Middle Church

• Why is the need for collective care so essential? • How might the Church be a teaching agent for collective care? • How have you been a recipient of or a giver of collective care?

Natalie Renee Perkins, preacher

How do you honor and move forward? • Where do you find joy in our fight? • What is stuck in your body? How can you release it?

Ben Perry, preacher

• What would it look like to live in an economy of abundance? How would it feel? • Our working rights were won through collective action. How can we build that kind of solidarity now? • Jesus said “put down your nets” as an instruction to abandon predatory economic systems. What nets is God calling you to put down?

Catherine Torpey, preacher

• What are the passions in your life which you might celebrate or honor more than you do? Try writing your own Song of Songs to celebrate what makes the blood pump in your veins! • Does your way of reading scripture liberate you to “rise to fierce love”? Why or why not? • How does (or might) loving your whole self (including your body and its needs and desires) help you to do the work of justice i...

Victor Greene, preacher

• Someone once said, “Clothing makes community.” Think about your everyday life. How do you and your community literally and or figuratively wear truth, righteousness, and peace? • Be creative. Choose one: a) What other garments would you add to wear that are at our disposal to help us rise and withstand evil we see in our world? And why? b) Instead of a Roman Soldier, what other template might we...

Amanda Hambrick Ashcraft, preacher

• What does a world flourishing in peace look like? • What would it look like to rise in peace—in yourself—in your community—in our country—in our world—and as Middle Church? • White supremacy and capitalism hinder the peace God designed for us. What are other barriers and hindrances to God’s peace?

Natalie Renee Perkins, preacher

• What are your own “I am’s”? How do they reflect the complicated and rich experience of your own existence? Which “I am’s” do you show to the world? Which are just for you? • What are the “I am’s” you hold on to for support? The “I am’s” that undergird the most important parts of yourself? What are the “I am’s” you find uncomfortable? How might you make more space for these? • Are there “I am’s”...

Amanda Hambrick Ashcraft, preacher

• What is one area of your life where you can implement an abundance mindset rather than one of scarcity? What difference would this make? • How do white supremacy and capitalism actively work against an abundance mindset? What can we/you do about it? • What would it look like for Middle to Rise to Abundance? What role can you take in that rising?

Darrell Hamilton, preacher

The prayers of the people offered in today's worship is the Buddhist practice of mettā bhāvanā. • God shows us that boundaries are important for living a life of faith. Where in your own life do you perceive a need to reset appropriate boundaries? Or, to honor appropriate boundaries that have been set for you? • Dr. King said, “Riots are the language of the unheard.” Likewise, outbursts are often...

• How can you be in better solidarity with trans, non-binary, and gender variant folx? What do you need to unlearn about gender in order to do so? • Who are the prophets among you and your community that you might have overlooked? What can you learn from them? • Is there anything keeping your body from being a site of liberation for yourself and others? What will help you become free?

Ben Perry and Elise Tiralli, preachers

Jacqui Lewis

• What does Pride mean to you, in light of and regardless of your sexuality or gender identity? • What risks are you willing to take for your light to shine? • How can you encourage and uplift others to follow the words of Jesus and be “the light of the world?”

Jacqui Lewis, preacher

• Charles Albert Tindley’s hymns chart his experience with the liberating love of God. What song sings your faith? • Are you feeling stormy about the state of our nation? How will your faith change the weather? • How does this movement of “LOVE. Period” inspire you to use your resources to create “shelter in a time of storm?”

Jacqui Lewis, preacher

• The God of the breasts is the female nature of God, who has both what humans would call feminine and masculine attributes. How do you experience those aspects? • We who are in God’s image are also anima and amimas. How do you experience yourself in that regard? • This two-spirit nature of humankind is as old as time. How did we get so strident and simplistic about the binary, in your mind? How c...