Awaken Bowness Podcast

Ephesians:Welcome Home Part 1

A POST- COVID SPECIAL!
As we learn to come together again (slowly and safely) after nearly two years in isolation from one another we are reflecting on Paul's letter to the Ephesians for a few weeks. This is  friendly dialogue (unscripted) between two pastors who love the church and much like the apostle Paul, long to see the church be a HOME to one another in the Beloved. The goal for this series, of course, is to empower you to ask even more questions and hold the sacred text with more curiosity, and be even more open to one another in the name of the God who is love. The mission flows from the COMMUNITY - so let's wrestle together with the depth, height, and width of Jesus' unfathomable love for us, through us, towards all of us.
 
 He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.  He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will,  to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. Eph 1:4-6
 

The He(art) of Forgiveness Part 3

Beloved,
Today we had a unique opportunity to hear some teaching from from two very wise and experienced individuals.
Donald Goertz is an ordained pastor with the CBOQ and for the past 25 years he has been Associate Professor of Church History and Director of the MDiv. Church In The City at Tyndale University where he also helped design and launch the Spiritual Formation major.
Over the years, this mix of experience has led to his being asked to consult with a variety of congregations and organizations in Canada and overseas as they wrestled with complicated histories and planned for next steps forward. He has two primary goals: to help the Church rethink its mission and creatively engage its wonderfully multicultural and diverse community and to actively prepare people to integrate their faith and their personal and professional lives.
Marion Goertz, DMin, RP, RMFT, CTTS
For over 20 years Marion has maintained a private consulting practice, first in the Greater Toronto Area, and most recently in Western Canada, specializing in psychotherapy, trauma treatment and corporate reconciliation
As you all may recall, Donald and Marion worked with Scott and I this fall to facilitate dialogue and reconciliation and they both brought such patience, insight, and thoughtful leadership to our little church.
Today they will be giving a sermon together to conclude our series on Forgiveness. Please consider bringing the warm Awaken welcome and I pray each of us can find our hearts soft in the hands of our gentle Creator who longs for us to know the freedom of true forgiveness.

The He(art) of Forgiveness Part 2

In an attempt to try something new this sermon is based off of an interactive game of Kahoot played on Sunday, April 18th. We talked about SHALOM and forgiveness and unresolved conflict. Did you know that withholding forgiveness affects YOU more than it affects the person who offended you? Did you know that conflict is a gift? Did you know that forgiveness is at the very HEART of Christian life together? 
Let's be known in Bowness by our willingness to forgive freely and completely.
 
 

The He(art) of Forgiveness Part 1

Join us for a three part series on FORGIVENESS as a spiritual practice of letting go. In this Sermon we unpack the poetic and beautiful story of Jacob and Esau and reflect on forgiveness as a gift that gives itself to you. 
 
In this sermon and throughout this series you will find reflections from Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Reverend Mpho Tutu's book, The Book of Forgiving. https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00DB32SR6/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Easter Sunday 2021: Utterly Alive

On Good Friday several of us gathering around the weeping tree in Bowmont park to slowly and reflectively take the weeping ties down from the tree. On Saturday we ironed them and carefully, prayerfully, tied them all together and made a banner for the Sanctuary. On Easter Sunday we had a celebratory worship service hosted by Logan and Dionne and we gave a sermon proclaiming that God is utterly alive and we reflect on how the bodily resurrection demonstrates that the earth and God are completely open towards one another. Our longing to connect is blessed by God!

Lent as a Sacred Space for Sorrow: The God of the Losing Side

The God revealed in the Scriptures is continually on the losing-side of history. This is foolishness and a stumbling block to those who are winning. Jesus didn't ride triumphantly into Jerusalem: the Resurrection isn't the victory following Friday's defeat. Jesus marched into Jerusalem - lowly and riding on a donkey to reveal a God who suffers, takes risks, opens Godself to vulnerability and always towards the most vulnerable. That might challenge our Greek notions of "omnipotence and omniscience" but you cannot love if you cannot lose and greater love has no other than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends. 
 
 

Lent as a Sacred Space for Sorrow: Compassion for Your Own Hurting Heart with Adrianna Schmidt

Adrianna is a Table Group leader at Awaken and also a registered Psychologist. She leads us in a beautiful and interactive sermon on Self-Compassion. Is it ok to love oneself and be kind to oneself? Can we see our emotions (anxiety, fear, sadness, etc) as teachers looking to teach us something? What if we invited those "guests" over for tea and became curious about them. Thank you Adrianna! 

Lent as a Sacred Space for Sorrow: Collective Grief and the Genocide in Rwanda with Melchoir Cyusa

Today we had the special honour of learning from Melchoir Cyusa. Melchoir is a survivor of the Rwandan Genocide and knows what it means to grieve as an individual and he knows very well how important it is to make sacred space for communities to grieve together. In this sermon we learned a lot about the Genocide in Rwanda against the Tutsi people and how people who have survived make space for grief and reconciliation work. 
 
Thank you Melchoir! 

Lent as a Sacred Space for Sorrow: The Cross and the Lynching Tree

We all have prejudice. Prejudice is when you make a judgement about someone's value based on their physical appearance/attributes. This could include their ethnicity, gender expression, weight, height, clothing style, monetary value of their clothing or vehicles, etc. Confronting our prejudices is important work and all people must do this work. Racism, however, is when power is mixed with prejudice and one group of people who have special access to power can dehumanize those they have prejudice against. Racism is about power and the Cross is God's divine confrontation with Power. This episode is a take 2 b/c of a sermon recording tech glitch. I read directly from my notes and re-recorded in my living room with a train and a puppy in the background. 
 
At Lent we talk about the agony of the crucifixion and the suffering of Christ and so this sermon felt like an important PART of a bigger story about the role of suffering in our world and in the Church and this sermon is not a systematic theology but rather a message from our pastor for a particular community asking particular questions in this particular place called Bowness. We focus on Isaiah 53 and the notion that Christ is a man familiar with pain and suffering and the ways his suffering leads to healing for all. 
 
Please don't just take MY word for it! Check out:
 
Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing and Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery by Soong Chun Rah and Mark Charles
The Color of Compromise by Jemar Tisby
Reading while Black by Esau Mccaully
The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James Cone
Who Will be a Witness by Drew G.I. Hart
and African American Readings of Paul by Lisa M. Bowens
 
For a full bibliography of commentaries on books of the bible by Biblical Scholars and Theologians of color email us! 

Lent as a Sacred Space for Sorrow: The Sword That Breaks the Heart

Jess Andrews came and delivered this amazing sermon on pain and love through the eyes of Mother Mary. Thank you Jess for your leadership and courage.