restoration | Memorial United Church of Christ

Signs, Wonder…and Grace

Posted on May 8, 2021May 8, 2021 by Jamie Gaffke

You can watch the video of Pastor Kris’ sermon, “Signs, Wonder… and Grace,” HERE. Who has heard of a Clearness Committee? Have any of you experienced a Clearness Committee? Either as a person of focus, or a member of a committee? A Clearness Committee is a discernment process our Quaker siblings have developed, which Parker Palmer (himself a Quaker) traces back to the 1660’s. One person brings a concern, question, or issue they are wrestling with into a group setting. A committee of support gathers to listen. On the Center for Courage and Renewal’s website they describe the experience as one ...
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Cultivating: Community

Posted on March 31, 2021March 31, 2021 by Jamie Gaffke

You can watch the video of Pastor Kris’ reflection, Cultivating: Community, HERE. Sitting down last Monday to begin my sermon for today on Luke’s story of Jesus’s approach to Jerusalem, my heart stood still. I read the sentence again: “If you only recognized the things that make for peace!” The words caught my breath. I rolled the phrase over and over in my mind. Where do you even start with these words of Jesus, when the daggers of white supremacy have pierced the hearts of so many people of color in the United States for all too long? Over the past few months, I have been participating in a...
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Cultivating: An Understanding Heart

Posted on March 25, 2021March 25, 2021 by Jamie Gaffke

You can watch the video of Pastor Kris’ reflection, Cultivating: An Understanding Heart, HERE. In the first of the 3 stories the author of Luke offers today, we listened as Jesus foretold of an unsettling series of events which lay ahead in Jerusalem. Somehow, it is all too easy for us to gloss over the “we don’t want to go there…” we don’t want to talk about… let alone actually face… arrest, violence, or death… whether we live in the 1st century or the 21st. But we are in Lent and each and every year of our faith journey as followers of Jesus we purposefully walk this journey to Jerusalem ...
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