FBCP Families | 03.13.2021

Hey, Friends!

What a great example we had this week of God's character displayed in nature (especially right after the teaching we heard from John Jay last Sunday!). As the rain comes and snow is visible in the mountains, it's a beautiful reminder of the ways that God is at work to bring new life forth after the winter months. It's also a good reminder to pray for our neighbors who are without shelter in the midst of rain and cold. We hope you and your families can take time this weekend to praise God and lift up the needs of others as you look out at creation. (And this idea of rain and growth will be part of our upcoming Liturgy for Families with Kids—see below for details!)

Liturgy for Families with Kids

Hooray—it's almost here! Next  Saturday, March 20th, at 10:30AM is another liturgy time in the park for all of our families with kids. We will have a fun-filled morning praising God together as we consider what it means to be soil where God can grow goodness in each of us. It's also the first day of Spring, so we are pumped to think about all the beautiful things that can bloom around us and inside us!  You can RSVP using this link to help us prepare enough supplies for everyone.

Kids

This weekend we encourage you to get outside as a family and take a prayer walk around your home. This kind of embodied prayer can be so powerful, and it's a fun way to pray as a family together. You can use this guide as inspiration to help you use the environment around you to prompt your prayers. (And you can always substitute things based on what you find around your neighborhood!) 

Youth

This week the youth have a Youth Zoom gathering at 2pm. Here is the meeting link that you can use to hop on the hangout. We look forward to being together on screen!

And if you are looking to spread some love to other youth in the area, there's an opportunity to sponsor a student at Blair High School by sending them some Blair swag and other encouraging gifts to help make the end of the year special for them. We have one Blair senior in our youth group at FBCP, and we are always grateful for ways to be good neighbors to other youth in Pasadena. Let me know if you are interested, and I can get you more information.

Sending you so much love and virtual hugs!

With gratitude for you,

Pastor Lindsay & Pastor Mary

Friday Updates 03.12.2021

Happy Friday, Friends at FBCP!

Today we have some important updates and opportunities to share with you. You can listen to the audio version below, but here are the highlights:

  • We look forward to gathering again for outdoor worship on Sunday, and we will have a few more chairs out for folks in the seating area! As always, we will livestream the service and post a recorded version later in the day. Thank you for honoring our safety agreements so that we can love each other well and stay safe and healthy.

  • Don’t forget to move your clocks an hour ahead on Saturday night! It’s Daylight Savings and time to spring forward. We’ll understand if anyone looks a little sleepy on Sunday morning!

  • Our weekly Lenten Bible Study continues this week on Wednesday at 12pm over Zoom. This week Pastor Gretchen is leading—yay! Join us for a time of reflection and discussion as we make the journey through Lent together. We’ll be using a Lenten devotional created by the folks at SALT Project, and you can pick up a physical copy of the devotional at Outdoor Church or can access a digital copy here. We would love to add your voice to the mix, so be sure to look for the Zoom invitation in the coming week!

  • Blair High School is just down the street from FBCP, and we regularly have students from Blair in our youth group. This year we have one senior who will graduate from Blair (do you remember Thomas?!), and we are always looking for ways to partner with this neighborhood school. This spring they are looking for folks to sponsor a high school senior by sending them some Blair swag and other small gifts as an encouragement to the students and their families. If you are interested in being matched with a senior to help spread some joy during this difficult school year, you can email Pastor Lindsay at lindsay@fbcpasadena.com.

  • We are sad to share the news that longtime friend and member of FBCP Jesse Terry died early this week. Pastor Mary has some words to share about his legacy, and you can hear her tribute in the audio below. If you would like to send words, photos, or videos of remembrance for a digital page honoring Jesse, please send them to lindsay@fbcpasadena.com or use the button below. Here are the addresses if you would like to send cards to the family:

    Mrs. Bunny (Annabelle) Terry
    Copper Canyon Senior Center
    37225 Jerome Lane
    Murrieta, CA 92562

    Karen and Lewis Dawson
    31455 Corte Madera
    Temecula, CA 92592

Grace and peace as you head into the weekend. We can’t wait to worship with you on Sunday!

Less without you,

The FBCP Community

 

This Week’s Mixtape:

Mary

Additional Information about Myanmar

Detailed reports of brutality by the military police include the killing and beating of peaceful protesters who seek an end to the military coup and a release of the duly elected civilian government officials arrested in the coup. The brutality also includes forcing civilians to be porters for the military police under threat of beatings or death; forcing civilians to walk ahead of the police in dangerous areas so that the civilians would become human shields and human minesweepers for the soldiers. In addition, there are reports of rape by military police. There are many night raids in which civilians are arrested, and over 100 people were detained and at least three killed in such raids Sunday night. Medical personnel, medical facilities, ambulances, and crews are also targeted. Over the weekend the military took over hospitals and schools to use them as temporary bases for the military. Also, hospitals taken over were used to arrest wounded who came in hoping to get treatment. The military there assumed that the wounded were protesters. In rural areas, there have also been villages that have been burned by military police. It is reported that the average age of those who have lost their lives defending democracy is 17. There are also reports of some military police or former military police who have refused to participate in these acts against civilians, disobeying their superiors and leaving their military positions. They, too, need our prayers.

American Baptist Churches U.S.A. is responding in a number of ways, and you are invited to help both with prayer and with additional much-needed help if so moved. This link provides brief information on how the crisis began and our more than 200-year partner relationship with the Myanmar Baptist Convention (MBC), a call to prayer, and a way for any who are so moved to help American Baptist International Ministries provide financial support. Funds will be used to assist civil servants and their families who are engaged in the Civil Disobedience Movement, to assist people who are suffering due to their jobless status, and to help those who cannot afford to pay for medical care and vitamins as well as to pay for tests, medical supplies and vaccines related to Covid-19.

Paul

Be Still My Soul

Be still, my soul! for God is on your side;
bear patiently the cross of grief or pain:
leave to your God to order and provide,
who through all changes faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul! your best, your heav’nly Friend
through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Be still, my soul! for God will undertake
to guide the future surely as the past.
Your hope, your confidence, let nothing shake;
all now mysterious shall be clear at last.
Be still, my soul! the waves and winds still know
the voice that calmed their fury long ago.

Be still, my soul! the hour is hastening on
when we shall be forever in God's peace;
when disappointment, grief, and fear are gone,
love’s joys restored, our strivings all shall cease.
Be still my soul! when change and tears are past,
all safe and blessed we shall meet at last.

FBCP Families | 03.06.2021

Hey, Friends!

Thanks to those who were able to join our virtual parent discussion last week with Iris Chen. We are so grateful for the parent community at FBCP and the chance to learn with and support each other. If you weren't able to attend but are interested in the conversation, let us know! We plan to host more opportunities like this in the future and would love to connect with you. Thanks for being such a thoughtful community.

An Invitation to Parents During Lent

We are well into the season of Lent, and I am praying for God to keep tilling the soil in our hearts as we get closer to Easter. This is a beautiful time of intentionality, one that can give birth to new ways of being if we make space to pause and reflect. I came across this article with three simple practices for parents during Lent. I hope you find it encouraging if you're feeling the weight of parenting and need space to reconnect with God and other parents. We look forward to the rest of this season with our church family!

March Liturgy for Families with Kids

Mark your calendars for our next time of worship in the park on Saturday, March 20th, at 10:30AM! We will have a fun-filled morning praising God together. You can RSVP using this link to help us prepare enough supplies for everyone. 

Women in Science

Rachel Ignotofsky is a New York Times–bestselling author and illustrator. Her book, Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers who Changed the World, is a gloriously illustrated celebration of female trailblazers. It highlights the contributions of fifty notable women to the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, with examples from both the ancient and modern worlds. The result is a fun and accessible book that appeals to kids and adults alike. Check out the author's interview with KiwiCo here.

Youth

This week the youth will be in the park at 10:30AM! We are really looking forward to being together safely and can't wait to be with you all. Bring a mask and a water bottle. We hope to see you Sunday morning!

Sending you so much love and virtual hugs!


With gratitude for you,

Pastor Lindsay & Pastor Mary

Friday Updates 03.05.2021

Happy Friday, Friends at FBCP!

Today news anchors Zip Bannister and Mary Kerry Brokenberry have today’s “Baptist News Update” for you. You can listen to the broadcast below, but here are the highlights:

  • We look forward to gathering again for outdoor worship on Sunday. As always, we will livestream the service and post a recorded version later in the day. Thank you for honoring our safety agreements so that we can love each other well and stay safe and healthy.

  • This Sunday we will celebrate communion! You can bring your own elements or have one of our handy communion snack packs, which are the best option we have during the pandemic.

  • Our weekly Lenten Bible Study continues this week on Wednesday at 12pm over Zoom. This week John Kelly is leading—woot! Join us for a time of reflection and discussion as we make the journey through Lent together. We’ll be using a Lenten devotional created by the folks at SALT Project, and you can pick up a physical copy of the devotional at Outdoor Church or can access a digital copy here. We would love to add your voice to the mix, so be sure to look for the Zoom invitation in the coming week!

  • If you want to listen in on the Daily Encouragement tracks from this week, check out the mixtape below!

Grace and peace as you head into the weekend. We can’t wait to worship with you on Sunday!

Less without you,

The FBCP Community

 

This Week’s Mixtape:

FBCP Families | 02.27.2021

Hey, Friends!

Last Sunday was such a special time of remembrance as we honored four members of our church whose legacies will long outlast their days with us. As we celebrated their lives, I couldn't help but also think about our younger church family members and the potential they also have to shape our church in special ways as they grow and become the people God has called them to be. The rich tradition of FBCP continues in each of us, and it's a joy to carry on the legacy of those who came before us as we imagine new ways to grow as a church. Thanks for being such a special place to belong!

Virtual Parent Conversation

This Sunday at 7:30pm we are hosting a time for parents to get together and discuss their parenting journeys with Iris Chen. For those who have read her new book (you can find it here or we can send you a copy!), this is a chance to ask questions and share anything that has resonated with you. If you haven't had a chance to read it but still want to join us, we would love to have you! Iris will begin by talking about her own journey with parenting, and then we'll have time for questions and conversation. We love our parent community and look forward to gathering together for a time to connect and learn! Here’s the Zoom link to join.

Kids

Liturgy for Families with Kids

Mark your calendars for our next time of worship in the park on Saturday, March 20th, at 10:30AM! We will have a fun-filled morning of learning and praising God together. (And stay tuned for details about Easter—we have a fun celebration for families in the works!) 

Honoring Black History Month

Here are some resources to help families learn and celebrate Black History all year long. To hear from a local voice, check out a recent article from Denise Verret, the CEO and zoo director of our Los Angeles Zoo. She has some powerful words to share about being a woman of color in her field, and she shares a story about Dr. Roger Arliner Young, the first African American woman to ever receive a doctorate in zoology. You can read her article for Black History Month to learn more about both of these women and their contributions to science and zoology.

Youth

Sunday Gathering

This week the youth have a Youth Zoom gathering at 2pm. Here is the meeting link that you can use to hop on the hangout. We look forward to being together and talking about a simple prayer practice for Lent (and we'll make space for play, too!). We will be in the park next week at 10:30AM to continue with our every-other-week schedule.

Fuller Youth Institute Cohort

Since the start of 2019, a team of FBCP adults and youth have been part of a two-year cohort with the Fuller Youth Institute to develop new methods for youth ministry. It continues to be a rich and imaginative process, one that has continued during the pandemic. We look forward to sharing more about what we are developing in the coming months, and we would welcome your prayers for vision and clarity as we seek new ways to grow alongside our young people.

Sending you so much love and virtual hugs!


With gratitude for you,

Pastor Lindsay & Pastor Mary

Friday Updates 02.26.21

Happy Friday, Friends at FBCP!

Chip and John Kelly bring us the announcements today in the style of all your favorite game shows. You can listen to the fun in the audio below, but here are the highlights:

  • We look forward to gathering again for outdoor worship on Sunday. As always, we will livestream the service and post a recorded version later in the day. Thank you for honoring our agreements so that we can love each other well and stay safe and healthy:

    • Stay in your car if you are able to drive to the garage.

    • Wear a mask whenever you are outside your car.

    • Keep 10ft of space between you and others.

    • Share your love by not hanging around before or after service.

    • Stay home if you aren’t feeling well and let us know how we can help care for you!

  • A huge thank you to all who were able to donate to Friends In Deed to help them stock up their bad weather supplies! We were able to drop off those items on Wednesday, and we are so grateful for your partnership to help those who are without shelter in these colder months. Let’s continue to pray for our most vulnerable neighbors, that we would know how to advocate and care for them.

  • Our weekly Lenten Bible Study continues this week on Wednesday at 12pm over Zoom. Join us for a time of reflection and discussion as we make the journey through Lent together. We’ll be using a Lenten devotional created by the folks at SALT Project, and you can pick up a physical copy of the devotional at Outdoor Church or can access a digital copy here. We would love to add your voice to the mix, so be sure to look for the Zoom invitation in the coming week!

Less without you,

The FBCP Community

John Jay

Friends at FBCP,

Today I have an audio message to share with all of you for a couple of reasons. One is to talk a bit about how we are thinking through Black History Month and to share some books that have shaped my own understanding of race, theology, and the contributions of our Black brothers and sisters to our faith tradition. The other purpose in sharing tonight is to offer an apology for failing to give context for the final song in last Sunday’s worship service. I will continue to be honest about the times I fail, and I am grateful for your time given to listening to this message.

We are a diverse church, and I am so thankful that our community is one where we can listen deeply and correct one another when necessary. What a gift to be a congregation of such discernment and trust. I remain…

Less without you,

Pastor John Jay

Lindsay

MEMORY

is not just a then, recalled in a now, the past is never just the past, memory is a pulse passing through all created life, a wave form, a then continually becoming other thens, all the while creating a continual but almost untouchable now. But the guru’s simplistic urge to live only in the now misunderstands the multilayered inheritance of existence, where all epochs live and breathe in parallels. Whether it be the epochal moment initiated by the appearance of the first hydrogen atoms in the universe or a first glimpse of adulthood perceived in adolescence, memory passes through an individual human life like a building musical waveform, constantly maturing, increasingly virtuosic, often volatile, sometimes overpowering. Every human life holds the power of this immense inherited pulse, holds and then supercharges it, according to the way we inhabit our identities in the untouchable now.

Memory is an invitation to the source of our life, to a fuller participation in the now, to a future about to happen, but ultimately to a frontier identity that holds them all at once. Memory makes the now fully inhabitable.

The genius of human memory is firstly its very creation through experience, and then the way it is laid down in the mind according to the identity we inhabited when we first decided to remember, then its outward radiating effect and then all its possible future outcomes, occurring all at the same time. We actually inhabit memory as a living threshold, as a place of choice and volition and imagination, a crossroads where our future diverges according to how we interpret, or perhaps more accurately, how we live the story we have inherited. We can be overwhelmed, traumatized, made smaller by the tide that brought us here, we can even be drowned and disappeared by memory; or we can spin a cocoon of insulation to protect ourselves and bob along passively in the wake of what we think has occurred, but we also have other more engaging possibilities; memory in a sense, is the very essence of the conversation we hold as individual human beings.

A full inhabitation of memory makes human beings conscious, a living connection between what has been, what is and what is about to be. Memory is the living link to personal freedom.

Through the gift of an inheritance truly inhabited, we come to understand that memory creates and influences what is about to happen, and has little to do with what we quaintly and often unimaginatively call the past. We might recall the ancient Greek world where Memory was always understood to be the mother of the muses, meaning that all of her nine imaginative daughters, all of the nine forms of human creative endeavor recognized by the ancient Greek imagination, and longed for by individuals and societies to this day, were born from the womb and the body of memory.

Taken from Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words by David Whyte.

In Pasadena as it is in Heaven

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