A creative collaboration between Trinity United Methodist Church and Sellwood Faith Community
Our community exists to embody the love of God in the world because we believe everyone needs a safe space to be loved for who they are already.
September Shifts
It's September and for the Parish that means a return to programing and an increase in activity. We’re returning to our monthly service at Night Strike, where we serve our homeless neighbors under the Burnside Bridge and we’re adding a quarterly project at the Oregon...
Happy National Read a Book Day! Celebrate by picking up Whipping Girl.
Serano writes on the book’s title, “I have called this book Whipping Girl to highlight the ways in which people who are feminine, whether they are female, male, and/or transgender, are almost universally demeaned compared to their masculine counterparts” (5).
15 minutes
It can be tempting for me to want to do everything all at once. I often have wish I had a magic nose like Samantha from Bewitched, so I could wiggle it and the large task ahead would be done. It's over whelming to think about losing weight or creating institutional...
Seasonal Slump
Attendance is down. Giving is down. We've had 3 people move into assisted living so they won't be coming anymore. I am freaking out. This great momentum we've had with our 5th anniversary of dinner gatherings, 9 new members joining at Pentecost, and the success of...
If Not Us, Who?
As a full disclosure, this is a long blog and it talks about both gun violence and white supremacy. It has been a heavy few weeks as more lives have been lost to gun violence. Our own denomination calls us to end gun violence. The United Methodist Church urges...
Chaos and Calm
We are on the final week of our summer ministry experiment, Steele Street School. It has been amazing. We've served 25 different children thanks to 16 church volunteers and 45 youth from LAST (Learning and Serving Together, a service-learning program for youth run by...
Love Matters
This week one of our leaders shared her story of claiming her identity. I asked her if we could share it here because for me her words are so powerful and her experience of the church in the midst of the journey is exactly what I believe Jesus would want for every...
Popping the Bubbles
We tend to create lives full of people who think like us, look like us, come from a similar culture or background. And yet I believe that God is only fully known through the vast diversity of God's most amazing creation, people. Part of what God calls us to do is to...
Transformation
In the past 6 years, I've laughed and cried a lot at the SFC table. This Sunday I did a healthy deal of both as members of our community shared the journey they have been on to truly love and celebrate who God made them to be. It got me thinking about the slow and...
What Are We About
Every week I lead a bible study. We discuss the scripture that will feature in the sermon at Trinity. I started the practice of having a bible study on the sermon scripture on the recommendation of preaching professor. It is an amazing gift to hear the thoughts and...