ITLOTC
(In The Life Of The Church)
Epiphany
The Lens in My Glasses (by jamie)
yes, hello.
hope this finds you well.
not sure how it’s february, but here we are.
some of you are going to hate the format I chose for this post
BUT ITS TOO LATE
so, sorry about that.
if it bothers you, you can copy and paste it into paragraph form, but we both know you’ve got better things to do.
let us begin:
people are amazing.
every person who isn’t you has lived an entire existence to which you have no direct access.
those existences are varied, of course.
some of them are drastically different.
others are suspiciously similar.
but even those suspiciously similar ones are actually mind-blowingly different.
have you ever given that some serious thought?
the particularity of it all?
have you considered that even people who have similar interests, tastes, opinions, etc. to your own have perhaps come to those by a path that is different from yours?
that sometimes the “whats” are similar, but the “whys” are different?
or that people who have very different interests, tastes, opinions, etc. to your own have perhaps come to those by a path that is similar to yours?
that sometimes the “whys” are similar, but the “whats” are different?
what is this madness?
humanity, i guess.
weird.
anyway.
if you’ve been at ubc for any amount of time, and if you have been paying attention, you will probably have noticed that we have quite a range of theological ideas floating around.
and it’s no surprise.
that’s what happens when you gather a group of people together and offer them the nicene creed as a “what we believe” statement.
have you read the nicene creed?
it primarily talks about God and what God has done (is doing?) in history.
in the process, it says some important stuff, but it doesn’t say very much stuff at all.
so even if we relentlessly recited it together with the expectation that everyone could claim each phrase with absolute certainty (we don’t, and that’s not really the point of creeds, but you get the idea), there would still be innumerable opportunities for us to disagree about beliefs we hold strongly.
and yet, here we are.
held together.
rolling into year 24 of here-and-held-together, actually.
amazing.
i say this to say that we’ve been banking on the One in whom all things hold together to hold us together for as long as we’ve existed.
as you might imagine, i’ve been thinking about our theological diversity a lot lately; specifically, wondering what value it might offer us.
there was a time where I would have said the value of theological diversity in our community is that it affords us ready-access to lively debates.
that in our engaging in conversations with people with whom we disagree, each of us might walk away with something to chew on.
as if the presence of disagreement were some sort of safeguard to theological complacency, ever-again inviting us to do the wrestling that has accompanied the people of God since there were people and God.
i guess that’s still valuable.
i guess it still has the chance to keep us on our toes and still offers to protect us from making our ideas about God into idols.
but i’m pretty resolved now to say that this isn’t the greatest benefit of our diversity.
not the one i cherish the most.
instead, i’d say the greatest benefit is something much more passive.
it’s the fact that we gather week after week with a room full of people with whom we disagree on any number of things, and do so without the need to strike up a lively debate.
it’s our collective (subconscious) shout into the cosmos that we have gathered around One who is more real than the lines we draw in the sand of our differences.
it’s a casting off of the masks we project onto others and a coming to know the people beneath.
people who are made in the image of God.
people who know God in ways that we do not, piecing together pictures from vantages we can’t access.
people who are the body of Christ.
people to love and be loved as Christ loved us.
people with pain for us to carry, burdens for us to bear.
partners with whom we stumble further down the way of Christ, not alone, but together.
my God, what a gift.
have you noticed it?
i’m offering you this lens just in case you haven’t
because i popped it into my glasses recently, and it’s doing things to me.
Image to generate clickbait traffic
LGBTQ Conversation Resources
We’ve got a list of resources for thinking about the various ways Christians engage our current discussion at ubc. If you are interested in accessing any of those, or attending any of our Wednesday night workshops, you can find all that info here.
Parents Night Out
Ever feel challenged by the demands of raising kids? Need some time to do nothing? Boy do we have an opportunity for you. Next Friday, February 8, UBC will be hosting a parents night out. Sign ups will be at church this Sunday, but if you won’t be there and would like to sign up, you can contact Taylor @ taylor@ubcwaco.org.
College Women’s Group
Join us for UBC’s College Women’s Group! We meet Thursdays at 7pm in the piano room here at church. Every week, we spend time catching up with one another, walking through scripture, and praying together. Contact Emmy at emily_edwards2@baylor.edu if you have any questions.
Work is Worship
Greeters: Rick & Daniel
Coffee Makers: Hoymeyer
Mug Cleaners: Order of the Phoenix
Money Counter:
Welcome Station:
Leadership Team
If you have a concern or an idea for UBC that you’d like to share with someone that is not on staff, feel free to contact one of our leadership team members.
Chair- Adam Winn: adamwinn68@yahoo.com
Byron Griffin: byrontgriffin@gmail.com
Kerri Fisher: Kerri_Fisher@baylor.edu
Bridget Heins: bheins@hot.rr.com
Jeremy Nance: Jeremy.J.Nance@L3T.com
Joanna Sowards: jo.sowards@gmail.com
Kathy Krey: kathykrey@gmail.com
Student Position, Samuel Moore: samuel_moore2@baylor.edu
Student Position, Anna Carol Peery: anna_peery@baylor.edu
UBC Finance Team
Do you have a question about UBC’s financial affairs? Please feel free to contact any of your finance team members.
JD Newman: JD_Newman@baylor.edu
Hannah Kuhl: HannahKuhl@hotmail.com
Justin Pond: pondjw@gmail.com
Doug McNamee: douglas.mcnamee@gmail.com
Catherine Ballas: catherine@refitrev.com
UBC HR Team
If you have concerns about staff and would like contact our human resources team, please feel free to email any of the following members.
Josh Blake: joshnblake@gmail.com
Ross Van Dyke: Ross_Vandyke@baylor.edu
Jared Gould: jared.gould1@gmail.com
Rebekah Powell: rpowell671@gmail.com
Kristen Richardson: wacorichardsons@gmail.co