We’re taking a summer break!
“In our contemporary context of the rat race of anxiety, the celebration of Sabbath is an act of...resistance...It is resistance because it is a visible insistence that our lives are not defined by the production and consumption of commodity goods. Such an act of resistance requires enormous intentionality and communal reinforcement amid the barrage of seductive pressures from the insatiable insistences of the market...”
Dear friends,
As a core team, we’ve decided to have the Sunday Night Service weekly worship services take a summer break (with the rest of you!). We’re going to take this time off and devote some of our energy to relaxing and making some plans for the future. If you’re in town this summer and just itching for some Sunday worship I’d suggest giving the upstairs folks a go––All Souls at 10:30a.
Though we’ll take a break from our Sunday gatherings, we’ll still meet up this summer for:
Beer garden hang outs, June 28th and July 26th at Westbrae Biergarten in Berkeley.
A family dinner in August. This will be a Storytelling Dinner meets Family Meeting. Stay tuned for more details in July!
We realize that it’s a little scary to take a break, and it’s certainly not what any business-minded perspective would likely advise, but one of our core values at the Sunday Night Service is to not live into and repeat the consumerist, power hungry, exploitative practices of the churches we came from. In order to do this, we want to pay attention to ourselves and our collective energy as we continue towards what we think it looks like to live in the kingdom of God here and now.
The quote above was taken from Walter Brueggmann’s book Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now where he talks about the dangers of trying to do too much, which he calls multitasking and likens it to the biblical notion of serving two masters. He says “multitasking is the drive to be more than we are, to control more than we do, to extend our power and our effectiveness. Such practice yields a divided self, with full attention given to nothing”, and that “such multitasking with a divided heart means that there is no real work stoppage, no interruption in the frantic attempt to get ahead.” This is what we’re trying NOT to do, and we’re taking the risk of resting this summer, and trusting that all will be well.
Keep an eye out on instagram for updates. We hope summer is relaxing and life-giving.
Yours,
Sunday Night Service Team
