Now that we’re in the New Year we’re going to be entering the third part of our series “Fixed on Jesus: how to hold the centre in an age of diversity”. Having rooted ourselves firmly in the centre (part 1), and having explored a model for how to love well, GYVE (part 2), we are now going to practice what we’ve been talking about. In order to do that, we invited your input. As you might imagine, we gathered a whole list of “Hot Button” issues of diversity that you felt the church needs to address. For those of you who participated in this survey, thanks! We had a lot of thoughtful responses! We have done some categorizing and have come up with what we feel will be good issues for us to explore in the next two months. We did exercise some editorial control (for example, “unkempt hipster beards” will not be discussed! – thanks for that – you know who you are even if nobody else does!).

For each of the Hot Button topics we will have one Sunday morning in which we will explore the various perspectives on the subject. These will not be times to take a position as a church – that’s not the point. Rather, the point is to learn.

Then we have scheduled a few Sunday evenings to demonstrate what doing GYVE looks like with each of these Hot Button topics. We will have a few brave people model the process for us. Again, the point isn’t to argue positions. Rather, we are attempting to create a safe place to hear each other, and hear the stories, values and experiences underneath the various perspectives. This is a sacred and holy event.

If you haven’t already gotten a handle on GYVE, we highly encourage you to do so. Also, please continue to pray for the church in this season. It will bring up many emotions. God will meet us – the Holy Spirit has been guiding us and will continue to do so. Still we say, “Lord have mercy!”

>>Listen to the sermons here.

>>Read the articles here.

>>Download the GYVE booklet here.