From Church of the Village Website
Church of the Village
Mission Statement
The Church of the Village is a progressive and radically inclusive community committed to dismantling racism, sexism, and all forms of oppression. This congregation is part of a long tradition of welcoming marginalized communities, especially those in the LGBTQIA+ community, and offering an affirming, gay-friendly church space. The foundation for all of our theology and practice is Jesus’ instruction – deeply rooted in Israelite and Jewish tradition – to “love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.” We seek to build a world overflowing with justice, mercy, kindness, and compassion.
Our church building stands on ancestral lands of the Lenape people. The colonizers who stripped indigenous peoples of their lands used Christianity to justify their actions. We are beneficiaries of a history of appropriation, slavery, and forced migration. We repent and commit to being a community that seeks to repair the harm done to indigenous peoples, and build new pathways to love and justice.
We celebrate human diversity, welcoming people of every color, nationality, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, physical and cognitive ability, and economic status. We strongly support environmental justice and stewardship of the Earth. We believe many roads lead to God and are respectful of a diversity of spiritual paths. We believe our community flourishes with many points of view, opportunities for creative expression, and participatory worship.
Justice and Beauty
The Church of the Village is a progressive and radically inclusive community committed to dismantling racism, sexism, and all forms of oppression.
Many Christians seek what they call an 'inclusive community.' They understand the universal Spirit of love revealed in Jesus as a beckoning presence within each and every human heart, drawing us toward its realization. They know that any realization of such a community will be approximate; it will be expressed in varying degrees and ways, and its expressions will themselves be in process. An inclusive community is always evolving, never claiming perfection. It is always on the way.
The Church of the Village in NYC is one example of a community that, with support from its leaders, aims to respond to this call. It strives to be a pocket of inclusivity in one of the world's busiest and most vibrant cities, and thus a beacon for others.
We celebrate human diversity, welcoming people of every color, nationality, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, physical and cognitive ability, and economic status. (Church of the Village)
The Church of the Village has a special but not exclusive focus on welcoming marginalized communities.
This congregation is part of a long tradition of welcoming marginalized communities, especially those in the LGBTQIA+ community, and offering an affirming, gay-friendly church space. (Church of the Village)
Process Theology
Some of the leaders and laypersons at the Church of the Village are influenced by process theology. They partake not only of its ideas but also its spirit.
From a process perspective, the value of an inclusive community is not merely that it is good; it is also that it is beautiful. It carries within its atmosphere a sense of joy, celebration, musicality, and the arts, along with a recognition that the purpose of life is not just to be good but to enjoy a 'richness of experience' in relationships among people and with the more-than-human world.
Moreover, a truly inclusive community knows that human life is nested within the larger context of a web of life, the Earth itself, and that all living beings deserve respect and care, and that each living being offers a unique wisdom and beauty to the world. An inclusive community is bio-inclusive.
We strongly support environmental justice and stewardship of the Earth.
And it knows and repents from the fact that so much of the Earth, and the indigenous communities whose spirituality was so often earth-based not text-based, have been exploited and violated by urban-industrial civilizations, including their historical religions such as Christianity.
Our church building stands on ancestral lands of the Lenape people. The colonizers who stripped indigenous peoples of their lands used Christianity to justify their actions. We are beneficiaries of a history of appropriation, slavery, and forced migration. We repent and commit to being a community that seeks to repair the harm done to indigenous peoples, and build new pathways to love and justice.
One of the pastors at the Church of the Village is Jeff Wells. He is also one of the editors of 'Preaching the Noncontrolling Love of God.' He is a Facebook friend, and wanting to know a little more about him, I discovered in his profile that he likes the singer-songwriter Phil Ochs, whom I also admire. This is why I try to introduce more about the Church of the Village, its mission, and share some excerpts from Jeff's writings, with inspiration from Phil Ochs (1940-1976). It seems to me that, with any introduction to Church of the Village, it helps to have a musical component.
The Church of the Village Choir sings many styles of music, from classical church sounds to spirituals, contemporary, jazz, and even bluegrass.
It's hard to categorize Ochs, but I'm sure his music would be welcome in any Church of the Village setting. He was an American protest singer and songwriter, known for his sharp wit, earnest lyrics, and commitment to social justice.
The True Protest is Beauty
Phil Ochs' call to action, "You must protest, you must protest; it is your diamond duty; ah but in such an ugly time the true protest is beauty," resonates with the mission of the Church of the Village and with core principles in process theology. Ochs' emphasis on protest as a moral imperative, especially during difficult times, parallels the Church's dedication to social justice and its proactive stance against forms of societal oppression.
His notion that "the true protest is beauty" echoes in the Church’s practice of radical inclusion and affirmation of the LGBTQ+ community, which seeks to foster a space of beauty amidst societal challenges. Of course many churches in the United States are welcoming communities who seek to foster such space. That is good news!
The linkage of protest and beauty, found in Ochs, resonates with process theology's view that the divine lure within individuals and communities is towards beauty or "richness of experience." In process thought, this beauty is understood not just as harmony and intensity in the life of individuals but also as justice and beauty in community: that is, in people's relationships with one another and within society at large. Here "society" includes the more than human world: the hills and rivers, plants and animals, Community is eco-community.
There But for Fortune
One of Ochs' best known songs is "There But for Fortune." The song reflects on how fortune—or the lack of it—shapes lives in fundamentally unjust ways. Thus the song is linked to a broader understanding of privilege and power as not inherently earned or merited but as accidental, underscoring the randomness of birth circumstances.
From a process perspective, the circumstances of your birth position are not a result of divine favor but rather a matter of chance, and the choices you make are not controlled by an all-controlling deity. There is indeed a compassionate Spirit in the world, but this spirit is not a puppeteer. The Spirit is an inwardly felt lure to live in ways that are wise and compassionate, creative and free. A recognition of this can lead to a more compassionate and justice-oriented approach to life. This realization can inspire a sense of solidarity with those who are less privileged and can motivate actions to address inequalities and injustices.
From the perspective of Jeff Wells, this approach to life follows the teachings of Jesus who emphasized loving one's neighbor and caring for the marginalized and oppressed. The notion that "it could have been me," combined with a recognition that each human being is unique and beautiful, fosters a sense of lovingkindness, urging those born into privilege to use their circumstances not for self-aggrandizement but as a platform for service and advocacy. In practical terms, this results in various forms of activism at the Church of the Village: service works such as soup kitchens and policy advocacy aimed at redistributing resources and opportunities to create a more balanced and fair world.
You find this approach to life in excerpts from an essay Jeff Wells offers in a book he helped edit, called "Preaching the Uncontrolling Love of God." The essay is called "Does God have a Plan?" and his answer is No, God does not have a preconceived or preordained plan for the world, but God loves the world deeply and meets all people as they are, in their capacities, as he puts it, to become "beautiful mosaics" in the beloved community. You will also find it in an excerpt from a sermon he offered at Church of the Village in a sermon he gave on Palm Sunday called Jesus' Bold Peace March Into Jerusalem" (March 24, 2024).
His notion that "the true protest is beauty" echoes in the Church’s practice of radical inclusion and affirmation of the LGBTQ+ community, which seeks to foster a space of beauty amidst societal challenges. Of course many churches in the United States are welcoming communities who seek to foster such space. That is good news!
The linkage of protest and beauty, found in Ochs, resonates with process theology's view that the divine lure within individuals and communities is towards beauty or "richness of experience." In process thought, this beauty is understood not just as harmony and intensity in the life of individuals but also as justice and beauty in community: that is, in people's relationships with one another and within society at large. Here "society" includes the more than human world: the hills and rivers, plants and animals, Community is eco-community.
There But for Fortune
One of Ochs' best known songs is "There But for Fortune." The song reflects on how fortune—or the lack of it—shapes lives in fundamentally unjust ways. Thus the song is linked to a broader understanding of privilege and power as not inherently earned or merited but as accidental, underscoring the randomness of birth circumstances.
From a process perspective, the circumstances of your birth position are not a result of divine favor but rather a matter of chance, and the choices you make are not controlled by an all-controlling deity. There is indeed a compassionate Spirit in the world, but this spirit is not a puppeteer. The Spirit is an inwardly felt lure to live in ways that are wise and compassionate, creative and free. A recognition of this can lead to a more compassionate and justice-oriented approach to life. This realization can inspire a sense of solidarity with those who are less privileged and can motivate actions to address inequalities and injustices.
From the perspective of Jeff Wells, this approach to life follows the teachings of Jesus who emphasized loving one's neighbor and caring for the marginalized and oppressed. The notion that "it could have been me," combined with a recognition that each human being is unique and beautiful, fosters a sense of lovingkindness, urging those born into privilege to use their circumstances not for self-aggrandizement but as a platform for service and advocacy. In practical terms, this results in various forms of activism at the Church of the Village: service works such as soup kitchens and policy advocacy aimed at redistributing resources and opportunities to create a more balanced and fair world.
You find this approach to life in excerpts from an essay Jeff Wells offers in a book he helped edit, called "Preaching the Uncontrolling Love of God." The essay is called "Does God have a Plan?" and his answer is No, God does not have a preconceived or preordained plan for the world, but God loves the world deeply and meets all people as they are, in their capacities, as he puts it, to become "beautiful mosaics" in the beloved community. You will also find it in an excerpt from a sermon he offered at Church of the Village in a sermon he gave on Palm Sunday called Jesus' Bold Peace March Into Jerusalem" (March 24, 2024).
Our Lives as Mosaics
Jeff Wells
We know that we humans have the capacity to act outside of mere self-interest and move toward societies based on inclusive care for all human and beyond human existence. We know because we have seen and continue to see examples of it. Process philosophy and process-relational theology give us the tools to see that all existence, not just humanity, is deeply connected and interwoven in a network of solidarity and mutuality. To the extent we can grasp that fundamental truth and listen deeply for God’s luring and leading, we strengthen our ability to resist and uproot our collective human tendency to sin.
*
At their best, our lives are beautiful mosaics, adventures in continual becoming, through our constant interplay with God’s love and luring. God loves to participate in the endless wonder of becoming—endless creativity, spontaneity, change, evolution, transformation, and renewal. How much more powerful and relational that is than the vision of God who is either a controlling puppet-master or a distant hands-off observer. God does not offer a roadmap that our lives, our relationships, or our community must follow. Yet, God can lure us out of exile and help us to get back home. To paraphrase Jeremiah, God has “a deeply loving desire for our welfare and not for harm, to give us a future with hope.”
Jeff Wells in Preaching the Uncontrolling Love of God: Sermons, Essays, and Worship Elements from the Perspective of Open, Relational, and Process Theology.
*
At their best, our lives are beautiful mosaics, adventures in continual becoming, through our constant interplay with God’s love and luring. God loves to participate in the endless wonder of becoming—endless creativity, spontaneity, change, evolution, transformation, and renewal. How much more powerful and relational that is than the vision of God who is either a controlling puppet-master or a distant hands-off observer. God does not offer a roadmap that our lives, our relationships, or our community must follow. Yet, God can lure us out of exile and help us to get back home. To paraphrase Jeremiah, God has “a deeply loving desire for our welfare and not for harm, to give us a future with hope.”
Jeff Wells in Preaching the Uncontrolling Love of God: Sermons, Essays, and Worship Elements from the Perspective of Open, Relational, and Process Theology.
Jesus' Bold Peace March into Jerusalem
Jeff Wells
Jesus felt God’s call upon his life to bring the message of love and justice to his people and beyond. God beckoned him not to teach people merely to love God or love the people of their synagogue or their town or even all the people of Judea. He learned through experience and God’s lure that his call was to teach people even to love their enemies. Here is what he proclaimed:
“You have heard it said, ‘Love your neighbor—but hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for your persecutors. This will prove that you are children of God. For God makes the sun rise on bad and good alike; God’s rain falls on the just and the unjust.”
What? Love the Romans? Love the oppressors? Yes, Jesus said. Even do good to your perceived enemies. Jesus himself demonstrated this sort of love when he healed a servant of a Roman centurion – a soldier of the empire.
I despair, sometimes, at the widespread violence, hatred, and oppression in the world today. It is hard to imagine how we are ever going to convince enough people to choose love for it to make a difference, so we can repair intractable conflicts. How can Palestinians and Jews ever come to love one another? Or Russians and Ukranians? Or people of color, queer persons, and Muslims on one side and fundamentalist white racist Christian nationalists on the other?
For a long time in my life, I was convinced of the necessity of violence as a means to achieve a radical political and economic transformation of society. Even now, I sometimes find myself falling back into despising certain political and religious leaders and groups of people who advocate views and policies with which I so strongly disagree. But then I remember what Martin Luther King Jr. preached in his famous 1957 sermon, “Love Your Enemies.” King asserted we need to practice “an active love for the individuals who may be caught up in an evil unjust system, while we continue to work passionately and unrelentingly to do away with the system itself.”
I believe and I teach often that God is at work every moment in the heart, mind, and spirit of every single person. That doesn’t mean every person responds to God’s generous lure. Every human being has the capacity to change, to grow, to be transformed, to learn how to love. If we condemn, if we hate, if we seek to do violence to our perceived enemies, we will never reach them. But if we keep striving to love them, especially when it is very hard to do so, then they may begin to feel guilt or shame, they may begin to soften, and we may end up cooperating with God, who is always already calling that person to change and grow. With proper humility and recognition of our own faults and failings, we can act as instruments for the positive transformation of our perceived enemies. Friends, this is agape love – the refusal to give up on anyone because we recognize that everyone is a beloved child of God.
- Jeff Wells, "Jesus' Bold Peace March Into Jerusalem" (March 24, 2024).
“You have heard it said, ‘Love your neighbor—but hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for your persecutors. This will prove that you are children of God. For God makes the sun rise on bad and good alike; God’s rain falls on the just and the unjust.”
What? Love the Romans? Love the oppressors? Yes, Jesus said. Even do good to your perceived enemies. Jesus himself demonstrated this sort of love when he healed a servant of a Roman centurion – a soldier of the empire.
I despair, sometimes, at the widespread violence, hatred, and oppression in the world today. It is hard to imagine how we are ever going to convince enough people to choose love for it to make a difference, so we can repair intractable conflicts. How can Palestinians and Jews ever come to love one another? Or Russians and Ukranians? Or people of color, queer persons, and Muslims on one side and fundamentalist white racist Christian nationalists on the other?
For a long time in my life, I was convinced of the necessity of violence as a means to achieve a radical political and economic transformation of society. Even now, I sometimes find myself falling back into despising certain political and religious leaders and groups of people who advocate views and policies with which I so strongly disagree. But then I remember what Martin Luther King Jr. preached in his famous 1957 sermon, “Love Your Enemies.” King asserted we need to practice “an active love for the individuals who may be caught up in an evil unjust system, while we continue to work passionately and unrelentingly to do away with the system itself.”
I believe and I teach often that God is at work every moment in the heart, mind, and spirit of every single person. That doesn’t mean every person responds to God’s generous lure. Every human being has the capacity to change, to grow, to be transformed, to learn how to love. If we condemn, if we hate, if we seek to do violence to our perceived enemies, we will never reach them. But if we keep striving to love them, especially when it is very hard to do so, then they may begin to feel guilt or shame, they may begin to soften, and we may end up cooperating with God, who is always already calling that person to change and grow. With proper humility and recognition of our own faults and failings, we can act as instruments for the positive transformation of our perceived enemies. Friends, this is agape love – the refusal to give up on anyone because we recognize that everyone is a beloved child of God.
- Jeff Wells, "Jesus' Bold Peace March Into Jerusalem" (March 24, 2024).
Phil Ochs
|
|
You must protest, you must protest; it is your diamond duty; ah but in such an ugly time the true protest is beauty.
* One good song with a message can bring a point more deeply to more people than a thousand rallies. * Show me a prison, show me a jail, show me a prisoner whose face has grown pale, And I'll show you a young man, with many reasons why. There but for fortune, go you or I. * All my days won't be dances of delight when I'm gone And the sands will be shifting from my sight when I'm gone Can't add my name into the fight while I'm gone So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here * It's always the old to lead us to the war; it's always the young to fall Now look at all we've won with the saber and the gun. Tell me is it worth it all? For I flew the final mission in the Japanese sky; set off the mighty mushroom roar. When I saw the cities burning I knew that I was learning that I ain't marchin' anymore. |
|
For decades, millions of Christians have been leaving church behind. Among those who have stayed, not only individuals, but entire congregations are rejecting traditions that fail to address the challenges of our contemporary world. They yearn, instead, for a profound relationship with the ever-present God who is loving, inclusive, persuasive, and uncontrolling.
This rich and diverse collection of sermons, essays, and worship elements explores how to preach, teach, and practice Open, Relational, and Process theological perspectives in local faith communities. It is a powerful resource for pastors, ministers of worship arts, lay church leaders, professors of preaching, worship, and practical theology, and anyone seeking a deep understanding of God that aligns with the Bible, science, and inclusive love and justice for all life on Earth. |
More Commentary on Essays and Sermons
in Preaching the Uncontrolling Love of God
- The Rapture of Being Alive: Two Hymns by Sheri Kling
- The Grace of the Empty Tomb: Notes on a sermon by Nichole Torbitzsky
- The Craziness of Christian Love: Notes on a Prayer by Vikki Randall
- Embracing the Moment: A Buddhist Perspective on Open and Relational Theology
- Leaning into Withness: A Whiteheadian Reflection on a Sermon by Jonathan Foster
- A Sermon is Co-Created: Listening to a Sermon with an Open and Relational Heart