As we step into a new year at The Oceanside Sanctuary and a renewed vision and mission, you are invited to lean into community and help us cultivate a Christian spirituality “reclaiming its calling to be known for love, liberation, and the celebration of God’s image in all people.”
From the whole staff at the Oceanside Sanctuary, we want to thank you for making our annual year-end fund drive a success! Our goal was to raise $50,000 to support our Community Impact programs, and you helped us exceed that goal by raising $53,127!
We hope you have been tuning in to Pastor Jenell’s daily Advent reflections this month on our podcast channel, The Collective Table. Each week, the reflections have focused around a different theme of Advent. On this final week of Advent, we will look at love together.
In this week’s episode, Claire and Jason listen back to a conversation with Rabbi Sharon Brous, who draws from Arendt’s ideas that loneliness and social isolation are essentially preconditions for totalitarianism. Together, they explore the crisis of loneliness, as well as rituals and practices which go against a current of individualism and competition.
November 21st 2024 marks our 149th birthday as a church and the beginning of our 150th year. This is an incredible milestone! Our church has existed longer than telephones, record players, or light bulbs! We would love to see you this coming Sunday November 17th for a 149th birthday celebration immediately after church in our new downstairs community room.
God of Justice, we sit with sadness in our hearts today. We come in the rawness of our pain, not hiding what we carry. This world feels fractured, and we feel pulled in every direction. God of the Stranger, we lament for those who have come to our shores, seeking refuge and safety, only to be met with rejection and suspicion.
In this powerful episode, Jenell and Claire dive into The Collective Table archives to revisit the “See No Stranger” book club conversation featuring Valarie Kaur. Valarie, a renowned civil rights activist, author, and speaker, has dedicated her life to promoting revolutionary love—a concept she describes as "the choice to enter into labor for others who do not look like us, for our opponents who hurt us, and for ourselves."
