Monthly Group
Testimony
I'm a graduate student in Chicago. I want to be part of a church that can thrive without legitimating anyone's cultural hangups on the one hand or affirming peopl ...
Theology in Context
Day|Time: Second Sundays of the month, 11:45a-12:45p (Downtown) & 7:00-8:00p (Wicker Park)
Place: 610 S. Michigan (UVC Downtown) & 1502 N. Hoyne (UVC Wicker Park)
Leader: Dr. Jonathan Dean
Contact Info.: jdean@aurora.edu
DiscipLeship Stops: Varied
Looking for a way to connect with fellow UVCers outside the city limits? This monthly group strives to bring people together and build community around the centerpiece of stories. Each month’s gathering will focus on a particular book, story or reading to get the discussion started on the joys and obstacles of becoming a faithful Christian in today’s world.
TOPIC SCHEDULE
January 8: New Year’s Resolutions & Sanctification
We will begin by talking about New Year’s Resolutions. Along the way, we’ll explore a basic theological question: can we really change? is our ‘human condition’ a hopeless business, or is it possible that God might not be finished with us yet? If you prefer old-fashioned theological language: we’re talking about Sanctification!
February 19: Evil and the Holocaust
How do we imagine evil, especially on the scale of the Holocaust? Is God good? Is God in the intervention business any more? We’ll explore ways in which Christians and Jews have wrestled with faith after Auschwitz.
March 11: The God-Man: Jesus and Christian Thought
Christian doctrine holds Jesus to be both God, and human. For some, this is an essential tenet of Christian belief without which all is lost. For others, it feels like an impossible paradox. How do we begin to understand the radical idea of a God who takes flesh and dwells among us? Where do we fit in?
April 15: Resurrection and Renewal
Was the resurrection, as Bishop David Jenkins once said, merely ‘a conjuring trick with bones’? Or did something really extraordinary happen that day? We’ll think about what the first Christians thought they were doing in making the claim of Jesus’s resurrection, and what it means today.
May 13: Mystical Paths
Mysticism is a phenomenon hard to define, and yet mystics have been and remain some of the Church’s most vital, revolutionary, exemplary thinkers, activists and writers. We’ll meet a couple of them: and ponder whether there’s a mystical vocation for all of us 21st-century Christians.