Weekly Update February 3, 2022

Last year, our friend Jerome Blanco, Editor in Chief of FULLER Magazine, reached out to us (Bobby & Inés) about writing a piece for their next issue focused on “Renewing the Church”. We were delighted to be included and began working together to compose a piece that captured the story and DNA of our Beloved Community. As the issue has now been released, we’d love for you to read about this familia you call home! You can access our article here.

May you be reminded of how since the first days of this church: “the Spirit was bringing us back to ourselves, back to God, and back to one another. The Spirit was reconstructing our fragmented selves and less-than-faithful theologies to the new thing God was doing among us.”

As we continue in our Rhythms of Justice series, we want to point you to a couple of important things:

Super Bowl and Sabbath

After much prayer and many conversations and several considerations, we’ve decided to take Super Bowl Sunday off as a church. That means Sunday, February 12th will be one of our Sabbath Sundays for the year. If you’ve been with us for a bit, you know we value resting from corporate services at various times in the calendar. We decided we didn’t want to get in the way of our familia connecting with friends and familia. And while we know it’s not really so much *about the game itself* (or the commercials or the halftime show), it’s really about recognizing this as a time each year when people gather in joy with those they’re close to. So as a Rhythm of Joy, go enJOY the game with friends and familia.

And if you’re up for hosting some folks over at your place, then we encourage you to take time this Sunday to invite people over for the following week! We’d love to see hangouts happen with our people together!

Black History Month

As we intentionally enter into this month marked each year to specifically honor our Black sisters and brothers, we want to first do so by pointing you to an incredible reading list of Black women authors compiled by our brother and friend, Dominique Gilliard. We’ll add it here below. If you end up reading a book, we invite you to consider a friend (or even group) to read one with you. And let us know what you land on! We love to hear these stories!

Save the Date

Our next church familia hike will be February 18th Rancho Palos Verdes. And it will be a family-friendly and light hike. So no Rocky movie montage necessary to get in shape for this one! Come as you are. 🙂

Looking forward to seeing you Sunday, fam!

Bobby


Post from Dominique Gilliard

Friends, what books by Black women are you reading this month? If you don’t know where to start, here are some recommendations. This is in NO WAY an exhaustive list!!!

  1. This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
    by Cole Arthur Riley
  2. In My Grandmother’s House: Black Women, Faith, and the Stories We Inherit
    by Yolanda Pierce
  3. Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being
    by M. Shawn Copeland
  4. Knowing Christ Crucified: The Witness of African American Religious Experience
    by M. Shawn Copeland
  5. I Bring the Voices of My People: A Womanist Vision for Racial Reconciliation
    by Chanequa Walker-Barnes
  6. Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
    by Harriet A. Washington
  7. Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God
    by Kelly Brown Douglas
  8. White Women’s Christ and Black Women’s Jesus: Feminist Christology and Womanist Response
    by Jacquelyn Grant
  9. Teaching to Transgress: Ed as the Practice of Freedom
    by bell hooks
  10. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
    by Michelle Alexander
  11. Another Kind of Public Education: Race, Schools, the Media, and Democratic Possibilities
    by Patricia Hill Collins
  12. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration
    by Isabel Wilkerson
  13. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
    by Isabel Wilkerson
  14. The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together
    by Heather McGhee
  15. Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World–and How to Repair It All
    by Lisa Sharon Harper
  16. Truth’s Table: Black Women’s Musings on Life, Love, and Liberation
  17. If God Still Breathes, Why Can’t I?: Black Lives Matter and Biblical Authority
    by Angela N. Parker