Join us for #pubtheology tomorrow evening from 7-8pm at the Alley Kat (3718 Main St.) where we will discuss: What are you grateful for today? Rachel Held Evans—beloved author, truth-teller, and icon for a generous Christianity—passed away Saturday morning, after a brief and unexpected storm of health complications. She was only 37 years-old. Many were in prayer for her during her sudden illness and #PrayforRHE even trended on Twitter. Mike Morrell asks what many are feeling: “Why did she of all people have to leave us, God? What about all that prayer?” Rachel herself put it this way in her book, Searching for Sunday: “I became a stranger to the busy, avuncular God who arranged parking spaces for my friends and took prayer requests for weather and election outcomes while leaving thirty thousand children to die each day from preventable disease.” One person in an online forum noted: “Rachel Held Evans died this morning, and I’m not okay. I really thought she would pull through this. And… I know that this is not about me, but I can’t help but feel like whatever faith I had left in prayer is gone. She had so many people praying for her. What’s the f#$%ing point?” Discuss prayer, grief, and how you’re feeling about Rachel’s passing. Evans wrote: “Instead of fighting for a seat at the evangelical table, I want to prepare tables in the wilderness, where everyone is welcome and where we can go on discussing (and debating!) the Bible, science, sexuality, gender, racial reconciliation, justice, church, and faith, but without labels, without wars.” Discuss the space that Rachel created for people with questions who were in traditionally conservative Christian spaces. Discuss the approach to church and community Rachel Held Evans describes here: “Imagine if every church became a place where everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable. Imagine if every church became a place where we told one another the truth. We might just create sanctuary.” “The longer the list of requirements and contingencies and prerequisites, the more vulnerable faith becomes to shifting environments and the more likely it is to fade slowly into extinction. When the gospel gets all entangled (at Alley Kat Bar & Lounge) https://www.instagram.com/p/BxKefHgh9Te/?igshid=k7eggstpq9f4
