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Sunday Gathering
September 29 @ 9:00 am - 12:00 pm
Join us!
Sunday’s Schedule:
Sunday’s Program and Reading
Sunday, September 29, 2024
What the World Needs Now: Surrender
Men Don’t Retreat: Masculinity and Sovereignty in White Evangelicalism
. . . . . . .
Guest Teacher: Sarah Kornfield is Associate Professor of Communication at Hope College and affiliated professor of Women’s and Gender Studies. She is the author of Contemporary Rhetorical Criticism, and the just-published book from Johns Hopkins University Press, Invoking the Fathers.
Musicians: Annagail (Jared and Jennifer Adams) is an American Americana/folk duo based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. They’ve always defied and stretched genres. Equal parts singer/songwriters and rock band. Thinking man’s Americana. Darkly optimistic opuses? Pop for philosophers? Country for the curious? Rock for the recluse? Whatever you need to call them, Annagail weave heartache and hope for the disillusioned.
Music: Annagail
Gathering Host: Mark Smith
Music: Annagail
Meditation: Bob Kleinheksel
Moment of Silence
Readings/Teaching: Sarah Kornfield
When you are trapped in sin, imagine yourself in a cage. The door is locked, and as you look around you see many others in cages too. But because of the gospel, Jesus comes and unlocks the cage. He leaves the door open and invites you to walk out. As you step out of the cage that has held you prisoner, he gives you the key to the cage, which is your story. Every time we share our story and tell what God has saved us from, our sin loses power over us, and others are often freed from their cages. Do not be ashamed of your story. Do not hide it. Use the story God has saved you from, by his kindness, to walk freely out of your cage, and invite others to do the same.
-Pastor Jonathan “JP” Pokluda, Why Do I Do What I Don’t Want To Do?
Replace Deadly Vices with Life-Giving Virtues, 138, emphasis added
Sovereignty, as Stephen J. Hartnett and Bryan R. Reckard explain, has to do with how “nation-states create borders, organize space, and wield power over particular areas.” Borders symbolize a state’s sovereign claim over a “territorial entity.” As such, sovereignty pertains to space or terrain. However, in democratic nation-states, “the people” retain their freedom; they consent to governance and hold their elected officials accountable. At least in theory, then, “the people” are free and sovereign. As such, who constitutes “the people” becomes a matter of utmost importance. Surveying U.S. governance, social contract theorists such as Carole Pateman and Charles W. Mills clearly demonstrate that U.S. sovereignty was built by and for propertied white men. They constituted the original “the people” and others did not. Since the founding era a wide variety of Constitutional Amendments and legislation have reshaped the contours of “the people,” rendering appeals to freedom and sovereignty especially pertinent as they shape what it means to be a person or citizen in the United States.
-Kornfield and Mikkelsen, in press
Music: Annagail
Gathering Host: Mark Smith
Music: Annagail
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