The Gathering, Grace Long Beach

Happy New Year! New Year's Eve Night of Worship at Grace!

noreply@blogger.com (Christina) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 02:16:00 +0000

Come join us for a Night of Worship at Grace, beginning at 7:30-9pm, in the church lobby. It will be a time of prayer, music, and looking forward to the new year. (No childcare provided.)

Grace Brethren Church, 3601 Linden Ave., Long Beach, CA

noreply@blogger.com (Christina) — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 17:44:00 +0000

Art and Music at EVOCAL, 12/18 @ 8pm

noreply@blogger.com (Christina) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 20:38:00 +0000

Congratulations Deebles!

noreply@blogger.com (Christina) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:34:00 +0000

Welcome Graham Clifford Deeble, born 11/3 @ 7lbs, 8oz, and 20" long. The Deebles have a family blog celebrating their family here.

Jana is going to finish up her semester and still has classes Monday through Wednesday. If you are available, they would love to be fed M-F for the next three weeks. Sign up if you can and include your email address or phone #. We’ll send out a confirmation email. Email Jacquie Bryant at jacquie.bryant@biola.edu if you want to get on this list.

Thanks!

Repost: J. Richard Middleton: A new Heaven and a new Earth...

noreply@blogger.com (Christina) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 22:27:00 +0000

Click the bold title for a link to the article: A New Heaven and a New Earth: The Case for a Holistic Reading of the Biblical Story of Redemption by J. Richard Middleton.

Please feel free to leave your comments and questions in the comment box below. Pete and Eric check the blog weekly, so you will have an opportunity to continue the discussion here!

Refractions 29 - Makoto Fujimura

noreply@blogger.com (Christina) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:04:00 +0000

I was reading Makoto Fujimura's Refractions 29: The Island of the Misfit Toys, Part II - his thoughts on artist Jasper Johns, and was struck by the 2nd paragraph, where he refers to N.T. Wright's Surprised by Hope - it seems stunningly appropriate as we explore the Middleton article.

N.T. Wright points out that the popular culture’s distortion of the idea of heaven has truncated the true message of the gospel. He notes, for example, Maria Shriver’s version of heaven, written in her book to children – “is somewhere you believe in… It’s a beautiful place where you can sit on soft clouds and talk to other people who are there…If you’re good throughout your life, then you get to go to heaven…” (quoted in pg. 17) He argues that the language of heaven in the New Testament doesn’t work that way.” “’God’s Kingdom’ in the preaching of Jesus refers not to postmortem destiny, not to our escape from this world into another one, but to God’s sovereign rule coming ‘on earth as it is in heaven.’” (Pg. 18) Heaven, in other words, is not our final destination (as in speaking of Life after Death) : but the biblical writers spoke of the New Heavens and the New Earth, a reconciled whole in which we will inhabit, work and create (Life after Life after Death). We are called to assist in the creation of this new reality through our earthly lives, bringing justice, mercy and beauty into our broken realities. Instead of people simply “going to heaven,” The Bible tells us that at a future point in history, Heaven comes to us, and earth will be re-birthed in one glorious fulfillment of hope someday. “Heaven,” Wright continues, “is the place where God’s purposes for the future are stored up. It isn’t where they are meant to stay so that one would need to go to heaven to enjoy them; it is where they are kept safe against the day when they will become a reality on earth.” (Pg. 151)

I considered posting the entire essay here, but he has so many amazing insights, you'll want to continue reading his blog.

Further into the essay, he quotes N.T. Wright, shoring up the emphasis on culture-making and how it can impact the full scope of Time.

This pro-culture stance, based on what theologians call common grace, makes sense because our effort to bring beauty, justice and peace into the world is a universal calling. Theologically, I am not a Universalist, one that believes that all roads lead to heaven. But scriptures points to a universalistic bent of culture making that bring beauty and empathy into the world. After all, don’t we desperately desire to know that our efforts to create, to administer justice and to bring mercy into the world, are not in vain. To this longing, N.T. Wright goes further than mere affirmation. He states;

You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that’s about to roll over a cliff. You are not restoring a great painting that’s shortly going to be thrown on the fire. You are not planting roses in a garden that’s about to be dug up for a building site. You are – strange though it may seem, almost as hard to believe as the resurrection itself – accomplishing something that will become in due course part of God’s new world. (pg. 208)

Let that sink in a little...

As Fujimura explores the works of Jasper Johns, he suggests how good work lasts:

Thus, the art of Johns operates in “constant negation of impulses,” ( pg. 84) and therefore, his art cannot be simply “Pop” imagery, and is not readily digestible in the way Warhol’s paintings are. Johns’ creativity demands more of us, and his exhibits are full of maps (sometimes literally, in his series of American maps) that depict visual riddles swirling deeply in the currents of culture. The journey of a viewer on that river can be full of generative discovery. Good art gives birth, impregnated with meaning for future creative journeys.

Do take some time to visit Fujimura's blog, and take some time to read the Middleton article.

Please do leave your comments and questions here - we can continue our dialogue on the blog.

Dinner and Discussion Group...

noreply@blogger.com (Christina) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:40:00 +0000

John Greer will be hosting a Navigator/Discipleship Gathering at his home on Friday evening (10/17/08) at 6:30pm. They will provide dinner and an opportunity for those who have been involved with discipleship ministries to share and discuss their highs and lows -- both the benefits and difficulties they've experienced -- with discipleship oriented ministries.

Contact John if you are interested in attending at jnjgreer@msn.com -

Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett: Evangelical Politics : three generations

noreply@blogger.com (Christina) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:18:00 +0000

Here is an opportunity to review the video dialogue between Chuck Colson, Greg Boyd, and Shane Claiborne on Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett.

Click the image below to go to the videostream.

We Love Long Beach BBQ! Saturday, 9/27 1-5pm

noreply@blogger.com (Christina) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:06:00 +0000

Good Times Ahead! Come one and all to the free BBQ, hosted by We Love Long Beach, and City Council members Gary DeLong and Suja Lowenthal!

Show at Shelter! Surf Shop, Saturday, 9/27 at 7pm

noreply@blogger.com (Christina) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 20:57:00 +0000

The First 50 people will receive a great DELVE shirt! that looks like this:

Makoto Fujimura - Culture Maker

noreply@blogger.com (Christina) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:37:00 +0000

(Image from the sketchbook of illustrator John Hendrix.)

I came across Makoto Fujimura's blog, from a cover story at Christianity Today. Fujimura is a NY artist, who followed a call to move with his family from the suburbs into the city, a journey made more pronounced during 9/11. Fujimura, his wife, and children lived just three blocks from Ground Zero. Following the attacks, neighbors and fellow artists would gather together over coffee, to console, to mourn, and were pressed with the longing to create some kind of meaning. One question that continued to surface for Fujimura: "What is it that we have to deal with, this dehumanized reality that we are living in? What is the role of imagination in that?"

As someone who discovered Christ through the practice of Nihonga, a Japanese technique of watercolor incorporating layered pigment and metallic leaf, Fujimura recognized the process of art-making as a connection to the Divine, which Fujimura describes as "sublime grace", and saw the disconnect between the cultivation of beauty and the desperate and painful reality of daily life. He founded the International Arts Movement, with the mission to gather 'artists and creative catalysts to wrestle with the deep questions of art, faith and humanity in order to inspire the creative community to engage the culture that is and create the world that ought to be.'

Fujimura collects what he calls "Refractions", observations about life, culture and art on his blog. From a study of Rauschenburg and his faith to a reflection on how the Dillon Gallery, where Fujimara's work was on display, was host to both the recent wedding of his son, Ty, and a memorial service for a friend, Fujimura writes, "I now have a sense that my art should serve as a backdrop to the joys and sorrows of family and community. Art should mediate as a servant of humanity, to act as a theatrical backdrop to our human dramas.

Fujimura's work and observations, shaped by living intentionally in a city and collaborating with Tim Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian, are suffused with richness. It was difficult to excerpt one "Refraction" from his blog - as every entry is compelling and thought-provoking. Spend some time with him here, and be deeply inspired.

Is our pain God's problem?

noreply@blogger.com (Christina) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:51:00 +0000

Earlier this year, Beliefnet was host to a blog debate between Bart Erhman, Professor of Religious Studies and professed agnostic, and N.T. Wright, Bishop of Durham, on God and the problem of Suffering and Pain - some ideas to reflect upon while we study the N.T. Wright video series "Evil".

Bart Ehrman is James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the author of God's Problem and Misquoting Jesus, among many other titles. N.T. Wright is the Bishop of Durham for the Church of England and has taught at McGill, Oxford, and Cambridge. His books include Surprised By Hope, Evil and the Justice of God, and several other titles.

Find this series here.

Quandary for Hebrew: How Would Isaiah Text? - New York Times

noreply@blogger.com (Christina) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:28:00 +0000

By ISABEL KERSHNER
Published: August 7, 2008

JERUSALEM — Some Israelis have described being moved almost to tears by a rare viewing of the Great Isaiah Scroll, the best preserved and most complete Dead Sea biblical scroll, on special exhibit this summer at the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum for the first time in 40 years.

The familiar, unfulfilled prophecy of the 2,100-year-old scroll — “and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” — undoubtedly arouses emotion here. But there is also a thrill born of ordinary people being able to read, and at least partly understand, an ancient Hebrew text.

more here

The Evangelical Crackup, David D. Kirkpatrick, NYT - 10/28/07

noreply@blogger.com (Christina) — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 14:22:00 +0000

Hello Everyone,

I found this article on MSN concerning a big change in the evangelical church. I would like to get your take on the story, and anonymously post some of the responses on the Gathering Blog.

Ivan

The hundred-foot white cross atop the Immanuel Baptist Church in downtown Wichita, Kan., casts a shadow over a neighborhood of payday lenders, pawnbrokers and pornographic video stores. To its parishioners, this has long been the front line of the culture war. Immanuel has stood for Southern Baptist traditionalism for more than half a century. Until recently, its pastor, Terry Fox, was the Jerry Falwell of the Sunflower State — the public face of the conservative Christian political movement in a place where that made him a very big deal.

With flushed red cheeks and a pudgy, dimpled chin, Fox roared down from Immanuel’s pulpit about the wickedness of abortion, evolution and homosexuality. He mobilized hundreds of Kansas pastors to push through a state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, helping to unseat a handful of legislators in the process. His Sunday-morning services reached tens of thousands of listeners on regional cable television, and on Sunday nights he was a host of a talk-radio program, “Answering the Call.” Major national conservative Christian groups like Focus on the Family lauded his work, and the Southern Baptist Convention named him chairman of its North American Mission Board.

For years, Fox flaunted his allegiance to the Republican Party, urging fellow pastors to make the same “confession” and calling them “sissies” if they didn’t. “We are the religious right,” he liked to say. “One, we are religious. Two, we are right.” His congregation, for the most part, applauded. Immanuel and Wichita’s other big churches were seedbeds of the conservative Christian activism that burst forth three decades ago. In the 1980s, when theological conservatives pushed the moderates out of the Southern Baptist Convention, Immanuel and Fox were both at the forefront. In 1991, when Operation Rescue brought its “Summer of Mercy” abortion protests to Wichita, Immanuel’s parishioners leapt to the barricades, helping to establish the city as the informal capital of the anti-abortion movement. And Fox’s confrontational style packed ever more like-minded believers into the pews. He more than doubled Immanuel’s official membership to more than 6,000 and planted the giant cross on its roof. So when Fox announced to his flock one Sunday in August last year that it was his final appearance in the pulpit, the news startled evangelical activists from Atlanta to Grand Rapids. Fox told the congregation that he was quitting so he could work full time on “cultural issues.” Within days, The Wichita Eagle reported that Fox left under pressure. The board of deacons had told him that his activism was getting in the way of the Gospel. “It just wasn’t pertinent,” Associate Pastor Gayle Tenbrook later told me. (More here)

the new Beirut.

noreply@blogger.com (Christina) — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 23:54:00 +0000

ListeNow Benefit - October 27th

noreply@blogger.com (Christina) — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 23:52:00 +0000

(click for larger image)

Searching for God in the Brain - David Biello, Scientific American - October 2007

noreply@blogger.com (Christina) — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 10:53:00 +0000

The doughnut-shaped machine swallows the nun, who is outfitted in a plain T-shirt and loose hospital pants rather than her usual brown habit and long veil. She wears earplugs and rests her head on foam cushions to dampen the device’s roar, as loud as a jet engine. Supercooled giant magnets generate intense fields around the nun’s head in a high-tech attempt to read her mind as she communes with her deity.

The Carmelite nun and 14 of her Catholic sisters have left their cloistered lives temporarily for this claustrophobic blue tube that bears little resemblance to the wooden prayer stall or sparse room where such mystical experiences usually occur. Each of these nuns answered a call for volunteers “who have had an experience of intense union with God” and agreed to participate in an experiment devised by neuroscientist Mario Beauregard of the University of Montreal. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Beauregard seeks to pinpoint the brain areas that are active while the nuns recall the most powerful religious epiphany of their lives, a time they experienced a profound connection with the divine. The question: Is there a God spot in the brain? ...

more HERE

It's a boy!

noreply@blogger.com (Christina) — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 15:49:00 +0000

Congratulations to Lou and Susan Warde and the Warde family! Susan delivered Zachary Louis Warde Thursday night at 7:22. He is a healthy, beautiful boy weighing in at 7 lbs, 3 oz.

More details soon to follow on bringing meals to the Warde home.

The Gathering hearts Serve Day!

noreply@blogger.com (Christina) — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 15:15:00 +0000

As a church family we value making the presence of Christ known in our city. Despite the brokenness that we may come across every day, God has given us at Grace the opportunity to meet some of those broken areas by the partnerships that we have established with HfLB in our city. We have strong and well-rooted relationships with 15 ‘mercy and justice delivering’ organizations in our city, and twice a year we come together unified as a church family in order to show those organizations how much we care about them by serving them. We do this because our presence in the city matters, and through days like Serve Day, relationships are established that point others toward the reality that God has not abandoned our city. God has allowed us to be stewards, cultivators and shalom-bringers, within our neighborhoods, because that is how much He desires for our city to recognize him. 13 organizations have requested our help, and on July 28th we have the opportunity to serve them...

Here are the details..

At this point we have 115 volunteers signed up, and we still need approximately 250-300 more.

As an ABF, if we rally together to support 1 or 2 projects, we could probably occupy 75 of those spots.

One of the biggest areas of need is for a project called "Fun with the Franklins" at Franklin Middle School... This is one of our biggest projects, with the greatest amount of need. We will be partnering with Franklin Middle School to host a carnival for the students at Franklin as an "end of the Summer School" celebration, and it will also be open to the surrounding community. The students will be showcasing their work, their parents will be offered resources, and there will be games, sports tournaments, food, and more. We need about 60 volunteers in order to pull this event off. This is our first time partnering with Franklin Middle school, and it may provide tremendous opportunity for us to become more involved in being advocates within particular low-income schools.

You can either sign up online at www.serveday.org, or you can sign up at the Information Center on Sunday.

Email Kira Williams with any questions: kwilliams@gracelb.org-

Call for Volunteers - Music Camp for foster kids in July!

noreply@blogger.com (Christina) — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 14:11:00 +0000

The wonderful Tracy Turner is helping to organize a Music Camp for foster kids and needs a few more volunteers to help with games, crafts, teaching the recorder, lunch, and helping with a music theory lesson.

The camp is on Saturday, July 21 and Saturday, July 28, 9am-3pm, for kids that are entering 1st-6th grade. It would be awesome if people were available for both weeks in order to connect with the kids - but one week would be great too! Contact Tracy for more information at tracy.d.turner@gmail.com or email gatheringgracelb@gmail.com for Tracy's contact number.

(image - www.esa.int)

New Book Club Discussion- The Road, Cormac McCarthy

noreply@blogger.com (Christina) — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 21:29:00 +0000

The lovely Katherine Lo will be hosting a book club on Wednesday, July 18th, 7:30pm at the Labrys Gallery at Grace Brethren Church, featuring "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy.

"A searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece.

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.

The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,” are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation."

Join us for a great discussion on this fascinating book.

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 16:41:00 +0000

Summer Reading

Are you a night owl? Like to read and talk? Grab a coffee and join Collaboration Works! at the Broadlind Café for discussions about creativity and innovation.

Book & Brew Schedule

On the following Friday nights at the Broadlind Café:
438 E. Broadway, Long Beach, CA 90802
JUNE 29, 8 pm Orbiting the Giant Hairball
by Gordon MacKenzie
It’s not too late to pick up this book! You can read it in one sitting! Mac Kenzie inspires the creative person to rise above a “rubber-stamp” mindset into a mode of dreaming, daring and doing.

JULY 20, 8 pm The Medici Effect by Frans Johansson
Turn your ideas into path-breaking innovations! Johansson shows how breakthrough ideas most often occur when we bring concepts from one field into a new, unfamiliar territory.

AUG. 31, 8 pm The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
"To realize one's destiny is a person's only obligation". This quote taken from The Alchemist sums up what the book is all about. The journey that life should be is lived by a simple shepherd who finds that life's gifts lie within us all.

SEP. 28, 8 pm The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO by Tom Kelley
Learn the secrets for fostering a process of continuous innovation!
IDEO, the widely admired, award-winning design and development firm that brought the world the Apple mouse, and hundreds of other cutting-edge products and services, reveals the solution to the problem of innovation.

OCT. 26, 8 pm Good to Great and Good to Great and the Social Sectors by Jim Collins
“Some of the key concepts,” comments Jim Collins, “fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.”
Discover the surprising findings. If you own a business or run a nonprofit, you do not want to miss out on this discussion!

November Just Added!
Eric Marsh of HfLB was so excited about our upcoming reads he wanted to add his own favorite:

NOV. 30, 8 pm The Starfish and the Spider
by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom
The Starfish and the Spider argues that organizations fall into two categories: traditional “spiders,” which have a rigid hierarchy and top-down leadership, and revolutionary “starfish,” which rely on the power of peer relationships.

In every city there are two groups living side-by-side; non-profit organizations fighting to meet the needs of under-served people and socially conscious creatives with a desire to “give back” to their city or community. CollaborationWorks! bridges that divide, matching creative people with exciting projects that benefit nonprofits.

CWorks! is being launched by Alexa McNabb and Breanna Fowler from the Gathering, and Amy Hammer from the Young Adults group.

Gazing into the Abyss - Christian Wiman

noreply@blogger.com (Christina) — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 11:42:00 +0000

From The American Scholar quarterly.

Though I was raised in a very religious household, until about a year ago I hadn’t been to church in any serious way in more than 20 years. It would be inaccurate to say that I have been indifferent to God in all that time. If I look back on the things I have written in the past two decades, it’s clear to me not only how thoroughly the forms and language of Christianity have shaped my imagination, but also how deep and persistent my existential anxiety has been. I don’t know whether this is all attributable to the century into which I was born, some genetic glitch, or a late reverberation of the Fall of Man. What I do know is that I have not been at ease in this world...

Reflecting on Mission/Vision

noreply@blogger.com (Christina) — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 22:24:00 +0000

In this past Sunday's Gathering, Matt McNabb made a short presentation, detailing the proposed mission and vision statements of Grace Brethren Church, and requested our response, comments, questions, and feedback:

Mission: A community of the new creation, living out the Gospel, for the flourishing of all...
Vision: Catalyzing a global movement of the Gospel, that begins by impacting 40,000 people with the Gospel by 2015.

A discussion followed, highlighting these four questions:

1.) What intrigues you about these two statements?
2.) What excites you...?
3.) What would you do differently...?
4.) What would Long Beach look like, if we were fulfulling this?

We will be continuing the discussion regarding these proposed statements, at the Gathering, on 6/17.

Note: the number 40,000 was mentioned as 8% of the population of Long Beach, which is attributed to an approximate percentage of people required to effect a "tipping point", or movement for change.

Feasting on the Bible - a passage from Eugene Peterson's Eat this Book

noreply@blogger.com (Christina) — Thu, 31 May 2007 21:26:00 +0000

"Words spoken or written to us under the metaphor of eating, words to be freely taken in, tasted, chewed, savored, swallowed, and digested, have a very different effect on us from those that come at us from the outside, whether in the form of propaganda or information. Propaganda works another person's will upon us, attempting to manipulate us to an action or a belief. Insofar as we are moved by it, we become less, the puppet of a puppeteer writer/speaker. There is no dignity, no soul, in a puppet. And information reduces words to the condition of commodities that we can use however we will. Words are removed from their originating context in the moral universe and from personal relationships so that they can be used as tools or weapons. Such commodification of language reduces both those who speak it and those who listen to it also to commodities.

Reading is an immense gift, but only if the words are assimilated, taken into the soul — eaten, chewed, gnawed, received in unhurried delight. Words of men and women long dead, or separated by miles and/or years, come off the page and enter our lives freshly and precisely, conveying truth and beauty and goodness, words that God's Spirit has used and uses to breathe life into our souls. Our access to reality deepens into past centuries, spreads across continents...."

-Eugene Peterson, Eat this Book.

Read more of the excerpt by clicking HERE.