Big changes like the industrial revolution took a long time. This digital age, however, has been such a fast transition. We find ourselves in the middle of a change that we are yet to fully understand or know how best to encounter or embrace. Where does this leave us and what can we do? 

This blog post captures only a little bit of what transpired. For those interested in accessing some resources that the panelists shared, click on the downloadable PDFs.

Three panelists Jeff Levin, Pam Penton, and Reebee Girash offered insights for parents interested in navigating the challenges of stress, spirituality, and parenting.

Levin, life coach and educator, spoke of how imagination and independence are essential for identity formation. A stressor that Levin asked the audience to consider is the message that kids are receiving today. “If you want to be successful, your window of opportunity is narrow and you don’t have time to go tire swinging.” Are children hearing that they don’t have time to be outside to exercise independence and imagination? How does such a message, often subtle, affect kids? He further described the process of “mirroring” and asked, “How do you ‘mirror’ when you constantly have an iPhone in your hand?” 

Penton, Director of a childcare center, emphasized how stress is infectious. “We pass it down through our body, eye contact, through our faces.” The big question that Penton asked the audience to consider is, “How does anxiety and stress in adults get passed on (however unintentional) to children?” Penton, a big proponent of being outside in interaction with the world, reminded those gathered in our beautiful chapel that we adults need to make time to be inquisitive and playful. Kids have a way of picking up what they understand to be their family’s downtime. 

Girash, minister and educator, started with a sobering insight. By the time kids are 10 years old, they can see if spirituality is meaningful for their parents. In other words, whatever we do, kids see and feel our values. Girash noted how all parents want their children to be safe, loved, and filled with wonder and to be kind, grateful, gentle, and just. Living in a digital age, she noted, is not necessarily a bad thing for these values. As a way of offering insight to navigate the digital age, Girash shared her own family’s practices. “I love you” means no phones during family dinner or prayer. “I love you” further means taking a full day off to be intentionally present together as a family. 

During the discussion, folks pointed out that technology is now an essential part of formal education at every level. Can one then differentiate between media for learning and social media? What is the balance? 

First Baptist Church in Newton Centre is passionate about addressing the needs of the communities that we are part of. Write to us if you have an idea. We’d love to hear from you.

Raising children in the midst of Snapchat, Twitter, and Youtube presents unique challenges. Parents and professionals need a new set of skills and strategies to navigate the digital world with children. Come, listen to, and participate in a Q&A with three panelists from three faith traditions who will address stress, spirituality, and parenting children in a digital age.

Jeff Levin, M.A.T., M.S.W, is a consultant and coach to parents, families, schools, teams/athletes and corporations all over the U.S. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College, Boston College School of Education, and the Smith College School for Social Work. Jeff began his professional career as a middle-school English teacher and practiced psychotherapy for over twenty-five years. Jeff grew up in Newton, MA and is now based in New Hampshire and Boston.

​Pam Penton is Director of Meeting House Childcare Centre in Newton, MA. After having majored in Child Study at Tufts, Pam earned her graduate degree from Lesley University in Multicultural Special Needs with a focus on Mental Health issues for Middle and High School students in 1991. Pam began her career working with school age and older students for 12 years and eventually returned to the Early Childhood field in 1998 and stresses Nature Education. Pam grew up in Waltham, now lives in Newton, and is a single parent of an eleventh grader.

Reebee Girash is Associate Pastor at Eliot Church with an emphasis on children’s and youth ministry and Denominational Counselor to United Church of Christ students at Harvard Divinity School, where she received her M.Div. in 2002. She has a great passion for social justice ministry, and particularly for climate action. She is a volunteer with 350MA as well as the Massachusetts Interfaith Coalition for Climate Action. Reebee grew up in Nashville, TN–and still contends that y'all is proper English.

For more details, contact Minister for Community Life, John Boopalan: john[at]fbcnewton.org

A Curated Interfaith Series (Fall 2018 dates: Sept 30, Oct 28)
Our guests for this special interfaith series will include two Shia Muslims and a Christian from the Muslim majority country of Indonesia. Click here to learn more.

Romans 13: What's the Fuss? Sunday, August 5
Sze-kar Wan, Professor of Biblical Studies, explores the historical, political, especially theological factors responsible for Paul's words in Romans 13.1–7. Some recent politicians' misuse and abuse of the passage notwithstanding, Paul intended it as a subversive, transgressive statement. Come join us. Help us unlock the liberating message encoded in Paul's words.

Journeys in Adoption. Sunday, May 6.
We have two beautiful families that have adopted. These families inspire us to embody courage, creativity, and connection. One family has children in college and beyond. Another has children in elementary school. Come join Steve Loar, Chris Teague and Rob Case as they share their adoption journeys.

Click here to find out more about Rob and Chris' journey.

Gender Relationships over the Last 50 Years. Sunday April 15.
Heather Palmer, longtime member of the church, will lead a discussion on 'Changing Gender Relationships over the Last 50 Years.' Come join us as Heather encourages attempts at understanding these events, illustrating with examples from her experiences as a doctor and Faculty member at the Harvard School of Public Health. What does it mean to look back and look ahead?

Does God Really Love Diversity? Sunday, March 25.
Sze-kar Wan, Professor of Biblical Studies at Southern Methodist University, led us in a superb discussion.

He asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Luke 10:29
 
First Baptist Church has formed an interfaith partnership (Newton Brookline Asylum Resettlement Committee) along with five other local congregations:  Temple Reyim, First Unitarian Universalist Society of Newton, Temple Beth Zion, Grace Episcopal Church and the Newton Center Minyan. Refugee Immigration Ministries (www.r-i-m.net) and other organizations connect us with asylum seekers who need our help.
 
When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. (Leviticus 19:33-34)
 
People seek asylum because they have suffered persecution or fear that they will suffer persecution because of their political beliefs, race, religion, nationality, or membership in a particular social group.  Our asylum seeking families have legal representation. Most have lawyers associated with the PAIR Project (Political Asylum/Immigration Representation) which provides free legal services to indigent asylum seekers.
 
For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Galatians 5:14)
 
Our interfaith partnership provides housing, food and support to asylum seeking families as they settle into the community and become independent. We are now assisting a Yazidi family, two families from Africa and one from South America. We had a beautiful Easter service and our 2018 Easter Offering went to help these families. 

To learn more, visit: www.nb-arc.com
 
The Compassion in Action Committee leads the congregation in finding ways to identify with the poor, marginalized, and oppressed in our midst and around the world. 

Once upon a time, the word "queer" simply meant strange, odd, or peculiar. In the 20th century, however, the word was used pejoratively to refer to those considered more than strange, odd, or peculiar, but also sexually deviant. As we enter the 21st century, the word is being reclaimed and embraced by those who see themselves on the margins of what might be considered normal or typical.

Christians have never worshipped a "typical" God. Christians worship a God who can be known personally but who is also strange, odd, peculiar, and even unknowable. Could we also ask the question, "Is God Queer?"

The question is meant to facilitate creative conversations that will help foster understanding and appreciation of encounters with friends and strangers, especially things that deviate from our expectations for them, including (and perhaps especially) God. Join a conversation with ministers, academics, and theologians in The Chapel. Coffee and dessert reception at 6:30 p.m. Free and open to all. 

Continuing the Conversation: After the panel event, we are making space to continue the conversation from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. on three consecutive Mondays (2/26, 3/5, and 3/12). They are opportunities for people to further discuss matters arising from the Friday event. Each of the panelists will have two reading suggestions that we may use as a starting point for discussion. 

For more information, email John Boopalan: john[@]fbcnewton.org

Dr. Angela Bauer-Levesque is Harvey H. Guthrie, Jr. Professor Emerita of Bible, Culture, and Interpretation of the former Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge. She has contributed to The Queer Bible Commentary (Book of Jeremiah) and to the lectionary site Out in Scripture. Her other publications include The Indispensable Guide to the Old Testament (The Pilgrim Press) and Seeing God in Diversity: Exodus and Acts, coauthored with Elizabeth Magill (Church Publishing). Professor Bauer-Levesque received her PhD and MPhil from Union Theological Seminary in New York, and her MDiv from the Universität Hamburg, Germany. In her teaching and writing Professor Bauer-Levesque has emphasized various aspects of social location (gender, race, sexual identity) and their impact on interpretation. She and her wife live in Cambridge, MA.

Dr. Cody J. Sanders serves as the pastor of Old Cambridge Baptist Church in Harvard Square and American Baptist Chaplain to Harvard University and teaches on the adjunct faculty in pastoral care at Andover Newton Theological School. Cody grew up a gay, Southern Baptist kid in South Carolina with an early sense of call to ministry, not quite knowing how his faith and sexuality would merge or if a vocation in ministry would ever be possible. He now cultivates denominational community within the Alliance of Baptists where he co-coordinates the Racial Justice & Multiculturalism Community and within the American Baptist Churches USA. Dr. Sanders is the author of A Brief Guide to Ministry with LGBTQIA Youth (Westminster John Knox, 2017) and co-author of Microaggressions in Ministry: Confronting the Hidden Violence of Everyday Church (Westminster John Knox, 2015).

Dr. Megan DeFranza is a Christian theologian, author, speaker, and facilitator of challenging conversations especially around Christianity, sex, gender, and sexuality. She is producing a documentary “Stories of Intersex and Faith” with Lianne Simon and Paul Van Ness and serves as a Research Associate at the Center for Mind and Culture in Boston and as a Visiting Researcher, Boston University School of Theology. She is best known for her book, Sex Difference in Christian Theology: Male, Female, and Intersex in the Image of God (Eerdmans, 2015) and has contributed to other dialogical volumes, including Evangelical Postcolonial Conversations (InterVarsity Press, 2014). In all her endeavors she works to contribute thoughtful and humble reflections on the mysteries of God and human being in the hopes that, together, we can build a more just, reverent, and loving world.

Structural wrongs such as race and caste continue to cast their shadow over us in the present. These wrongs negatively affect ways in which persons think and act. Join us on Friday, January 12, 2018 @ 7 p.m. in The Chapel for a critical conversation with S. John Boopalan, Minister for Community Life and Theologian in Residence, as he discusses his new book, 'Memory, Grief and Agency: A Political Theological Account of Wrongs and Rites.'


Wrongs today, John argues, are better understood as rituals of humiliation, which are socially conditioned practices of domination affected by discriminatory logics of the past. These rituals of humiliation continue to be enacted even in the absence of ill-intention. Understanding this, John argues, is important for all who are interested in interventions. Come and better understand how caste and race are not who we are but rather what we do.

Michael Harvey, Executive Director of the Conference of Baptist Ministers in Massachusetts and Dr. Maari Zwick-Maitreyi, Research Director, Equality Labs and Co-founder of Dalit History Month will serve as respondents. They will offer two distinct perspectives, one from a secular activist perspective and one that may include the role of religious folks. This makes the event quite ecumenical.  

Prof. Dwight Hopkins of the University of Chicago calls John's book “One of the most comprehensive theological books ever written comparing and contrasting caste and race.”

Refreshments and drinks will accompany the discussion. The event is free and open to all and will have ample time for questions from the audience.

This conversation is part of a series of critical conversations hosted by First Baptist Church Newton Centre that address pressing issues of public life. In October 2017, we hosted an inter-faith public panel event that asked the question, "Adonai, God, Allah: One and the Same?" and had an engaging and refreshing conversation with Jewish, Muslim, and Christian faith practitioners.

Stay tuned for other events. Email info@fbcnewton.org for more information.

Thank you for being a part of First Baptist Church in Newton Centre. You are a part of a diverse, creative, and intelligent church. We are a small, but potent collective!
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The next several weeks is a critical time for us when we revisit what God is up to with us. We ask important questions: What have we done? What’s working? What do we want to do differently? What do we want to accomplish together?

Our Council has been working diligently to prepare for our meeting this Sunday. If you are a member, your participation is critical. We need you to vote on two items: (1) a Proposed 2018 Budget and (2) the minutes from the 2018 Annual Meeting last February. This is considered a “business meeting” but it is far from “business as usual.”

What is a Proposed Budget?
A Proposed Budget is presented for consideration by the church members. After a time of discernment, a budget is voted on and adopted at the February Annual Meeting.

The Process:

• This Sunday: Approve Proposed 2018 Budget.
• Sunday, November 19: Commitments Sunday. We acknowledge and celebrate our commitments to one another and the church through baptisms, welcoming new members, and offering our financial pledges for 2018.
• February: Approve budget for 2018 and elect leadership for 2018 at Annual Meeting.

Discernment
The period between this coming Sunday and Commitments Sunday (November 19) is an important time of discernment. We pray, discuss, and listen.
I’m looking forward to sharing with you what I sense God is up to with us and where I think we need to go in 2018. Christ is our head and we look to him to lead us. I look forward to learning about what you are sensing about our next season together.

Warmly,
Sean