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Celebrate our life together, giving birth in many ways;

Father-Mother Love is with us, leading to a better day.

Equal partners ‘round the table, family groups of every kind

show us how to nurture kindness, new creation’s joy to find.

I have witnessed the remarkable power of religious communities to bring social capital to bear on behalf of their members. Some congregations are particularly good at bringing low-income, isolated people into a milieu in which they benefit tremendously from contact with fellow congregants who have the connections they need to get ahead. It is as if they’ve stepped into an updraft as they enter the door of the church or temple or mosque, and find themselves swept up toward job contacts, vital information about services and resources, and good role models to follow toward creating better lives.

Community can’t make your problems go away, but it can remind you that you don’t have to face them alone.

One of the first questions asked of a person planning on becoming clergy is, “tell me about your call to ministry.” God seems to have a wide variety of ways to make “that voice” heard. Some can tell you the day, the hour, and the place when “the unmistakable event” occurred. Others seem to become more and more aware over a long period of time that ordained leadership is what they were meant to be. Even then “the call” can be something grasped and lost.

Let’s stop assuming that a collection of individuals constitutes community. It doesn’t. In fact, it usually makes for disaster, as evidenced by the number of conflict resolution experts who are making their living off congregational members who are at each other’s throats. It’s not the fault of congregational members. We need to be teaching what it means to be in community, and that includes practices that are going to make us fit for community. Most of us got our training for community life in dysfunctional families. The moment anything approximating intimacy breaks out in congregations most people simply re-enact largely the unexamined history of our family of origin.

The church sign can be easily read by anyone driving by: “You can’t be a devoted follower of Jesus unless you are part of a local church.” Does the church that posts this sign not trust the people with Jesus’s message? What is the meaning of “incarnation” if not “embodiment” by individual persons of the spirit of the Christ? Is the “Body of Christ” for members only?

The Apostle Paul created the metaphor of the “Body of Christ” as the community of followers. In 1 Corinthians 10:16-17, he explains the meaning of the ritually-shared meal: “The cup of God’s gracious benefits that we consecrate means that we are involved in the blood of the Anointed, doesn’t it? The bread that we break means that we are involved in the body of the Anointed, doesn’t it? That there is one loaf means that we who are many constitute one body, because we all partake of the one loaf.” In Romans 12:5 he says, “Just as each of us has one body with many parts that do not all have the same function, so although there are many of us, we are the Anointed’s body, interrelated with one another.”

Church is not for everyone. Even for those who like it, there are as many distractions as attractions to the spiritual life there. I thought of entitling this “spirituality for loners” because I want to suggest eight ways of experiencing spiritual community outside of church!

So what do I mean by a sacred community or spiritual community, or as Peck would call it a true community? I refer here to an intentional community with an identifiable common purpose. Maybe that purpose is simple to grow spiritually as individuals. It is a community where one can transcend oneself and experience a sense of the interconnectedness of life. It is a community in which each member seeks to see and relate to the divine or the sacred in the other.

According to Leo Tolstoy, the famous Russian novelist, in his magnum non-fiction opus, The Kingdom of God is Within You, the idea that God or Jesus founded the church is “so utterly untrue and unfounded that one is ashamed to refute them.” Only the modern Christian church would even assert such a notion. Jesus could not have founded the church as we presently understand the word. Nothing like the idea of the church with its sacraments and its claim of infallibility can be found in Jesus’ words or in the ideas of other men of his time.

Toward the end of 2013 many of us had a strong sense of shedding, releasing, and letting go. There was sickness, death, closing of chapters, ends, silence, and darkness… Now, as we begin this new year, we find our selves in a time of New Birth and New Ways. Join us on this journey into Newness and Co-Creation.

This Christmas, we invite you to re-connect with Source and the Oneness of All.

Progressives are less interested in teaching the beliefs of our or any other religion. We are much more interested in teaching ethics, behavior, justice and compassion. We can demonstrate what it means to be a person of faith by telling the stories of modern prophets and saints: Gandhi, Dorothy Day, King, Mandela, Romero, Mother Teresa and others who have lived as examples of what it means to be people of faith. We must “preach the church to the church” telling the stories of those who are within our own community who have given of themselves in remarkable ways. If we want to raise a generation of leaders and heroes we must accept that we must set the example in the way that we practice our faith.

We are believers in Jesus Christ who accept all people without judgment and who desire to work and worship as a community striving for social justice.

In this time of reflection and gratitude, we want to take this opportunity to tell you how thankful we are for you- your support, your interest, and the path that you dare to walk.

Modern scholarship and religious practice have given us several different images of Jesus. Some insist that he never existed while others insist that he was God incarnate. This message attempts to take a scholarly approach to articulating a relevant, historically honest approach to the role of the Jesus tradition in the 21st century saying: the strata of the Jesus tradition that motivates progressives is the Jesus who stands as an alternative to the empire.

There is one constant in this universe- and that is Change. Here at ProgressiveChristianity.org we are sure experiencing it! This monthly eBulletin is All About Change!

This month is all about children! Aren’t they incredible lights in this world?! Whomever has been offered the gift of the opportunity to guide young hearts and minds knows that children come here to also teach us. It is from their own inner wisdom that our lives can be wholly changed.

During this time of intense transition, axial shifts, cultural evolution, darkness, and rebirth…may we all be born again into the light, into the healing, into the spirit, and into interconnected awareness. May the light of Jesus shine within all of us. May his birth be a reminder of the power of one human to change the world. May we be the midwives of this new birth. May the birthing pains be worth the new creation that we are being called to co-create. May we ever be in gratitude for this divine experience of being human during this holy shift.