go public with your love

This fall has turned into a season to witness to God’s love.
This past weekend, people all over Boston and all over the world prayed and marked 10 years since the terror and heart-rending sadness of 9/11, and we wondered aloud how to bring reconciliation and peace to this hurting world.
This coming weekend, thousands will gather in New York City to occupy Wall Street and demand an end to the unchecked rule of greed and might. A local group of Protest Chaplains -- many of them from The Crossing -- will head to the city bearing prayer, hope and the dream of God’s justice among the protesters.
On Thursday, September 29, we’ll step out to Boston Common to celebrate The Crossing’s 5th anniversary with a Birthday Worship Party. It will be less a celebration of ourselves, and more a chance to step out, give thanks and bless the city with music, prayer, communion and real live food (I can’t wait to pass out brownies and lemonade on the corner of Boylston and Tremont Streets). We’re dreaming of a tent revival like The Common hasn’t ever seen. Come celebrate God’s love out in the open.
Progressive Christians don’t often go public with our witness. By the end of September, we’ll have enough practice to put the lie to that old story. Let’s be a different kind of Christian, world-changing Christians, starting now.
Labels: alternative worship, Boston church, emergent, emerging church, Episcopal, evening service, progressive evangelical, queer, volunteer, young adult

Minister for Justice & Action Vicki Morte organized us to truly represent, and for weeks our crews gathered on the lawn of the Life Together house in Brookline to build a float that unequivocally announces "God loves you and so do we!" 





r worship. He seemed engaged enough, until I finished offering the reflection, a meditation on the first commitment in our Rule of Life, the commitment to practice Radical Welcome (embracing the gifts and voices and wisdom of The Other, such that we and our communities are changed).
in to the House. (Jason Long and Arrington Chambliss presented Saturday and set it off right!). It's insanely intimidating to be one of two priests providing pastoral support, organizing liturgies and preaching multiple sermons to the gathered body of nearly 200 bishops. But last Thursday night, before I left for North Carolina, The Crossing community did a laying on of hands for me. Folks stretched out to touch my head and shoulders, or the shoulder of the person closest to them, and Kevin Vetiac prayed an amazing Holy Spirit-filled prayer over me. I took that power, and stories from our community and images of your faces, with me to the House. 



