Keep Christianity Weird

    For the remainder of the summer, National Park Church will be participating in a sermon series entitled Keep Christianity Weird. The idea of this title came from the city mottos of Austin, Texas and Asheville, North Carolina – Keep Austin Weird and Keep Asheville Weird. Citizens of both cities proudly proclaim and adopt this slogan, because the essence of their cities is found in their respective weirdness. They fear that their cities will become like any other cookie-cutter city, which would mean that the uniqueness of their cities would be lost, if they do not intentionally insist on maintaining the customs that make them abnormal. The same danger threatens Christianity when it loses the strangeness of its message – the peculiar story of a crucified God. If we, as the church, have grown comfortable with this narrative and depiction of God and being his followers, then we have likely sanitized the radical gospel of Jesus. Jurgen Moltmann suggests, in his book The Crucified God, that “Christians who do not have the feeling that they must flee the crucified Christ have probably not yet understood him in a sufficiently radical way.” At the same time, the cross is the event that is intended to shape the lives of followers of Jesus. Our hope is that all will feel welcome to come and learn why adjectives such as foolish, strange, and weird are embraced by Christ’s disciples as fitting and profound descriptions of Christianity.

Adult Sunday Morning Class: This summer we are having a combined adult class which will meet in the Auditorium. We will be journeying through the book of Philippians. Our time together will allow us to explore specific ways that the church can more faithfully orient itself around the self-sacrificial example of Jesus Christ.

Taylor