An interview with Mike Boyd. Original member and elder who is stepping down from leadership...for a while. ...

A joyful letter from Brad Carpenter on the eve of our Installation Service for Pastor Daniel Yoon....

Last week, Daniel and I drove down to Oakland to meet with two other pastors. Kyle has been leading a church planting project called Oakland Communion that has gathered a group of urban professionals interested in Jesus, justice and real community. Many of them are new to Oakland and there for professional reasons. Bernard pastors The Way in Oakland. He is a native Oakland...

On Friday afternoon I began a whirlwind adventure. I received a phone call from an old friend who was in a heck of a bind. The call came from the rehearsal dinner for his daughter's wedding scheduled for the next day. He quickly informed me that the pastor who had prepared the couple to marry was having his own family emergency in the ICU and they were without a pastor for...

A few reflections on a new church logo. The idea of a logo is ubiquitous in our culture. Everyone knows what a logo is. It's a swoosh. It's the shape of a soda bottle. Its a couple of golden arches. We are consumers and when we think logo we think brand identity. We think brand loyalty. We think celebrity endorsement. We are a symbolic society and ever more so with the ad...

This excerpt appears on pages that list a number of blog posts....

A few reflections on the practice of keeping Christian seasons and the celebration of Lent If you have ever found yourself in Mexico on Cinco de Mayo or Canada on Boxing Day or something of the sort you begin to realize that the way we organize our time, the calendar that we keep and the holidays that we celebrate say a lot about who we are. We don't often stop to think ab...

"Lent is the season of blood and guts and flesh. It is the supremely anti-Gnostic season." [Peter Leithart*] From the very beginning of Christianity there has been a strong tendency for people to "spiritualize" Jesus' teaching, his mission and particularly the meaning of his resurrection. You no doubt have come in contact with some version of the teaching that the physica...

This week is a very special week in the Christian year. Holy Week or Passion Week is the week leading up to the resurrection celebration on Easter morning marking the events of the final week of Jesus' life before his crucifixion. The week begins with Passion/Palm Sunday and ends with the "three days" (also called the Triduum, from sunset on Thursday to sunset on Easter D...

What a celebration! On Easter Sunday Grace Sacramento hosted 119 people at our first ever Easter service in our own facility. Friends, family and visitors from the neighborhood worshiped with us as we welcomed four individuals and families as new church members and celebrated being "Easter people in a Good Friday world!" Afterwards we hosted hundreds (we don't know exactl...