Aug
29
2010
Preached by Winton Boyd on Sunday, August 29, 2010
Phoenix Affirmation for today: We celebrate the love of God by acting on the faith that we are born with a meaning and purpose; a vocation and ministry that serves to strengthen and extend God’s realm of love.
Romans 12
1-2 So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
We’ve been exploring the Phoenix Affirmations this summer, and we’re coming near the end. We explored important aspects of our life of faith – the inclusiveness of it, the role of doubt, the pursuit of justice, the commitment to the poor…
And now, we may be coming to one of the hardest affirmations for progressive Christians – an affirmation that we are born with a meaning and purpose, a vocation and a ministry… Continue Reading »
Aug
23
2010
Preached by Winton Boyd on Sunday, August 22, 2010
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Like many of you, I have family members who have diligently put together family histories, or family trees. Amidst the details of births and deaths, marriages and children – there are often noble stories of trans-oceanic travel, starting new lives and businesses, success in the face of hardship and a general, overall family pride. While on sabbatical in Scotland 6 years ago, I had a chance to read up on some of the more ancient Boyd family history. While at what used to be known as the “Boyd Castle” I learned that ancient forebears had gotten deeply in debt, that father and son had fought on opposing sides during the Jacobite war; the result being the beheading of the son and the forfeiture of the castle. Of course, this little fact isn’t the first thing one reads in the family or clan history. It takes some digging to find this less than stellar example of misjudgment and loss. Continue Reading »
Aug
10
2010
Preached by Winton Boyd on Sunday, August 8, 2010
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Christian love of neighbors includes preserving religious freedom and the Church’s ability to speak prophetically to government by resisting the commingling of Church and State
In the five churches I have served, as a youth minister or ordained pastor, in my adult life, nothing has been more divisive in congregational histories than wrestling with this question. How does a church enter the political realm, plays a prophetic role while maintaining the separation of church and state? How can a involvement as a voice of conscience can be a source of hope and light? Continue Reading »
Aug
03
2010
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Preached by Ken Pennings on Sunday, August 1, 2010
Each Sunday this summer, we’ve been looking at the Phoenix affirmations developed by a group of progressive Christian pastors in the Phoenix area, some UCC pastors and some from other denominations.
They felt the public face of Christianity that now pervades our society does not reflect the way most Christians view and practice their religion. The Affirmations express a more traditional, inclusive, and expansive role for Christianity. Continue Reading »
Jul
20
2010
Preached by Winton Boyd on Sunday, July 18, 2010
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In the catalog of religions and creation stories, the story from which our Genesis text comes stands apart because humanity is created not only in love, but also in the image of the creator. We are not the result of fighting Gods, we are not the spoils of a victor God. Nor, according to this very first story of our relationship and connection with God, are we slaves to a higher being. In God’s own image, the image of the Holy One, were we created, male and female. Continue Reading »
