Lead vocals by Rev. Kate Penney Howard. Other vocals, instruments, and engineering by Ken Janzen. New hymn text, set to the tune
Swing version of my stewardship hymn From Our Abundance We Give. Appropriate for inclusive Christian, Unitarian Universalist, and other congregations.
This upbeat sending-out song or closing hymn is based on words adapted from a famous John Wesley quote.
This upbeat sending-out song or closing hymn is based on words adapted from a famous John Wesley quote.
Amanda wrote this for an inclusion campaign within the United Methodist Church and also did a Pride version of the video.
Amanda wrote this piece when churches were closing their doors early on in COVID as a reminder that church is more than a building.
A Pentecost social justice song. And a prayer for any day of the year for those dedicated to building Beloved Community. Winner of the 2021 United Church of Christ Musicians Association Hymn Writing Competition
A short closing or sending-out song appropriate for all forms of inclusive worship.
This hymn is appropriate for Earth Day and other environmental worship services. Recording and video by Ken Janzen.
A pretty, simple Easter Hymn: Love Will Have the Final Laugh
Join Rev. Dr. Caleb J. Lines of University Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)/United Church of Christ, San Diego as he sits down with an indigenous leader to talk about sacred dance in indigenous traditions.
Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr.’s history in the United Church of Christ and the Civil Rights Movement go back years and reflect a legacy of justice orientation and activism.
Worship Nov. 7, 2021
Sermon with Rev. Dr. Caleb J. Lines
This morning, I preached at Platte Woods United Methodist Church in Kansas City. They’ve been doing a sermon and education series on Freeing Jesus - and they asked me to come and finish up their study of the book.
An Easter Journey
A progressive Christian encounter with the Easter story that situates it within the longer story of sacred love and within our lives today.
Scripture: Genesis 22: 1-14
Perhaps the story isn’t so much about God but about us. But if you accept that the Bible is the work of many authors, the story tells you nothing about God. Instead, it tells you what the various authors’ believed.
"Searching for God" SCRIPTURE Acts 17.22-28 with Rev. Amanda Hambrick Ashcraft
We tune our hearing to silence. We wait on the source of being. Our minds release the roar of thoughts.
In the desperate final days of Bonhoeffer's life, he wrote from prison about the futility of trying to talk to stupid people about facts, as many of his neighbors and fellow church folk simply rolled along with the Nazi movement. M. Scott Peck defined evil as a kind of "militant ignorance," a refusal to deal with the known facts of reality.
In worship at Mt Hollywood Church in LA, Sunday, Feb 16, I "channeled" William Jennings Bryan, best known as the fundamentalist Christian lawyer who defended six-day creationism in the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925.
“At the center of the Christmas story is hope…hope which comes to us in the form of a vulnerable, poor baby. A child, not a king, changes the world. God appears to us as a marginalized, Afro-Semitic, Jewish child from Nazareth in Palestine. A child who grows up to teach us to welcome the stranger. How would our world be different if we loved our neighbors as ourselves?” asks the Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, senior minister of Middle Collegiate Church.
Politically Speaking host Dave Szollosy interviewed me and our conversation revolved around the issues relating to how our religion informs our politics.
I am indebted to Amy-Jill Levine's book "Short Stories by Jesus" and Bernard Brandon Scott's book "Hear Then the Parable" for challenging me to look beyond the Christian bias of interpreting Jesus' parables through the lens of the repentance and forgiveness and attempting to hear this story in ways more in keeping with Judaism.
This sermon, is a distillation of the work of Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan in their excellent book “The First Christmas” I am indebted to Peter Rollins for his approach to the Christmas story. Some have said that the birth of Jesus is the most amazing birth story ever told. Jesus birth narrative heralded the arrival of a child who was praised as the Son of God, the Saviour of the World who was said to be the personification of peace on earth; God incarnate; fully divine and fully human. Not everyone agrees that this is the most amazing birth story ever told. Indeed, the story of Jesus birth can’t even claim to be unique. Some claim that Jesus’ birth story is just one of a long line of birth stories. Jesus’ birth story, some claim, is only considered to be unique because it’s our story; our story that we tell over and over at the expense of other birth stories from other communities that are just as great.
Jesus MATTERS – BRUNCHtalks 5 by Rev. Dawn Hutchings Audio only click here Moving beyond the sacrificial interpretation of the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth to explore a progressive way of following Jesus. Jesus' way of being provides hope for 21st century christian communities who embrace the LOVE we meet in the stories about Jesus that have been handed down to us. Can christian communities provide a space where people can gather together to learn how to love?
Mark 4:35-41
The raging storms are all around us. Racism, poverty, disease, and violence; four winds that howl so ferociously that all we can hear is the sound of people’s fears as we see the very real possibility that the bottom might just fall out of the small craft we have fashioned to navigate the troubled waters that lie ahead.
I am indebted to Jim Kast-Keat, a pioneering preacher who inspired me to open this sermon with the video below. I am also indebted to Bishop John Shelby Spong for teaching me more that I can articulate with words. His excellent book The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic opened the Gospel According to John in ways that have helped me to see aspects of the Divine to which I was once blind. Much of the sermon consists of extensive quotes from chapter 9 of Jack’s book.
Catholics and Evangelicals have been relatively silent about the #MeToo movement because they have tended to view the entire topic of ethics through the single lens of abortion. The Trump administration is getting a pass on many moral fronts because of his ability to appoint anti-abortion justices and because of his visible and verbal support of pro-life groups. This sermon, the 4th in a 4 part series on the #MeToo movement, implores Catholics and Evangelicals to rethink the primacy of abortion advocacy and to add their voices to the creation of a more ethical world for women.