If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you probably know that I was a member of Cross Creek Community Church, actually since its very beginning.

You may also have read my post last November about Cross Creek’s merging with Oak Creek United Church of Christ. That post also featured the name I liked—Croak Creek Community Church (“cross” + “oak” = “croak”)—for the merged church, as well as a fun logo I proposed to go along with the Croak Creek name.

I didn’t really think “Croak Creek” would be adopted, and in fact it wasn’t. The new church is named Harmony Creek Church. Not “Harmony Creek Community Church” or “Harmony Creek United Church of Christ,” although Harmony Creek Church is a part of the United Church of Christ as were both Cross Creek and Oak Creek, and Harmony Creek is also affiliated with the Alliance of Baptists, as was Cross Creek.

The merger’s going fairly well as Harmony Creekers work out what traditions from the two churches to keep and what new stuff to try.

Even so, I’m feeling a bit nostalgic about Cross Creek. Because of that I’ve been going through some Cross Creek memorabilia, and one item I came across was this, the one and only official Cross Creek Community Church cookbook, Pass the Plate ’round the Welcome Table.

This cookbook was put out in 2007, a year that was billed at Cross Creek as a “Decade of Daring,” the tenth anniversary of our church. The cookbook wasn’t particularly successful as a fundraiser, but it does work at providing some memories of the good food we had at church gatherings.

The forward to the cookbook also provides a nice glimpse of some of the history of Cross Creek. Since these cookbooks are no longer for sale—they made the move to Harmony Creek but were set out for anyone to take for free—I figured it’d be okay to post a scanned copy here for those who want to remember or learn a bit about the church that was Cross Creek.

A few days ago a gay friend of mine complained on Facebook about my “Christ-centric” point of view, saying that he couldn’t understand my “still want[ing] to find hope within the religious mainstream.” On the very same day, a heterosexual stranger with whom I had a little debate on Twitter about marriage equality in New York said that his opposition to same sex marriage was “the Christian point of view,” having expressed astonishment at my 140-character explanation of my religious beliefs. An irony made more evident by the close timing of the reactions from these two very different people is how they, coming from such antithetical places, share something in common with each other—neither approves of my religious beliefs or the spiritual choices I’ve made.

For the former person, someone I’ve known for many years and whose friendship I still value, I’m too Christian. My openness about my faith, my participation in a church, my knowledge of scripture, all of this is apparently too much for him, this despite the fact that I’ve never pushed my religion on him, never told him he should be Christian or join a church, never engaged him in debate about religion, never emailed him or posted on his Facebook wall about religion. Indeed my comment on one of his posts that triggered his harangue made no mention either of Christ or of religion.

For the latter person, the stranger whom I’ve never met and never will, I’m not Christian enough. My being a member of a United Church of Christ congregation, part of a denomination that not only endorses marriage equality but also espouses views such as the key UCC one that “God is Still Speaking,” means that I am “not Biblical” in my approach to life. [Another irony is that this stranger’s father is a UCC pastor, although I do not know whether this stranger and his father share similar views about the path the denomination has taken.]

Perhaps one reason my friend disapproves of my religious perspective is that, although he does not realize this, he agrees with the stranger about Christianity. The stranger, explaining his beliefs on marriage, on the UCC and on Biblical inerrancy, presented his views as “the Christian point of view,” not a Christian’s point of view [emphasis mine], and I think that somehow my friend agrees with this stranger, Somehow my friend agrees with this stranger, that there can be only one Christian point of view. that there can be only one Christian point of view, and thus if I say I’m Christian, my point of view must be invalid.

A third irony is that the stranger showed me a little more respect than did my friend because he actually asked about my beliefs, while my friend I don’t think understands them, but both the stranger and my friend think I’m wrong when it comes to religion. While I respect the right of both my friend and this stranger to have religious beliefs different from mine, I refuse to allow either of them to tell me that there is a single Christian perspective.

So what do I believe? Well, what I told the stranger about my beliefs, in a Twitter-sized chunk, is “that the bible isn’t inerrant, that, as the UCC says, God is still speaking, and that Christianity isn’t the only way.”

For many Christians, including the stranger, my beliefs are enough to disqualify me from claiming that I’m a Christian, and given our culture’s understanding of what it means to be Christian (an understanding of Christianity that, ironically, my non-Christian friend shares), I guess I’m not a Christian. I do not believe the Bible to be inerrant. I do not believe an omnipotent God had no choice but to sacrifice his only son to atone for my sins to save me from eternal damnation. Further, I do not believe in an omnipotent God at all, I do not believe Jesus was the son of God or the sole manifestation of God, I do not believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus, and I’m not entirely sure there even was a historical Jesus. The stranger’s right—
I’m not Biblical.

My friend’s right—
I am Christ-centric. The stranger’s right—I’m not Biblical.

For many non-Christians, including my friend, my beliefs are enough to dismiss me as yet another Christian, and given my choices in life, especially those about many of the people with whom I associate, I guess I am a Christian. My background is Christian and I’m a part of a Christian church. You may not know many people who’ve helped to start a church, but I’m one such person, having been a part of Cross Creek Community Church since before it was even called that (I drove my little gay Miata through a blizzard in 1996 to be part of a small group of people who met to come up with our as yet unborn church’s name). Many of my friends are clergy. Despite not being entirely sure there ever was a historical Jesus, I believe much of what Jesus reputedly says, including the bits about loving one’s neighbors and caring for the least among us. It’d be much easier if I didn’t believe this stuff—I wouldn’t ever have to take a vacation day to unload a Foodbank truck or to get up very early on a Saturday to volunteer at a church food pantry. My friend’s right—I am Christ-centric.

Ultimately, however, it doesn’t matter whether either the stranger or my friend is right. I can’t live my life to please strangers who understand my beliefs and thus think I’m going to hell, and I can’t live my life to please friends who misunderstand my beliefs and thus think I’m making choices to avoid going to hell. All I can do is make choices that, as much as possible, make my life better for me.

And whether the stranger is right that I’m not a Christian but should be or my friend is right that I am a Christian but shouldn’t be, I’m happy being the kind of Christian I am. A statement that is true for me, though it will be too Christ-centric for my friend, is that I’ve found God at Cross Creek. The God I’ve found there is neither the one in whom the stranger believes nor the one whom my friend rejects. No, the God I’ve found is one whose voice is heard through relationships and dialogue, one who is made powerful from people working together but one who is limited by people’s imperfections. My describing God in this way should make it obvious that I believe God can be encountered in many circumstances, not just through Christianity and indeed not just through religion, but my encountering God through this Christian community works for me. I’m not ashamed of it, nor will I apologize for it.

A final irony before I close is that in another context this same statement—I’m not ashamed of it, nor will I apologize for it—would be something my friend would wholeheartedly endorse. It’s rather queer that in a Christian context he would find it so offensive.

Rabbi Irwin Kula If you’re a regular reader of my blog or if you’re familiar with the church I attend, Cross Creek Community Church, you know that over the years we’ve had quite a few rabbis come to talk to us. It’s become a tradition of sorts for us to invite a rabbi to talk to us during Advent (read about rabbis who spoke to us during Advent in 2009 and 2006), but this weekend we invited a rabbi, Irwin Kula, to come to speak to us for Lent.

Rabbi Kula lives in New York City but has developed some Dayton connections through teaching a class at United Theological Seminary where he influenced Ruth Hopkins, one of many Cross Creekers who have gone to seminary there. Ruth brought Rabbi Kula’s book Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life to the attention of Cross Creek’s pastor, Mike Castle, who ended up incorporating teachings from the book in the sermons and liturgy for Lent in 2009, and many Cross Creekers read Yearnings that Lenten season. Because of those connections, Rabbi Kula is back in Dayton this weekend for Cross Creek’s latest weekend intensive; he gave a talk this evening after a chili supper and will be back to preach at both services tomorrow morning.

I have to confess that I was not one of the Cross Creekers who read Rabbi Kula’s book in 2009, and despite the many references to Rabbi Kula’s writings in Cross Creek materials from 2009, he didn’t make a big impression on me then. It’s not that I disagree with what he said; I guess I just wasn’t paying attention.

This evening, however, I appreciated what Rabbi Kula had to say, and I think I can pass the test Rabbi Kula’s son might put to me—Rabbi Kula shared several anecdotes about his family, one of which is that his son often travels with him as he lectures around the country, but people don’t realize who his son is, and if his son hears someone saying to Rabbi Kula, “I enjoyed your talk,” his son will ask that person, somewhat mischievously, “Oh, really? What did Rabbi Kula say?”

A great deal of the first part of Rabbi Kula’s talk, which had been billed as being on “Tradition and Change: Reimagining Religion in the 21st Century,” was helping us to understand the state of religion in the United States in 2011, and much of what he told us wasn’t surprising. The fastest growing religious segment in America is “None,” and that’s not atheists but spiritual people who don’t identify with any religious group. People don’t feel obligated to follow the religious practices of their parents. Rabbi Kula used the metaphors of cathedrals and bazaars for how people used to get information on religion and how people get that information now—people used to have beliefs handed to them in cathedrals, buildings whose price of admission was buying the beliefs being sold in them, but now people search for wisdom from the many booths in a bazaar (one that, unlike markets on the streets of old European towns, doesn’t have an anchor store in the form of a church at its center), and if the wisdom being sold at your booth doesn’t make sense—real practical sense, the effects of which people can witness—people will move on to other booths.

Rabbi Kula then tried to explain why people search for wisdom, and, given his Jewish background, I didn’t find his mentioning the Jewish concept of tikkun olam unexpected, but instead of translating it in the way I’d heard before, repairing the world, Rabbi Kula described it differently, as “repairing the soul.” That’s not so altruistic. “Do[ing] less damage,” another reason Rabbi Kula gave towards the end of his talk for seeking wisdom, is important too, but we seek wisdom to make our own lives better.

What Rabbi Kula said next about this 21st century search for wisdom was something I really hadn’t expected and indeed heard very skeptically at first. Locate
the partial truths
our opponents have What he said was that an important way to find wisdom is to locate the partial truths that our opponents have.

Now Rabbi Kula made it very clear that he’s pretty progressive; beyond being willing to come talk at a Christian church pastored by an openly gay man, he was also explicit about advocating for the acceptance of LGBT people in his Jewish circles. So, although Rabbi Kula wasn’t just talking about the gay issue but any issue with multiple sides, my mind went immediately to how unlikely it would be that those who say I’m going to hell for being gay or that God hates me for being gay or that I can change my being gay could have any truth on their side. And I did something somewhat rude and blurted out a question about just how little these partial truths we were supposed to find could be. Rabbi Kula had confessed during one of his initial anecdotes that he himself finds it difficult to control his impulse to blurt out exactly what he’s thinking sometimes, so I hope he understood my lack of impulse control. At any rate, he took my question seriously and diverted temporarily from the planned path of his talk to give an answer I found very helpful.

The partial truths that conservatives or fundamentalists have in our society’s culture war turn out not be so small after all: the truths they have are related not to the remedies they prescribe for our society but have to do with the diagnoses they’re making about our society.

For example, sexuality is messed up in our society. The specific example of this, pointed out by Rabbi Kula and discussed some afterwards by the assembled group in the appointed question and answer time, is the hypersexualization in our society of young women from their teens to early twenties. Conservatives aren’t wrong when they say this is a problem. What they think should be done about it—oppressing women back into traditional roles, stopping acceptance of alternative sexualities, etc.—is wrong, but the problem is real, and liberals can find wisdom by acknowledging it and talking about it. Rabbi Kula modeled this talking about this particular problem by sharing an anecdote about a situation his daughter, working amongst liberal artsy folk in a NYC gallery, found herself in.

Other areas in which conservatives have some partial truths are in the ideas that sacrifice and discipline and aggression can be necessary, although, again, not necessarily in the ways conservatives might advocate.

This seeking wisdom by locating the partial truths our opponents have pertains not only to large groups of strangers but also to individuals whom we know and love, love being the operative word. Rabbi Kula, sharing some anecdotes about his relationship with his wife, said that we should not seek to understand our opponents so that we can then love them but rather that we should love our opponents in order to understand them.

That should ring a bell for Christians, shouldn’t it? Rabbi Kula’s not the first Jewish teacher to tell us the importance of loving our neighbors. He’s just the first one, at least that I’ve heard, who frames it not as a belief—“Thou shalt love thy neighbor”—but who offers it as a method for finding wisdom—by trying to love your opponents, by cooling down the rhetoric, by listening, you might understand them and gain something for yourself in the process.

The Greek Festival, which occurs each year the weekend after Labor Day, is something I’ve attended annually for over a decade, even before I gained such convenient parking for it, having fallen into the tradition of going with the same friends each year. There’s plenty to experience at the festival—cute Greek boys (especially the one there Friday lunchtime at the Never on Sundae booth), music, shopping (in particular for icons that a friend of mine collects), dancing, thick Greek coffee in small cups, crowds, noise—but it’s the food that’s the main draw.

It used to be that I’d go only once each year, but now that I live so close I eat Greek all weekend. Friday for lunch I had a gyro and cheese and spinach pies and a chocolate-coated baklava for dessert. For dinner I shared a bottle of retsina and had pastitsio and Greek salad, followed by Greek coffee and a couple baklavas. The festival doesn’t open each day until 11 a.m., but, knowing that, I’d planned ahead and had
A sweet, if not healthy, Greek Festival breakfast baklavas and chocolate pinwheels for breakfast both Saturday and Sunday. Today for lunch I had a chicken gyro (not as good as the lamb gyros—be sure to ask for extra sauce on the side—but tasty) and another spinach pie, followed by some honey puffs. I definitely got my Greek on, as one of the t-shirts available for purchase said.

On Saturday, apart from breakfast, I took a break from Greek and ate Italian, not in the way you might have thought (no, not at the Italian festival) but at a spaghetti dinner held at my church as part of “An Evening with Philip Gulley.” Gulley was at Cross Creek as the guest speaker for the most recent of our weekend intensives, occasional times where we invite “professional thinkers” (as Gulley refers to himself and as my pastor introduced him but applicable also to other guests we’ve had previously) to give us amateur thinkers something more to think about.

You might be thinking I’d have done better to stick with the Greeks (and perhaps another bottle of retsina) than to go to a church dinner to hear a preacher talk, but Gulley, whom my pastor also introduced as an Indiana Quaker version of Garrison Keillor, was entertaining. Gulley has a dry self-deprecating sense of humor, a quiet, folksy manner that drew out quite a bit of laughter from those in attendance.

Like Keillor, Gulley draws upon his experiences growing up and living in small town America, but, unlike Keillor, Gulley’s purpose is not just to entertain but also to share his understanding of his faith, and, as Gulley shared on Saturday evening, although he is Christian he doesn’t believe that Jesus is the only way to experience the Divine. Gulley believes there have been and are multiple “God bearers,” and he spent his time Saturday explaining how we might recognize them. (Hint: the more loudly one proclaims that one is a God bearer, the less likely it is that one is.)

As part of his explanation of the concept of God bearers, Gulley, who says he likes to avoid theological language for the most part and to speak instead in language more people can understand, did bring up and explain a theological term, Theotokos, a Greek term for Mary, the mother of Jesus, a term that means (you guessed it) “God bearer.” I mention Gulley’s mentioning of Theotokos not so much because the term itself was central to his message but because I happened to hear that same specific Greek word again not more than 24 hours later.

Just as one helping of Greek food wasn’t enough for me this weekend, neither was one helping of Gulley sufficient, and I went back to Cross Creek again this morning to hear Gulley preach during our morning worship. Gulley was again entertaining, telling funny stories from his life experiences, not just to elicit laughter but to explain his faith. Gulley told a funny story from his Catholic childhood about being caught by his priest sledding down the hill of the Methodist church in his small town; rather than progressing in his faith by associating with non-Catholics, the priest thought Gulley should instead remain on the unchanging flat lawn of the Roman Catholic Church.

The problem is, as Gulley went on to explain, faith is not unchanging. Gulley illustrated this with another story, about a photo that his parents still display, a photo taken in 1958 of their family, before Gulley and his younger siblings were born. The photo which Gulley’s parents are still so fond of is valuable because it shows their family at a point in time, but it’s not an accurate depiction of their family over all time.

Alongside that story about a cherished family photo Gulley talked also about the Nicene Creed, again straying briefly away from folksy stories and into theological explanation, but again I mention his mentioning of a theological reference because this too I would hear mentioned again very shortly thereafter. Gulley talked about the 1685-year-old creed not because it is worthless and to be discarded but because, like the photo Gulley’s parents still like so much, the Nicene Creed is a snapshot of Christian faith at a particular point in time, not an unchanging depiction of Christian faith forever and ever.

So after my two helpings of Gulley, I went with another friend back to the Greek Festival for some more Greek food, and after eating, we went inside the Annunciation church to hear a brief explanation of the building and the Greek Orthodox faith, and here’s where the odd juxtaposition of Gulley and the Greek Festival took place. Sitting in the interior of the church with all its beautiful
The only Theotokos? icons, I heard mentioned two things I’d just heard Gulley mention—Theotokos and the Nicene Creed.

For the Greek Orthodox there is only one Theotokos, and they venerate her with a large icon at the back of their sanctuary, and the Nicene Creed, available on laminated cards stored in the backs of their pews, they brought up as an example of the unchanging and eternal nature of their faith. Quite a contrast to how Gulley made mention of these two theological things.

I point out this juxtaposition not as an attack on the Greek Orthodox faith (this statement echoes one I just saw made today on another blog by someone claiming, as it happens, not to be making “a personal attack on Pastor Philip Gulley”). It’s just that as enjoyable as I find the food at the annual Greek Festival, I’m afraid I don’t find what they serve inside their sanctuary to be as nourishing. Ironically, considering Gulley’s story of childhood sledding, it seems that those who go up the hill to the Annunciation Church value most the unchangingness of their faith while we who worship on the flat lawn in the church building that is Cross Creek cherish that God is Still Speaking.

I guess a lesson to be learnt from this odd juxtaposition is that just as there are multiple festivals with different kinds of food, there are also different Theotokoi bearing the Divine to us in different ways, even if some of us would prefer to go all our lives to the same festival.

This Sunday at my church, Cross Creek Community Church, United Church of Christ, we celebrated Pentecost Sunday.

Our worship space was festively decorated in Pentecost Red with balloons everywhere lifted by the Spirit!

Click any photo to embiggen it.

Of course, I brought one of the balloons home myself to enjoy on my balcony:

Rabbi Bernard Barsky

In the times that I’ve heard Rabbi Chessin speak, I’ve quite enjoyed her, so I have to admit to being a bit disappointed beforehand that she wasn’t going to be our guest again this year, but diversity is good, and Dayton is lucky to have not only multiple Jewish congregations and religious leaders but also more than one willing to be associated with a radical church like Cross Creek. Indeed Rabbi Barsky stood with Cross Creek in 2004 in speaking against Ohio’s “marriage protection amendment.” So, although it would have been easy enough for me, having given a party the night before his visit, just to have slept late, I got myself up and to church on time to hear him (at the 11:00 service).

I’d remembered one of Rabbi Chessin’s messages at Cross Creek as being rather apt for the Advent season, which is one of waiting, and looking back at my blog entry mentioning her visit, I see that I wrote that “it was our similarities, not our differences, that Rabbi Chessen wanted to stress,” that whether we were Jews waiting for the first appearance of a Messiah or Christians anticipating the annual birth or the eventual Second Coming of one, we shared that sense of waiting.

Rabbi Barsky, too, started by noting a similarity between Christianity and Judaism, specifically that each religion has a liturgical calendar, but he did so in order to point out some differences between Christians and Jews. That the Jewish liturgy does not include anything from the New Testament is obvious, but Jews also treat the Hebrew Bible differently than do Christians, placing an emphasis on the Torah, the five books of Moses or the Pentateuch, all of which Jews read every year over the course of their liturgical calendar. The second part of the Hebrew Bible, the Nev'im or Prophets, is not read each year in its entirety, and the rabbi said that most Jews look to the writings of the Prophets not as texts predicting the future, as texts to which later events must be tied, but rather as commentaries on the times in which they were written. Our liturgical text for the service included a passage from one of the minor prophets, Micah 5:2-5a. Portions of Micah are included twice a year in the Jewish liturgical calendar, but this particular passage—predicting the coming from Bethlehem of a ruler of Israel, one of peace, who shall be great to the ends of the earth—is not one of them and thus is not read by or known by many Jews.

Although the writer of the Gospel of Matthew found this passage in Micah to be so important that he quoted it in his writings, Rabbi Barsky implied that the author of Matthew was being rather disingenuous, picking prophetic verses that augmented the story he was telling. The reason Jews don’t normally care about Micah 5:2-5a is, Rabbi Barsky said, not only that Jews ordinarily care more about what prophets’ writings say about the prophets’ own rather than future times but also that normally Jews aren’t very messianic and don’t worry much about the coming of a Messiah. There are exceptions to this, he said, particularly during times of adversity, such as that faced when under Roman rule around the time of Jesus’s birth, times during which Jews have in desperation sought a Messiah who might save them, but determining who the Messiah might be is not a dominant part of Judaism.

Indeed, Rabbi Barsky pointed out that asking him whether he thought Jesus was in fact the Messiah would be asking for a Jewish response to a Christian question, a question of concern to Christians but not to Jews. Instead, the rabbi suggested it would be better for him to give a Jewish response to the Advent story. To do so, he returned to the Gospel of Matthew, still in the second chapter but after the part in which the Gospel writer used Micah as a proof text (not a phrase the rabbi used but appropriate, I think), to Matthew 2:16-18.

The story in the second chapter of Matthew is at once both familiar and unfamiliar to Christians. We, of course, remember that Magi came from the east to worship the baby Jesus and bring him presents, for that is a part of the Christmas story we hear each year. We may also remember that King Herod felt threatened by this baby king and that Joseph, Mary and Jesus fled to Egypt, thus allowing Jesus to escape the fate befalling all other boys in Bethlehem two years old and younger, namely death by King Herod’s henchmen. You did remember that a part of the Christmas story was the mass slaughter of baby and infant boys, didn’t you?

Don’t feel too bad if you didn’t remember that, since most Christians don’t, and most of us certainly could not tell you the passage to which the author of Matthew turned to show that this slaughter was predestined, Jeremiah 31:15, about “[a] voice […] heard in Ramah, […] Rachel weeping for her children [who] are no more.” Talk about a mighty example of proof texting! By pulling a single verse referring to a town eight kilometers away from Jerusalem, where conquered Israelites were staged before their exile into slavery in Babylon, the Gospel author can dismiss mass slaughter as fulfilling the words of an ancient Jewish prophet. You see, Jeremiah wasn’t really talking about slaves being gathered in Ramah for exile but instead was talking, without even mentioning it specifically, about a future attempt to kill a baby king of Israel in his crib.

Rabbi Barsky was not as willing as the author of Matthew to gloss over the deaths of so many innocents and suggested that this tragedy might well have been something which Jesus also would have had a difficult time putting away. Jesus would surely have learned how close his escape was from being murdered as a baby and would probably have wondered why he was spared when so many of his peers were not. That Jesus would have been concerned about the memory of his murdered neighbors might be more apparent to those who know of a Jewish custom which Rabbi Barsky pointed out to us. The rabbi explained that when Jews speak of the dead, they often say something along the lines of “may their memory be for a blessing” (this practice of uttering honorifics for the dead is something Judaism has in common with Islam). Jesus might well have wondered whether he owed anything in his life to honor the memories of those who had not been so lucky as he.

Having given something of a Jewish response to a Christian question, Rabbi Barsky turned, though he didn’t term it as such, towards asking for a Christian response to a Jewish question. The rabbi said that Jews ask themselves how their convenant with God is made apparent through the actions they take. Addressing us Christians at Cross Creek, he asked how we make it apparent in our lives that Jesus is indeed our Messiah. How may Jesus’s memory (or His continued presence in our lives, if you prefer to phrase it that way) be a blessing?

How we answer that question can show whether or not our Christian faith is in fact similar to Rabbi Barsky’s Jewish faith. If, as many conservative Christians are apt to do, we point towards particular passages in Hebrew scripture as having been fulfilled by Jesus (proof texting), then our faiths are more different than similar. If, instead, we look at what prophets and Jesus had to say not as prophecies to be fulfilled but as commentaries on our communities, as challenges for us to make our communities better places, bringing about the kindom of God here on earth (that’s not a typo of “kingdom” but rather a phrase I learned from former Cross Creeker Lisa Wolfe), then our faiths are more similar than different.

That the faiths of us Christians at Cross Creek and of Rabbi Barsky and his congregation are more similar than different is something we’ll have more opportunity over the coming year to examine. Both Beth Abraham and Cross Creek have been involved in the efforts to organize a Dayton-area affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation, a grassroots community organizing network which has worked on justice issues across the country. The next meeting of the Dayton group will be in January at Beth Abraham; for more information, visit the new Cross Creek IAF team’s new webpage.

ConnectionPower founder
Allen Ratta

One church, however, that Cross Creek is now positioned alongside is the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas, the world's largest gay church, which was officially welcomed Oct. 29th into the United Church of Christ. With 4,300 members, Cathedral of Hope counts as a mega-church and probably knows a thing or two about ChMS.


What's the big comma about? Well, as Gracie Allen said, "Never place a period where God has placed a comma," or in other words, "God is still speaking." I'll update you further as Cross Creek continues to explore how we can connect powerfully to our visitors and members.