The Rev. Dr. Reggie L. Williams is planning a couple of exciting opportunities to take our studies to the city streets. One focuses on the history of Black Paris, the other on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German Lutheran pastor, theologian, and anti-Nazi dissident.
Featuring Dr. Scott Cormode
Tuesday 5 April 19h30-21h via Zoom.
The church as we know it is calibrated for a world that no longer exists. The basic assumptions about what it means to be church have changed and will continue to change. We the Church need to find a way to be agile enough to step into a future that we cannot predict. This book, The Innovative Church, was road-tested over the course of four years with over 100 congregations seeking to take the next faithful step. At its core, it asks one simple question: How do we embody a never-changing gospel in an ever-changing culture?
Dr. Scott Cormode (PhD, Yale University) is the De Pree Professor of Leadership Development at Fuller Seminary. He founded the Academy of Religious Leadership and the Journal of Religious Leadership. He is a former academic dean and is presently a senior fellow at the Fuller Youth Institute.
Thurber Conversations are an adult community gathering and growth time that is open to all.
Video recordings of selected past Thurber Lectures and Conversations here
Featuring Al Tizon
Tuesday 15 March via Zoom and also in-person in the Thurber Room -- Lecture and Zoom at 19h45; Meal at 19h.
A "Pass Vaccinal" is required for the in-person event in the Thurber Room.
There will be a meal served at the live gathering. We are asking for a donation of 5€ to help cover the costs of the food.
Al Tizon is Affiliate Associate Professor of Missional and Global Leadership at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago, IL. Previous leadership positions he has held include Executive Minister of Serve Globally, the international ministries of the Evangelical Covenant Church and co-president of Christians for Social Action, founding director of LIGHT Ministries in the Olongapo City, Philippines and associate professor of holistic ministry at Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University near Philadelphia, PA. Al has engaged in community development, church leadership, advocacy, and urban ministry in the United States and in the Philippines.
You can read more about Al's latest book Whole and Reconciled: Gospel, Church, Mission in a Fractured World on his website: https://www.draltizon.com/ We are excited to welcome Al to ACP and benefit from his expertise in mission and ministry.
Thurber Conversations are an adult community gathering and growth time that is open to all.
Video recordings of selected past Thurber Lectures and Conversations here
Featuring Dominique DuBois Gilliard, Director of Racial Righteousness and Reconciliation for the Evangelical Covenant Church.
Tuesday 1 February 19h30 via Zoom and also in-person in the Thurber Room
Ever wonder what it means to have privilege? Feel confused about how to use one's privilege for the betterment rather than the detriment of the body of Christ? Dominique Gilliard has done some groundbreaking work helping churches and other organizations recognize where privilege exists and rather than deny it, work toward using it in a way that honors God. You won't want to miss this compelling and challenging evening as we continue to wrestle with what it means to be a church that cares deeply about being a reconciling community.
This is event is part of the Many Colors, Creeds, Cultures...and Conversations! series.
Featuring Rev. Grace Imathiu, a leading activist/pastor for Welcome and Inclusion
Tuesday 18 January 19h30-21h via Zoom.
On 2 May 2021, ACP adopted an Affirmation of Welcome and Inclusion that we're now called to live into. The affirmation reads as follows:
We believe that we are called to love and welcome all people of all socio-economic backgrounds, ethnicities, races, nationalities, gender identities, and sexual orientations.
We believe that all who place their faith in Jesus Christ and seek to be his disciple may become members of our church.
We believe that all members of the ACP should have the same rights and responsibilities.
It's time to take our next best steps – to live out our affirmations! We're delighted to have Grace Imathiu joining us once again to guide us in the process. Though we're sincerely committed to loving all in word and in deed- to making Christ's extravagant love known to all who wish to experience it, it's not always easy to do so...yet it can be done!
Join us as we examine together what can be done to make Christ's love known to those who have been made to feel unwelcome and unloved in life, and even within the church.
This is event is part of the Many Colors, Creeds, Cultures...and Conversations! series.
Grace Imathiu is Senior Pastor of First UMC in Evanston, Il. She has also served churches in Kenya as a church planter; a superintendent minister overseeing 68 rural churches in Nkubu; and an urban minister to an ecumenical congregation in Nairobi with strong outreach to the neighboring slums of Kawangware. Pastor Grace is intimately familiar with the Church in its many theological expressions and social locations.
Grace loves people and has a passion and gift for inspiring and nurturing communities of faith to live out loud the prophetic story of Jesus. For Grace, the quintessential expression of the resurrected Lord’s presence is a community whose very DNA is a radical hospitality, which births a loving and a healthy tension that is ideological, theological, racial, ethnic, and cultural.
Thurber Conversations are an adult community gathering and growth time that is open to all.
Video recordings of selected past Thurber Lectures and Conversations here
Get the ACP Church Center mobile app here.
Gifts in support of the ministries and mission of the American Church in Paris may be made directly to the Church or to our United States sponsor, the American and Foreign Christian Union (AFCU).
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