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The Beloved Community at The Trees Newsletter
An Episcopal faith community exploring together what a life of faith "outside of a church" may be.
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1701 Pleasant Green Road, Durham, NC 27705.
Look for the sign by the mailbox. When you arrive, you'll find a winding driveway. We will have signs along the way to direct you to our gatherings. |
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THIS WEEK AT THE BELOVED COMMUNITY |
Wednesday, May 7 Thursday, May 8 Sunday, May 11 - Fourth Sunday of Easter 4:45 PM - Gathering and Time for Prayer 5:00 PM - Worship with Eucharist - Each week during our worship gathering we will have a lectionary discussion. If you are interested in exploring the lectionary readings ahead of time, we’ve put together a list of resources, including podcasts, websites, and blogs. They are found on our “This Week” page.
6:00 PM - Shared Meal of soup & bread
Keep up with all that's going on with The Beloved Community at The Trees with our online calendar. |
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1701 Pleasant Green Road, Durham, NC 27705. Look for the sign by the mailbox. When you arrive, you'll find a winding driveway. We will have signs along the way to direct you to our gatherings. |
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Bring a device and save paper: |
At The Beloved Community at The Trees we are committed to being as environmentally friendly as possible. We will have a sign when you enter with a QR code for you to access the order of worship. You can also view the order of worship ahead of time, here. |
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Each week at The Beloved Community at The Trees we have a lectionary discussion as part of our time together. If you are interested in preparing ahead of time, below are some links to resources you may enjoy. |
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Religious Trauma Recovery Support Group 1st and 3rd Sundays of each month, 3:00 - 4:30 PM
Religious trauma occurs when a person’s religious experience is stressful, degrading, dangerous, abusive, or damaging. Traumatic religious experiences may harm or threaten to harm someone’s physical, emotional, mental, sexual, or spiritual health and safety. You are invited to join us as we gather weekly to discuss personal experiences of religious trauma and learn together about healing.
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Parents, Families, & Friends of Queer Youth Support Group
2nd and 4th Sundays of each month, 3:30 - 4:30 PM NOT MEETING THIS WEEK!
This group is offered for anyone who considers themselves family or friends of a queer youth. The purpose of this group is to explore together what the bible actually says about being queer, how to be supportive family, and how to process your own experiences someone who loves a queer youth. |
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From Sin to Amazing Grace: Discovering the Queer Christ Zoom Book Study Wednesdays from 7:00 - 8:30PM May 7 - May 28 Led by Rev. Phillip Bass
May 7: Introduction, Chapters 1-3 May 14: Chapters 4-6 May 21: Chapters 7-9 May 28: Chapters 10-11, Conclusion
"From Sin to Amazing Grace: Discovering the Queer Christ" is a book by Patrick S. Cheng that explores the concepts of sin and grace within a Christian framework, specifically focusing on how these ideas can be reinterpreted to be inclusive of LGBTQ+ individuals, arguing that traditional interpretations often lead to condemnation and exclusion, and proposing a "Queer Christ" model that emphasizes liberation and acceptance through God's grace; the book critiques the traditional "crime-based" model of sin and presents an alternative Christ-centered model based on the concept of "theosis" (deification) where sin and grace are understood through what God has done for humanity through Jesus Christ. |
You can look ahead to what we will be studying in 2025 here.
Below are some other formation opportunities offered locally:
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The Beloved Community at The Trees has a practice of sharing our gifts and ministries with others. On every "5th Sunday" TBC engages in a service project to minister to others. Thank you Eileen for coordinating our 2nd 2025 5th Sunday, June 29. For this 5th Sunday offering we will be collecting donations to support the Pauli Murray Center for History & Social Justice. |
If you would like to coordinate an outreach Sunday, please let us know. The other 5th Sundays in 2025 will fall on August 31 and November 30. |
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On Sunday, June 1, Reverend Robert Freuhwirth, Rector of St. Matthew's, Hillsborough will join us to offer a presentation on "Julian of Norwich And Our Journey Into Belovedness" from 3:30-4:45 PM. All are welcome to attend!
*There will be no support group on June 1. |
On Saturday, June 7, we will hold a Queer Relationship Workshop, from 9:00am - 12:00pm, at The Trees. This workshop will explore how hetero- and cis-normative trauma negatively impacts queer relationships. This is open to anyone interested in learning more about queer relationships and trauma, as well as tools to navigate healthy queer relationships. |
Pride Sunday will be held on Sunday, June 29. On this Sunday we will celebrate the diversity of God's creation and God's love for all people! This will be a Sunday with special music, prayers, and liturgy. We hope you'll join us. |
We will also have our first Spiritual Retreat from Friday, September 19 - Sunday, September 20. This will be an opportunity to explore spiritual practices individually and in community, worship together, pray together and for quiet reflection.
More information about both of these opportunities will be coming in the near future. |
WANT TO BE CONFIRMED OR REAFFIRMED? |
Bishop Rodman will be visiting The Beloved Community on Sunday, September 7, 2025. If you are interested in being confirmed or reaffirmed during his visit, please let us know. Chris Reed has offered to lead a confirmation class for anyone interested in being confirmed or anyone interested in renewing their understanding of our life of faith. Chris will be using the book "Walk In Love, Episcopal Beliefs and Practices" for this offering. If you are interested in attending Chris' offering, please let us know.
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Now that The Beloved Community is in our second year, we need your help. One of the ways in which our community has come together is around a strong sense of formation. It has given us an opportunity to know one another more fully, as well as broaden our theological understandings. If you are interested in assisting on a Formation Team, please let us know. Participation on the team would include assisting in the selection of formation offerings, as well as leading a formation offering once or twice a year. |
As a small group met at The Trees in late 2023 to dream about what our community may be, one of the dreams for The Beloved Community was that pastoral care would be a community effort. For such a small community, we've definitely had quite a few pastoral care needs arise in our first year. Now that we have an established community, we'd like to put together a pastor care team to make this dream a reality. Participation on a pastoral care team would include joining clergy on pastoral care visits, assisting in coordinating meals, helping maintain our prayer list, and being intentional about holding the community in prayer daily. If you are interested in assisting with our pastoral care needs, please let us know. |
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Beginning in June 2025, The Beloved Community at the Trees will launch a Queer Youth Group. On Thursday, June 26, 2025 at 6 pm at the Trees will mark the kick-off of our Queer Youth Group. This youth group is high school aged youth who identify as part of the LGTBQIA+ community. We recognize that some queer and trans youth may feel comfortable in a traditional EYF or similar parish youth ministries given the affirming nature of our diocese and most parishes; however, because of issues with religious trauma not all youth with spiritual longings feel comfortable in a traditional church setting. We are currently working to both promote the creation of the Queer Youth Group to teens and families as well as recruit adult volunteers to assist. We have a some volunteers from The Beloved Community but have been in various levels of conversation with St. Phillip's, St. Matthew's , and St. Joe's for support and would welcome both queer folk and allies from other parishes that might feel called to assist with journeying with queer youth. Please contact us if you have any questions or suggestions on participating or volunteering.
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During our weekly worship gathering, we set aside time to remember those who are in our prayers. It is our practice to name them individually and to remember them communally. In addition to this practice, we will be adding an ongoing prayer list to our order of worship for those who appreciate having the names recorded for their prayer practices between worship gatherings. If you would like to add yourself or someone else to the prayer list, please contact us at welcome@belovedcommunitydurham.org. You are welcome to share as much or as little as you feel comfortable. Only the person's first name will be included in the order of worship.
This week we remember Anthony, Gregory, Julia, Justis, Laurie, Louise, Maureen, Melody, Paul, and Sarah. |
As we are starting to form a community, we are hoping to put together a directory to make contacting one another outside of our gatherings easier. If you would like to be included in the directory, please send your preferred name, email address, phone number, pronouns, mailing address, and a photo (or whatever combination you are comfortable with) to welcome@belovedcommunitydurham.org. We have a few of our community already in the directory. A copy of the directory can be found on our website. |
We rely on your gifts to offer the ministries of The Beloved Community. Although we strive to keep our overhead low, we do face financial responsibility. Your financial donations support our weekly meals, our formation opportunities, supplies for our healing ministries and worship, etc. If you would like to contribute to the ministries of The Beloved Community you can do so via cash or check donation, as well as through PayPal.
Check donations can be mailed to: The Beloved Community at The Trees 1701 Pleasant Green Road Durham, NC 27705
PayPal donations can be made using the QR code or link below: You can donate directly through the PayPal site here. |
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We are grateful for our sending parish, The Church of the Nativity, Raleigh. Nativity supported The Beloved Community through prayer, shared ministries, and financial oversight for our first year.
We are grateful for the use of The Trees, graciously provided to us at no cost by St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, Durham. We also give thanks to St. Philip’s for the gift of flowers. Each Sunday, St. Philip’s shares their flowers with The Beloved Community so that we too may enjoy the beauty of God’s creation.
We also acknowledge that we gathering on the ancestral territory of the Eno, the Tuscarora, the Occaneechi, and others. |
1701 Pleasant Green Road
Durham, NC 27705
USA
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