Dear Friends and Guests…
We often say at Wellshire that we attempt to be, at all times, a thoughtful and thought-provoking congregation. We seek to honor honest questions of faith and mission as we venture out of the walls of Wellshire to serve Christ - so often found in the unexpected guise of a stranger. So we pray, and meet, we travel and read and explore. We stumble and help one another up. We hammer and cook and laugh until it hurts. We offer and receive grace in abundance. If you would like to join us in this journey of exploration and service, please call, write or stop by. It would be my pleasure to share a cup of coffee (Fair Trade coffee from our Fair Shake Shoppe!) with you.
Fair Shake Shoppe PRICE LIST
Book, Sermon and Scripture excerpts describing a portion of the theology of
Local & Global Ministries at Wellshire:
In Solidarity
Your friends were asleep, dull
with the heavy drowsiness
of the unaware
while life was forging itself
in you.
Completely alone
You pronounced the unconditional yes.
The crushing weight of the cross
splintered your heart,
which seeped through your pores
fertilizing our land
with hope!
Julia Esquivel, Guatemalan poet & theologian
“New Testament images of the church are salt, light, yeast, servant and prophet…they give birth to the idea of the church as sacrament, sign and instrument…These images gave articulation to the idea, so well formulated by Archbishop William Temple, that the church is the only society in the world which exists for the sake of those who are not members of it. The classical expression of this perception of the church was the phrase, ‘the church for others.’ Its architect was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote the following sentences from a Nazi prison in 1944, ‘The church is the church only when it exists for others…the church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving…’ The question is then asked whether this helper syndrome jeopardizes the possibility of true co-existence? Instead of talking about ‘the church for others’, we should speak of ‘the church with others.” (Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, David J. Bosch, p.374-375)
“…for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me…” Matthew 25:35
“Lila Watson, an aboriginal woman from Australia, is often quoted for the advice she once gave to white mission workers: ‘If you have come to help us you’re wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with ours, then let us work together…’ Mission has little to do with a material ‘have’ helping a material ‘have not;’ mission is necessarily co-mission: a mutual process of risk and liberation, of co-building bridges of understanding over the vast ravines of racism and imperialism.” (Beyond the White Noise: Mission in a Multi-cultural World, Tom Montgomery-Fate, p.6)
“Wherever the spirit of justice grows imaginative and is transmuted into love, a love in which the interests of the other are espoused, the struggle is transcended by just that much.” (Love and Justice; Reinhold Niebuhr, p.38)
“He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Micah 6:6-8
We require a new vision to break out of the present stalemate toward a different kind of missionary involvement…the bravest among missionary thinkers have already for some time begun to sense that a new paradigm for mission was emerging…we stand at the definite end of a specific period or era of mission…We are called to a new pioneer task which will be more demanding and less romantic than the heroic deeds of the past…” Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, David J. Bosch, p.7-8
“The basic model in the West for understanding self, world, and God has been ‘subject’ versus ‘object.’ Whatever we know, we know by means of this model: I am the subject knowing the world (nature), other people, and God as objects. It is such a deep structure in all our thinking and doing that we are usually unaware that it is a model. It simply seems to be the way things are. But it is a model and not an innocent one, for it is implicitly dualistic, hierarchical, individualistic, and utilitarian…but what if we changed the model for knowledge from subject-objects to subject-subjects? We may believe that we think of other people and of God as subjects, but the model of Western knowing scarcely allows us to do so…It also lies behind our tendency to deal with differences among human beings in terms of hierarchical dualisms – male/female, straight/gay, whites/people of color, Westerners/Easterners. The first named is the subject, the second the object…” (Super, Natural Christians, Sallie McFague, p.7-8.)
Wellshire Travel Teams
“The church is viewed as the people of God and, by implication then, as a pilgrim church. In contemporary Protestantism, this idea first surfaced clearly in the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer…the biblical archetype here is that of the wandering people of God, which is so prominent in the letter to the Hebrews. The church is a pilgrim not simply for the practical reason that in the modern age it no longer calls the tune and is everywhere finding itself in a diaspora situation; rather, to be a pilgrim in the world…is to be ‘called out’ of the world, and ‘sent back’ into the world…God’s pilgrim people need only two things: support for the road, and a destination at the end of it.” Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, David J. Bosch, p.373-374)
If you have interest in a particular culture or country or region of the world, please let us know. Wellshire is in the midst of sending and receiving individuals and teams of curious and humble people as we seek to know and to respect one another as a global village of faith and myriad traditions. Most recently we have sent and received friends from the following countries:* China, * Egypt, * Haiti, *Santa Fe-Habitat, * Guatemala, *Zimbabwe and *Russia.
The Rev. Dr. Patricia M.B. Kitchen
Associate Pastor for Mission & Outreach
pkitchen@wpcdenver.org
303.758.2233 x. 223
