Maybe you’re already doing a lot of the practices and behaviors and reflections you need to in order to experience deep connection with God, but you’re just not calling those things “connecting with God”. What if the opportunity to feel spiritual enjoyment, health, purpose, aliveness, and hope (even in the midst of despair or injustice) is closer than you think? Kyle kicks off our new series...
Read MoreIn relationships, it’s experiences above all that build trust. The same is true for relationship with God, so we want to consider together: what personal experiences have shown you God might be all-loving? If you grew up religious, you may have been taught that you can’t trust your experience, because you’ll just make God in your own image, and that’s why you need a strict set of beliefs. We hope to show you otherwise!
Read MoreBelief changes are normal and healthy (especially when going through upheaval, like, I don’t know, say... a global pandemic). Religious settings don’t often communicate safety to reconsider and re-examine beliefs about God, but the season of Lent encourages us to consider how “death and resurrection” is the shape of life and growth. What if that’s how we looked at the inevitable changes in belief we all undergo?
Read MoreYou are (or could be) exercising creativity more than you think. And that is more spiritually good for you than you think. Kyle, Rebecca, Isaac, and Maria share their experience.
Read MoreLast Sunday we hosted a communal online experience meant to offer each of us some spiritual help in our individual journeys of leaving behind what constricts us and embracing promise for the future. Our sense is, as we turn the page on 2020, this past year has been full of chances for constricting lies, traumas, thoughts, beliefs, or vows to make their way into us and start to take up residence.
Read MoreBLC's Hayley Larson shares with us from both her personal story and professional studies how feminist language, images, and actions help us see the God Jesus reveals more fully, and how relying exclusively on male reference points is dangerous to faith.
Art by Kelly Latimore.
Read MoreAs we try to centralize the perspectives of oppressed voices on God and faith, part of what we must do is de-centralize the voices that have been dominant. Kyle, one of our pastors, shares some turning points in his life learning about God and faith, which each saw him leave behind a "God of the Powerful" and move closer to a "God of the Oppressed".
Read MoreIf you want to be able to fight injustice and experience hope, resilience, and joy in spite of it, you need a faith and a God that are acquainted with suffering and oppression. Continuing our series “God of the Oppressed”, we learned this week from BLC’s Barbara Cunningham about oppression and the God who responds to it from a Chilean perspective -- a story of dictatorship, political suppression, and being told what and how to think.
Read MoreIn honor of the weekend many would have been participating in Chicago’s Pride Parade if not for COVID-19, Rebecca Janvrin joins Vince & Kyle to discuss queer insights on God and faith. This kicks off our new series of discussion: God of the Oppressed. We’ll be immersing ourselves, one at a time, in various different marginalized perspectives on Jesus and faith and the Bible. Really, we can’t come to a proper theology and understanding of Jesus at all if we’re not trying to do that from marginalized perspectives, because Jesus was a marginalized person.
Read MoreKyle and Vince get excited when they discover that certain Biblical references may not be about what they’re popularly thought to be about in American culture. Because, despite all of the damage that is done when the Bible is misappropriated, it is (properly treated) a treasure trove!
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