Pastor Brian's Blog

@Home Series Overview We have all been spending more time at home and finding in it a mixture of refuge and confinement.   Home is where the heart is, as well as the place where we experience the limits of our humanness.   With Thomas Dumm’s Home in America (2019), we will tour five legendary American homes from Thomas Jefferson’s plantation house and Henry David Thoreau’s rustic cabin to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s little house, Emily Dickinson’s brick homestead, and Herman Wallace’s dream house.   Our exploration of these residential archetypes will help us consider how we imagine and inhabit life at home, especially in light of our faith.   June 7 MONTICELLO: Thomas Jefferson’s plantation home is an early American architectural masterpiece whose master was both a prophet of freedom and a practitioner of slavery.   In Psalm 84 , the poet declares the Jerusalem Temple’s beauty, a house of worship that Solomon built with slave labor.   Eve...

New guidelines from the governor and our bishop allow for our worship team to record videos in the Sanctuary with proper precautions. Religious services are now included as "an essential activity," according to Section 2.5.vi of the governor's COVID-19 Executive Order #30 (April 30, 2020): " To engage in the free exercise of religion .  To engage in the free exercise of religion, provided that such exercise must comply with Social Distancing Requirements and the limit on gatherings of more than ten people in keeping with CDC guidelines for the protection of public health.  Religious organizations and houses of worship are encouraged to use online or drive-in services to protect the health and safety of their congregants." In her recent response to the governor's revised order, the bishop has stated that "small groups, Bible study, council and committee meetings, and any other gatherings should still take place online."  However, p...

  Dear Trinity Friends, Over the past few weeks, we all have adopted extraordinary measures to prevent spreading the coronavirus.  In many ways, our lives have been changed as we follow the order to stay at home and close all “non-essential” businesses.  For most of us, our faith in God is essential for helping us through this public health situation, and yet we have not gathered as a congregation for public worship since March 8 for the sake of the greater good.  God is our saving help in both this life and the next.  Due to the satewide stay at home order, we will not worship in person this Easter.  It may be hard to imagine Easter without gathering in a Sanctuary decorated with fragrant flowers and resounding with the triumphant tones of trumpet and trombone.  We will miss singing Charles Wesley’s Christ the Lord Is Risen Today , sharing the bread and cup at Christ’s table, and standing for Handel’s Hallelujah chorus.  The ...

Series Overview Resurrection is for our life now.  It’s a gift from God that we choose and make our own today, not only after we die.  With insights from Fr. Richard Rohr, we will explore how to experience the resurrection in daily life.  In the present, we are joined to God’s eternity now and invited to share a life of goodness, beauty, and delight in partnership with Christ.  But first, we need to move through our stuff and do our salvation work, and that involves drinking from a deeper well of thought and teaching.  We seek to be centered on God and to let God do God’s job throughout our lifetime. April 19   RUNNING FROM RESURRECTION: In John 5:1-15 , Jesus asks a man: “Do you want to be well?”  Sometimes we are attracted to the negative, and we let our fears, hurts, or limitations define us.  Yet, Jesus invites us to experience healing when we challenge our negative beliefs.  What does negativity bias look like for you? A...

UPDATE: All gatherings suspended, including worship.  The food pantry will continue to distribute food. The Village of Wilmette has requested that houses of worship suspend all activities to prevent the spread of COVID-19.  Trinity Church will comply with this request. During the suspension, the church staff will be working to provide recorded worship content for the Trinity community, including music, prayers, a message for children, and a sermon.  Visit www.trinitywilmette.com/worshipvideo . In the meantime, we are still the church, and we are exploring ways to help our congregation remain connected amid this public health emergency.  Please contact Pastor Brian with public or private prayer requests. Also, if you need assistance in obtaining food or medications, several Trinity helpers are available.  Call Pastor Brian at the church (#847-251-7333). Panic is not a good response to an outbreak.  Our faith teaches us not to be ...