City Covenant

Getting pumped up for Christmas Eve! 4pm at 512 S Bernard!!

City Covenant updated their phone number.

City Covenant updated their info in the about section.

We would love for you to come to the Friendsgiving we’re doing at City Covenant on Sunday at 5:30. You can sign up for free at this link to let us know how much turkey to make for you! https://becommunitas.churchcenter.com/registrations/events/1509281

So pumped to baptize and dedicate kids today at City Covenant - this is a sweet season.

Communion at city covenant

Grateful for our community!

Great kickoff dinner for our new midweek meetup at City Covenant! We’d love it if you want to come to!

Easter kids choir - super fun to have the kids help out on the first song!

This week's blog is by David Sloan. Check it out! https://www.becommunitas.org/blog/go-slow-be-gentle

Go Slow. Be Gentle. — Communitas Go slow. Be gentle. Sounds like a cliché bumper sticker, but I like it. Plus, it’s biblical. Paul encourages us to walk with humility and gentleness (Ephesians 4:1-2), and Jesus is even described as gentle in Matthew 21:5. However, it doesn’t seem that easy for me. Just about every day I find m...

Hey Friends!
Check out this weeks reflection by Barbara Comito:
https://www.becommunitas.org/blog/the-problem-with-self-improvement

The Problem with Self-Improvement — Communitas I am highly susceptible to self-improvement plans, especially those that lay out steps to success: Do these 5 things and you will be a better wife, mother, employee, friend, Christian. I desperately want someone to show me the way to be the best me I can be. For some of you, red flags are waving ma

Hey Communitas! Check out today's reflection by Lin:

https://www.becommunitas.org/blog/what-does-your-backpack-feel-like-today

What does your backpack feel like today? — Communitas Not long ago, I was reminded of this image used in counseling, of our personal back pack. We all carry with us metaphorical backpacks as we go about our daily life. What they  carry can be external in nature, such as our responsibilities, other’s expectations, relationships,  and p

Today's reflection is by Courtney Grant. Check in out!
https://www.becommunitas.org/blog/tired

Tired. — Communitas Oh y’all, I am tired.  We are all bone-weary as we come out of the pandemic season. A thousand fears and  frustrations drained us over the last 16 months. What ground you down was likely different than  what decimated me. Perhaps you were leading, pressured from so many d

https://www.becommunitas.org/blog/since-we-have-such-a-hope
Check out our latest reflection by Joshua Kistner:

Since we have such a hope… — Communitas When I am in the exam room with patients, the subject of faith in God comes up frequently enough. Sometimes these are great stories of recovery and renewal. But unfortunately too often I run into expressions of faith that are misguided. One common example is when I offer some advice or intervention,

Check out this week's reflection by Joshua Mayer: https://www.becommunitas.org/blog/hope-deferred

Hope Deferred — Communitas “Hope deferred makes the heart sick...”  The last year I remember living through that held not an ounce of pain was my sixth. I turn forty-five this month.  Sound like a dramatic statement? Depression, anxiety, joint pain, muscle weakness, skin disorders, vision impairm

Hey Communitas!
Just a reminder that we are moving to 9am for worship THIS SUNDAY (May 30th). See you on Sunday at 9!

Check out today's devotion by Catherine Grady!
https://www.becommunitas.org/blog/spiritual-blockage

Spiritual Blockage — Communitas Any of you had issues with clogged drains or toilets? Quite likely you have and may also  have been unfortunate enough to land the job of removing the blockage from the pipes.  Usually this is a job I assign to my husband (the role of strong independent female has its limi

Hey Communitas! Check out this recent reflection from Kristen Robbins: https://www.becommunitas.org/blog/what-are-you-listening-to

What are you listening to? — Communitas What are you listening to?  I’ve been listening to Chris Stapleton a lot lately. In his song, “What are you listening to?” he asks are you listening to the real song or just some cheap cover band? It’s a fair question, what are you listening to?  Or rather, who are you

Check out this recent blog post by Matt Orlob:
https://www.becommunitas.org/blog/vulnerability-is-contagious

Vulnerability is contagious. — Communitas I have been listening to Christian radio exclusively and it has begun to drive my kids a little crazy. One  song that I really enjoy is one by Matthew West and is titled “Truth be Told”. It speaks about how when so many of us are asked how we are doing, rather than straight up sharing the t

We're hiring! Are you interested in being a part time youth coordinator (or do you know someone who is)?
More information here: becommunitas.org.

Thanks to John Robbins for this week's reflection: https://www.becommunitas.org/blog/do-not-fear

Do not fear. — Communitas The only thing to fear, is fear itself. These words spoken by Franklin D. Roosevelt during his inaugural address helped summoned the courage our nation would need as it fought its way out the Great Depression. While secular in nature, President Roosevelt’s words provide an elegant summary of a key

https://www.becommunitas.org/blog/pray-without-ceasing

Communitas Weekly Devotion - Mary Jo Andrews

Pray without ceasing. — Communitas Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 There is a lot to be praying about, pandemics, the world, our country, our community, friends, family, the young, the old, ourselves, suffering, rel

This weeks devotion by Josh Landrus:

https://www.becommunitas.org/blog/how-good-and-how-pleasant-it-is-to-dwell-together

How good and how pleasant it is to dwell together. — Communitas We just finished celebrating our Lord’s resurrection from the dead, an act so central to our faith that it cannot be overstated. As Paul said, “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, and your faith also is vain” (1 Corinthians 15:14). But Christ was raised and ultimately as...

Check out today's devotion: https://www.becommunitas.org/blog/help-me-please

Help me, please. — Communitas It’s been another rough week in a long series of rough weeks. And in the midst of this rough week for me, two things happened. I cried out to God with just kind of an achy groan and an almost inaudible “Help me, please. I don’t know how.” And almost immediately three friends reached out to m...

Check out this weeks devotion by Griffen Kociela:
https://www.becommunitas.org/blog/how-long

How long? — Communitas Something I have been reminded of over and over this year is that hopefulness does not have an on/off  switch. When we read devotionals, see motivation online, or have a quick conversation with a friend, there seems to be a very fast transition from struggle to hope – probably within the sp

Today is Saint Patrick's Day and it also marks one year since I last had dinner in a friend's home. In reflecting on Saint Patrick's famous return to Ireland and our eagerness for a "return to normal,” I began thinking about the ways in which a return can be a source of repentance, renewal, or of propelling the Kingdom forward.

Throughout the Old Testament God pleads with the Israelites to return to him.

Remember these things, Jacob,
for you, Israel, are my servant.
I have made you, you are my servant;
Israel, I will not forget you.
I have swept away your offenses like a cloud,
your sins like the morning mist.
Return to me,
for I have redeemed you.
Isaiah 44:21-22 (NIV)

We see this link between return and redemption emphasized again and again. The Israelites are implored to return because they have been redeemed. There is something good waiting for them on their return.

Several of the gospels tell us that Jesus returned to Galilee in the wake of John the Baptist's imprisonment ("When Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, he withdrew to Galilee" Matthew 4:12). For Jesus, this return was about retreat. In hearing this terrible news, Jesus returned to a place he knew well, in search of renewal in hard times.

In the 5th century, when he was a teenager, Saint Patrick is said to have been captured in Britain, enslaved, and taken to Ireland to work as a shepherd. After a harrowing escape (perhaps embellished by legend) and a time of study and reflection, he ultimately decided to return to Ireland and played a central role in converting the country to Christianity. His likely difficult choice to return had a hand in driving the Kingdom forward.

For the last year we have all been eagerly waiting for life to "return to normal.” I wonder if we might find some space for repentance, redemption, or renewal as we begin this return. What would that look like for you?

Is there a place you are eager to return? Do you have a friend or family member to whom it might be difficult to return? Have you begun a Lenten practice, set it aside, and need encouragement to return to it? How might you propel the Kingdom forward during our slow return to normalcy?
--Megan Hershey

Praise God I’m Satisfied.

For those of you unfamiliar with the low basso raspy voice of Blind Willie Johnson, I suggest you familiarize yourself with him. Especially with the song “Dark was the night Cold was the Ground”. An influencer as we might call him today, his music has woven its way throughout many a pop culture songs and I would dare to say that without him, we would not have a great deal of music today.

He sang the blues.

The blues is a music rooted in trial and tribulations, a genre born of old field holler songs that became an expression of a people used to uncertainty, cruelty and hardship. What grew of the melding of the hollers and gospel was a music of praise, circumspect and real life.

While not the most beautiful of voices, Blind Willie could write a mean gospel song and parallels the psalmist when he writes
“Well, it gave me joy and gladness, For the clouds he rolled away, While I’m left on Earth singin’ his praises, How glad I am today, Oh such a need had sinners, for he bowed his head and died, all right, Now I know I’m a child of his…..praise God I’m satisfied.”

Here in this Lenten season, we confront our trials, we reflect on our sins, and things that distance ourselves from Christ. But amongst this introspection, we must hold higher the fact that Christ (in what sometimes to me feels esoteric and distant) we have hope and we have a savior. That through difficulties and the fog of war, Christ “clouds he rolled away”, giving us light in the darkness.

Lent is our chance to practice denying our habits and/or practices that bring those clouds. The end of Lent is the reminder that “…he bowed his head and died” for “…such a need had sinners”. So here it is that we must remember to praise God because we should be satisfied. Not in our mortal coil, but in our God and savior, in Christ, in the hope, in the end.

Blues born out of turmoil, psalms born out of strife and hiding, constantly speak to the hope Christians have in our redeemer. Remember that there is a light, it is at the end of a tunnel, it may be faint at times, but it is there and it is a blessed gift.

Praise God We Are Satisfied,
Annan Sheffield

P.S. Coincidently Blind Willie Johnson has a fantastic version of this little light of mine called “Let your light shine”. In another song called “God Don’t Never Change” He also has a line pertaining to the Spanish flu which goes “God in the time of sickness, God the doctor too. In the time of the influenza, He truly was a God to you.” An apt line for today’s world.

This has been a long season of uncertainty and change. We’ve seen a worldwide pandemic, political upheaval, persecution of Christians around the world. and various ideological worldview theories presented to solve these problems. A few months in, struggling to find peace and direction, I decided to read through the Bible daily, using “Change Your Life Daily Bible” by Becky Tirabassi. I also joined a women’s Bible study on Colossians which was titled “He is Enough” by Asheritah Ciuciu.

As I studied through Genesis and Exodus, it was comforting to read the well-known story of God’s plan and provision. God created man “in His image” (Genesis 1:17). Then original sin came through Adam and Eve’s disobedience (Genesis3:6). But there was the promise of the Messiah as “the seed of a woman will crush the head of Satan” (Genesis3:15). The story is about His Kingdom and He is at the center, not me. Politics, vaccines, and ideologies will not save us. Our identity is derived from God, and Christ alone can know and change people’s hearts. He alone can liberate us from sin. Will God use dissension and chaos to further His kingdom? Absolutely. Will He use persecution and suffering to bring the lost to Christ? If I trust in His faithfulness and sovereignty, the answer has to be yes. Jesus makes clear our part when he says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:27).

Turning to my study in Colossians, Paul preaches against false teaching, angel worship and a secret knowledge of that day. He teaches that Jesus Christ is enough. “The Son is the image of God,(1:15) the Creator, (1:16) and the Sustainer (1:17). Human philosophies and other world views are empty when compared to His completeness. The gospel is presented in Colossians 1:13-14, “For He rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sin.” I can trust these truths today and tomorrow, regardless of the chaos that is happening around me. The following prayer from Colossians 1:9-12 is as pertinent today as it was 2,000 years ago.

“For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you will walk in a manner worthy to the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience; joyously giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light”

Everyday I can learn truths about God and His plan for redemption from the Old Testament. In the New Testament I can know Christ’s love, and His direction for my life in loving others. I can know that my identity is in Christ alone. We are all sinners in need of His grace. There needs to be no added truth because He is enough.
--Mary Menard

Grieving
When people say, “we have made it through worse before”
all I hear is the wind slapping against the gravestones
of those who did not make it, those who did not survive to see the confetti fall from the sky, those who

did not live to watch the parade roll down the street.
I have grown accustomed to a lifetime of aphorisms
meant to assuage my fears, pithy sayings meant to

convey that everything ends up fine in the end. There is no
solace in rearranging language to make a different word
tell the same lie. Sometimes the moral arc of the universe

does not bend in a direction that will comfort us. Sometimes it bends in ways we don’t expect & there are
people who fall off in the process. Please, dear reader,

do not say I am hopeless, I believe there is a better future
to fight for, I simply accept the possibility that I may not
live to see it. I have grown weary of telling myself lies

that I might one day begin to believe. We are not all left
standing after the war has ended. Some of us have
become ghosts by the time the dust has settled. -Clint Smith

I want us all to take a moment—I need to take a moment—and grieve. As it is far too easy for me to move on from the briefest second of grief to my next task, without proper time. I have been dwelling on grief the last few weeks since I read this poem by Clint Smith.

I also want to be very clear. There is a very big grief elephant in the room, COVID. All of the lives. The moments. The relationships. People and time that have been lost.

But we also cannot forget everything else that afflicted us before and through this past year. For every little or gaping hurt that you feel, know that my heart is with you. That God’s heart is with you and will never leave.

For even God in human flesh, knowing what was to come, knowing the resurrection was near, took precious time to grieve the death of His friend Lazarus.

And please, as you are reading this, ‘do not say I am hopeless, I believe there is a better future’. Though I have found that the better future does not always cheapen the pain you are experiencing, as you are experiencing it.

We were given Jesus’ beautiful example so that we know that God knows. Even in the Valley, God knows. Even when the promise of Revelation feels like a distant mirage, God knows.

Grieving should not happen alone, not for too long. It is up to us acknowledge that we grieve, that we carry pain. It opens us up to be able to carry the burdens of our brothers and sisters, and to have our brothers and sisters carry ours.

So do not shrink from grief. Do not shrink from loss. But, likewise, do not shrink from the grief and loss of those in our community. Reach out and let yourself be reached. For in this, we step
into a truer understanding of who God is and his plan for our world.
—Sam Smith

So, here we are, Ash Wednesday. Perhaps you are like me and have come to deeply connect with the feel of ash on your skin, reminding us we are dust, save for the life-breath of God, and as an entry point to six weeks of reflection leading to Easter Sunday. Or, perhaps the language and traditions of Lent are something you’ve had little or even bad experience with in your faith journey. Either way, like most things this year, Lent may look different than in the past. That can be a good thing.

Lent is considered a time for penitence, reflection. Sometimes I come to this season not just with anticipation, but trepidation. In my exhaustion, the last thing I want is MORE challenge to my heart and soul. To be sure, this of all years, we find ourselves already in a place of challenge, of wilderness.

In its essence, Lent is invitation into wilderness.

The 40 days of Lent commemorate Jesus’ time in the desert, following his affirmation as God’s son at his baptism. He was filled by the Holy Spirit and led by the Spirit into the wilderness. (Luke 4:1-3). In the desert, Jesus encountered “the devil” also meaning “the adversary”. In the desert, Jesus was tempted to cut corners or turn away entirely from the ministry he was about to embark on. In this wilderness, Jesus was tempted. This serves as a reminder of how God led the Israelites into the wilderness after freeing them from slavery in Egypt. We remember that in the wilderness Israel wandered, they grumbled, they miss-stepped. In the wilderness, God’s people even regret leaving slavery at first. It’s what they knew. Slavery provided food, shelter, and certainty, if at the cost of their covenant inheritance with God. The Biblical witness of wilderness experience usually does not conjure comforting feelings. It isn’t an easy place. And yet, here we are, invited into the wilderness of Lent.

It may be helpful here to recognize that the Hebrew the word wilderness is “Nidbar”, the root of which means “to speak”. (See Deut. 8:2)

“Wilderness” is literally “the speaking place.” God spoke to Israel in the wilderness. And it is where they found their true voice. The Spirit led Jesus to “the speaking place”, and returning from it, he began to speak the ministry of God’s Kingdom.

It was only in the wilderness that Israel was free enough from slavery to truly discover what enslaved them. And it took time. And it took faith. It took trust. In the wilderness, the Hebrews had to rediscover who they were as ones in covenant relationship with God. Remember, it is in the wilderness that a people who were enslaved for 400 years are first commanded to rest. Those who were enslaved are commanded to rest, that God may do God’s thing, in them and for them and with them.

You are invited into wilderness this Lent. What does that look like for you? Traditionally, yes, fasting from familiar comforts and habits, or taking on unfamiliar ones has supported this journey.

What if this Lent we let God free us from our familiar habits, thoughts, and safety that enslave us to discover what has enslaved us? And to reaffirm true covenant identity with God.

What if we think of the wilderness less as a place of challenge, or desperation where we are left hungry or tired, but where we, hungry, tired and lost, speak with God?

What if this year, we approach Lent as “the speaking place” where we find our voice, and where we hear from God?

What might God speak to you this Lent? What do you need to speak to God?

May you be blessed in “the speaking place” this Lent.
--Lin Preiss