The 4 week winter cohort launches Tuesday January 4th, 2022 on zoom from 7:30-8:30pm
Cost: $20
Sign up here:
https://www.aplos.com/aws/give/CascadeChurchPortland/Reimagine
I was once chatting with a high school student who told me that she knew she could be queer and love Jesus because she had heard a message of a loving and accepting God throughout her time at Cascade Students (6th-12th grade). I was shocked by her assuredness in the statement while thrilled that she had clearly gotten the message I had been trying to communicate, one that had been lacking in my own youth groups growing up. While I was delighted that she was so clear in this message of love and acceptance, through our conversation it became clear that she had different questions that I was not addressing. This encounter made me realize that as pastors and teachers or parents, we often teach the concepts we project onto our students or children from our own spiritual trauma rather than meeting them in their curiosity, and that the questions each generation is asking change over time. The question my parents' generation asked is if you could be divorced and part of the church. My generation asked questions about sexuality, I’m curious what the questions of future generations will be.
What I’ve found while working alongside families at Cascade is that adults who have found themselves in the process of deconstruction tend to feel lost about how to have conversations around faith with their children. Somewhere along the way, their own trauma or spiritual abuse becomes the focus of what they do not want to extend to their child. However, often families return to church systems after having children for the familiarity of a community or support system. And so, deconstructed parents find themselves sure of spiritual practices they don’t want for their child but very unsure about positive ways to incorporate faith.
In her book Faith Shifting, Kathy Escobar provides an amazing model for the process of deconstruction. During this class, we use that model as a framework to examine where one may be in the process of deconstruction, and together, begin to reimagine what it could look like to have spiritual conversations and rituals at home with our children. Join us on a four week adventure in parenting and deconstruction as we discuss brain development in relationship to spirituality and practical spiritual rituals to use at home with your children.
This class will be discussion based. Please download and print the pdf for the class and make sure that you have solid internet connections so that you can participate in the discussion as we find it an important part of the class. After the class, you will have access to a private facebook group to continue conversations from your cohort.