Explore Scripture this summer with friends and neighbors to seek guidance for our lives and for our community.

Thursdays at 8pm
Starting June 3.

We’ll gather in the pavilion at New Joy. Bring a camping chair and a mask.

For full details, click here.

After George Floyd was killed last year by a Minneapolis police officer, communities around the nation – including ours – began asking how race, inequality, and justice coincide. We confronted the reality that racism’s long legacy is baked into our society and wasn’t erased with the passage of civil rights legislation 50+ years ago. For some of us this was a new realization. For others it was yet another painful reminder of the deadly sin of racism.

A year later our local schools have become battlegrounds in a culture war around issues of diversity and inclusion. The Westfield Washington Schools is currently caught up in a debate about library books that is a proxy for many more issues around sexuality, diversity, and what we teach our community’s children. The Carmel Clay Schools finds its newly appointed Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer, Terri Roberts-Leonard, under attack. Parent groups are organized on “both sides” of these issues, as if there are just two approaches to how our schools honor a diverse student body and teach history.

The Bible may not speak directly to these issues – the words “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” or “transgender” are not in your Bible. Yet, the Bible has clear wisdom that speaks directly to how we live with one another, what a just society looks like, and what God’s love and promise mean for this world.

Explore Scripture this summer with friends and neighbors to seek guidance for our lives and for our community. Whether or not you identify as a Christian, I hope you’ll contribute to lively, generous, and hope-filled conversations, and help us envision a more just and peaceful community.

For if we know justice, we will know peace.

I’ll see you on Thursdays, at 8pm.