and I moved to England for a year and have now moved back to where we currently live — Wycliffe College.

We have much to share about our experiences, mostly good, though some difficult things too.

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I hope you’ll join us, and bring a friend, to hear Jordan and Danielle’s story.

Shalom,

Geoff

April 17, 2013crc

The Passion of Bruce Springsteen: Taking the Boss to Church

Sunday, April 21, 2013
7:00 p.m.

A Rock Eucharist with

The Wine Before Breakfast Band
Dr. Brian Walsh preaching

Church of the Redeemer Anglican
(Avenue Rd and Bloor St.)

Bring your dancing shoes…

March 25, 2013crc

A Pastoral Letter for Holy Week 2013

The story was going a certain way.
Sure, there were some detours along the way
and things didn’t always go totally as expected,
but the overall plot remained clear.

It was all about home.
It was all about being in exile from home
and longing for a return home.

Truth is, everything is about home.
Really, when it comes right down to it, what else is there?

And if it is about home, then it is, of necessity about story.
Stories that tell us the memories of home.
Stories that shape the contours of home.
Stories that will lead us home.

But sometimes these stories meet a dead end.
Literally.

February 11, 2013crc

Wine Before Breakfast – Therefore … party!

In what is undoubtedly his most oft-quoted statement, Alasdair MacIntyre once said,
“I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do’ if I can answer the prior question, ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’”

Paul has just spent eleven chapters addressing the prior question of what story or stories his Roman hearers find themselves in.

And it really is a matter of plural stories.

They find themselves a part of a Roman story rooted in imperial myths.
This is a story of conquest and the gods;
of imperial justice and the Pax Romana;
of Caesar and the pater familias.

And they find themselves grafted in to a Jewish story of a crucified Messiah.
This is a story of covenant and the God of Israel;
of righteousness and shalom,
of Jesus and a Father who keeps his promises.

February 4, 2013crc

Wine Before Breakfast – Coming Home

“Many of us are still suffering PTSD from the language of salvation.”

So I was told last week after our WBB service.
Post-traumatic stress disorder from the language of salvation.

I get that, even though it is not my experience.
I get it that the language of salvation has been a tool of manipulation,

rooted in an abusive spirituality of guilt,
and constructed for social control.
I get that.

But rather than abandoning the language of salvation
(and I appreciate that some folks just have to do that,
at least for a time),
I’d like to reclaim it.

December 10, 2012crc

Wine Before Breakfast – Advent Ache, Advent Hope

My daughters think that I hate shopping. They are mostly right.

Not all shopping, but certainly the kind of shopping that might take me into a mall. Indeed, my overwhelming bodily experience in a mall is an overheated irritation that gives birth to a grumpy exhaustion. My body literally starts to ache if I’m in the shopping mode too long. And too long is something like five minutes.

Actually, I can start to feel that overheated irritation and soreness just looking at a store these days.

That is one kind of bodily soreness.

But there are other kinds.

December 3, 2012crc

Wine Before Breakfast – Advent Waiting and “Groaning in Travail”

In what is perhaps the most remarkable turn of a phrase in the letters of Paul, the apostle tells us in Romans 8.22 that “the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now ….” This is a creation longing for redemption, longing to be set free from all that binds it.

Perhaps only the women in our community can begin to understand what Paul is talking about here, and even there maybe only the women who have given birth. I can tell you as a very concerned observer that there is an intensity in the groaning of labor like nothing else that I have ever witnessed. Groaning in travail was the way the older versions of the Bible put it.

But this is a travail, a work, a pain, born of hope. The smile on a woman’s face upon delivering her baby and holding that child to her breast is also one of the sweetest things that I have ever had the privilege to see.

All of creation is longing for that smile.
All of creation looks for the day of resurrection.
All of creation is waiting.
All of creation is in Advent.

November 29, 2012crc

Graduate Christian Fellowship – Christian Practices and Engaging Advent

Dear friends,
This week we welcome Jamie Howison as our speaker for the evening, the lead pastor of St. Benedict’s Table, a thriving urban church in Winnipeg, Manitoba. St. Benedict’s Table is a unique church community especially in its practice of an open communion table and in its honouring of the role of creativity and imagination in our church and faith lives. Several books have been published by members or groups from the community including works with an artistic emphasis, a book by Jamie Howison on the music of John Coltrane and an advent resource.

Jamie Howison will be speaking to GCF on “Christian Practices and Engaging Advent” as we prepare ourselves and our community for this time of faithful waiting for Jesus’ birth and reign. The St. Benedict’s Table community sees itself as “a community of Advent spirituality: always on the hinge between the old and the new, the known and the unknown to which God is drawing us.” Come and hear what Jamie Howison has to say about his community, about advent and about what God is drawing us to in our studies, in our work, in our ministry together, especially at this time of year.

Shalom,
Marcia

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Upcoming GCF Events:

Thurs Dec 6
End-of-Term Potluck and Advent Celebration

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Upcoming Campus Ministry Events:

Tuesdays, 7:22 am
“Wine Before Breakfast”
a weekly Eucharist service in the Wycliffe College Chapel,
followed by breakfast in the chaplain’s office

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Christian Reformed Campus Ministries
(University of Toronto)

Wine Before Breakfast (Tue, 7:22 am)
Graduate Christian Fellowship (Thur, 6:00 pm)

Brian Walsh, chaplain
Geoff Wichert (Rev.), chaplain
Marcia Boniferro, associate chaplain

November 27, 2012crc

Wine Before Breakfast – On slaves, bastards, adopted children and Jamie Howison

The man who began his letter by identifying himself as a slave …
‘Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ’ …
and who has at times in his epistle called his readers to be …
‘slaves of justice’ …
comes to the heart of his correspondence by writing …
‘For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear,
but you have received a spirit of adoption …’

Slaves of Christ, even slaves of justice, but for those very reasons, not captivated by a spirit of slavery.

Obviously the apostle is playing with this (and many other) metaphors in this letter.

November 26, 2012crc

Room at the Table: Urban Ministry from Justice to Imagination

Urban Remixed presents

Room at the Table:
Urban Ministry from Justice to Imagination

with Jamie Howison
st benedict’s table, Winnipeg
Facilitated by Brian Walsh of U of T

Monday, November 26 @ 7.00

Church of the Redeemer
162 Bloor St West, Toronto
(Bloor St & Avenue Rd)

Refreshments will be served