Church guide

This weekend, Reservoir served as one of the sites for this year’s Eastern Middlesex County Gun Buy-Back. 3 Reservoir volunteers helped out along with Steve Watson, facilitating the return of 29 unwanted weapons in the community. Thanks for helping us be plugged in with the needs of our neighborhood.

Do you have a Soccer Nights shirt and come to Reservoir on Sundays? Wear your shirt this Sunday, 6/9, to either service! Come help represent the awesomeness that is Soccer Nights. 😁👍⚽️

"The bottom line is that people don’t have to fit their round selves into a square hole—God knows how to communicate with all us—and it doesn’t look the same for all of us." Steve & Michaiah spoke this week about a God we can experience:

For Ian, part of the joy of living in his neighborhood is Soccer Nights, which he helps out at and his son participates in. Soccer Nights is a taste of heaven. Read Ian's story: https://www.reservoirchurch.org/story/ian-jackson/

Ivy Anthony spoke this week, inspired by the women of the Bible and the late Rachel Held Evans, about our God who helps: https://www.reservoirchurch.org/sermon/breaking-code-and-asking-for-help/

All your self-criticism is unfair to you and definitely not how God sees you. But it's also making you a harder person. Steve Watson reflects on the blog about getting permission to love himself, and why you should love yourself too: https://www.reservoirchurch.org/if-god-loves-me-maybe-i-can-stop-hating-myself/

We’ll miss long time member, Connie Chung, who has served as a leader in our community in so many ways, including serving on our board. She’s moving to Paris and we wish her well! On her last Sunday with us this week, staff, pastors, and board members prayed for her with the help of the whole congregation. All the warmest wishes, Connie❤️. #church #community #prayer

To get close to dry bones — to pain, suffering, and death — and in them to see life and hope, is prophetic. Let God speak life into your dry bones, and then go and speak it to others. Steve's full sermon from this week: https://www.reservoirchurch.org/sermon/speaking-life-into-being-where-you-cant-yet-see-it/

"When disillusionment and bitter reality makes us downcast, Jesus finds us and says: take it easy, have peace." God is alive and present in reality, exactly while it is filled with pain. Steve's Easter sermon: https://www.reservoirchurch.org/sermon/easter-2019-for-downcast-people-of-certain-doom/

In this Holy Week, we enter with Jesus into the wild place of his Passion. On Palm Sunday, we remembered his entry into Jerusalem to much fanfare. Today and tomorrow, we remember how he was betrayed by his friend, Judas. On Thursday, we’ll remember his last meal with his friends and his arrest. And on Friday, we will solemnly remember his death on a cross. But from all this death, from all this wilderness, comes new life in his Resurrection, which we will celebrate on Easter Sunday. Out of the dust, there will be a rising. #holyweek #lent #wilderness #wildplaces #exile #exodus #church

"Doubt doesn’t need to hidden or tucked away as if it’s something to be ashamed or afraid of. Doubt needs light, it needs to be seen and expressed. The only reason we’d think otherwise is if we practiced a fear-based faith, as if doubt made God angry or something. The most common fear-based faith in most religion is a form of fundamentalism, which just means... to need to always be right and certain. Which isn’t faith or anything else helpful, it’s actually a sin."

"Rest has got to be one of the least strategic activities in wild places. Out of control? Lost in the wilderness? Overwhelmed? In chaos, duress, or confusion? To not do anything, to simply rest seems counter-intuitive. But rest is part, maybe a seventh part, of what people in all places – wild places included – need." Today's Bible Guide for Lent:

"You know what’s cool to me, though? There is one character in this story who is not stressed out. And that character is God. God isn’t worried about the water. God has no regret about choices that have been made. And when Moses brings his anxiety to God, God says: it’s OK. I’ll take care of you." When we have to face problems and go out into the wildnerness, God's not worried. Audio isn't working this week, but you can read this week's talk by Steve Watson here:

A little snow won't stop us! In spite of the bad weather expected tomorrow, we will still have our Sunday services at 9:30 and 11:30 AM. Don't forget: it's Daylight Saving Time, so clocks spring forward!

"What is pilgrimage? Pilgrimage is a journey, exterior or interior, to a destination, known or unknown. It can be a literal trip, where we travel somewhere and hope that in the travelling or in the arriving we will learn something new, or in some way meet God. And pilgrimage is a break with our settled, regular life. It’s delaying gratification. It’s choosing to give up some short-term good we have for a longer-term but not fully known or experience “great” that we hope to find." Steve Watson preached this week on how he's looking at Lent this year:

Lydia shamelessly plugs 5 things happening in our community this March to help you flourish, including our Ash Wednesday service tomorrow at 7 PM. If you're looking for an Ash Wednesday service (with ashes, readings, prayer, and song) at an inclusive church tomorrow, come by Reservoir at 7.

"Jesus says it’s okay for me to be here, to worship him with all my guilt and shame. To sit at his feet and let my hair down... Will you let God see you? Will you come sit at the feet of Jesus, no matter what anyone else might say?" Lydia Shiu preaches on money, sex, power, and the people whose debts Jesus seeks to forgive:

Lydia Shiu is preaching this weekend for the first time since her maternity leave! She’ll be speaking on a story from the Bible very close to her heart: the story of the woman who anointed Jesus feet with oil. See you Sunday at 9:30 or 11:30 AM!

"Something I discovered is that, if you stare long enough, Ray Paradiso’s paintings will lift off in layers, rewarding your patience with the knowledge that there are pure magenta skies under his stained glass trees." Jillie Wowk-Kennedy, Reservoir member, interviews Raymond Paradiso, whose show in the Dome Gallery closes 2/28.

"Thinking is what will keep the love of Jesus expanding beyond the constraints of Sanctuary walls and church systems—preachers mouths and worship sets—and expanding into your much-lived places and much-filled heart, and beyond." Love is a word that can lose its meaning... but if we are convicted in our thoughts of the importance of love, that's how we'll find it and grow it in all our spaces. Ivy preached on this this week:

Steve Watson here, wishing you a Merry Christmas! Praying for you this week that you'll experience God with you in some way through Jesus.

Of the 1,000 people Reservoir's ministries touch each year, about 200 of us regularly give to sustain our community and its work. If you're one of those people and would like to give an additional year end gift, now's a great time to do so. If you don't give, and you would like to start, that's easy to do here: https://www.reservoirchurch.org/about/giving/ Thank you for your support!

Worship from this weekend’s #resretreat18: “Who the Son sets free Oh is free indeed I’m a child of God Yes I am In my Father’s house There’s a place for me I’m a child of God Yes I am” . . #faith #god #jesus #worship

The first two talks in our summer series Faith in a Time of Empire have been influenced by the writing of Walter Brueggemann. See a quick beat of him talking about the Exodus and "The Juice of Emancipation" in this short video, speaking to grandparents in particular, but accessible to us all.

Be opened, Jesus says. Check out a response to a passage we also looked at in our 40 Days Bible Guide this spring. More #AdventuresinSayingYes this Sunday. See you at 9:30 or 11:30 for "Yes to a Bigger Table."

For your Easter viewing pleasure, a poem, a video.

A visual prayer of doubt, faith, and hope for your Light in the Darkness today. See you Saturday night at 7:30.