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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, April 9
Thursday, April 10
Sunday, April 13 - Palm Sunday 3:30 PM - Parents, Families, & Friends of Queer Youth Support Group 4:45 PM - Gathering and Time for Prayer 5:00 PM - Worship with Eucharist - Beginning in the lower parking area 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 Meets this Sunday!
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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The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self Discovery Zoom Book Study Wednesdays from 7:00 - 8:30PM April 2 - April 30 Led Chris Reed Discerning your true self is inextricably related to discerning God's purposes for you. Paradoxically, the more you become like Christ, the more you become authentically yourself. In this profound exploration of Christian identity, psychologist and spiritual director David G. Benner illuminates the spirituality of self-discovery.
PLEASE NOTE - A SPECIAL MESSAGE FROM CHRIS REED ABOUT WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9:
Greetings,
This week instead of gathering on Zoom on Wednesday for our book study, you are invited to take a test to discover your Enneagram type. The free test is here: https://assessment.yourenneagramcoach.com/ The following week on April 16, we will gather to discuss Chapters 3 and 4 of The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery, which introduces the Enneagram as a tool for helping discover ourselves in a new and deeper way. On April 16, we will not only discuss the reading but also share our Enneagram results as well as our initial reactions to them.
On April 23, we will meet for our concluding session on the book, discussing Chapters 5 and 6. Even if you were not able to join us the first week because of technical issues with the Zoom link or calendar conflicts, don't let that stop you from joining us for the remaining sessions.
This week at 7:30 pm during our regular book study time, Chris will be the concluding speaker on a Lenten Lecture Series, "Being Called," which is put on by his home church, The Episcopal Church of the Ascension, in Dallas, Texas. All are welcome to attend via Zoom using the invite below:
Church of the Ascension Episcopal is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting. |
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 will mark Holy Week with several special gatherings.
Sunday, April 13 - Palm Sunday, Gathering at 5:00 PM Thursday, April 17 - Maundy Thursday, Gathering at 6:30PM Friday, April 18 - Good Friday. We will join St. Philip's for the Stations of the Cross in downtown Durham. Sunday, April 20 - Easter Sunday, Gathering at 5:00 PM
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EASTER SUNDAY - RINGING IN THE ALLELUIA! |
The word Hallelujah is an "Ancient Hebrew praise-shout. It means 'Praise Yah,' which is a shortened form of the word 'Yahweh.' It is translated into Latin as 'Alleluia,' and translated into English as 'Praise the Lord.'" For most of the liturgical year, Alleluia plays a prominent role in our liturgy. However, it is omitted during the season of Lent. On Easter Sunday, we again welcome the word Alleluia into our music and liturgy. In celebration of Easter and the return of Alleluia, you are invited to bring bells of any kind with you to our gathering. Each time we sing or say Alleluia during our worship, ring your bells and celebrate Christ's resurrection! Praise the Lord!!
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Episcopalians are invited to enhance their Good Friday devotion by attending a sacred performance of music devoted to this solemn day. The concert is being given in support of the 103 years of the Good Friday Offering, which assists churches, medical programs, and schools in the Anglican Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East.
“This Lent, the need is almost unfathomable,” writes Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe in a letter to Episcopal churches. “We do not know what the political future of the Holy Land will be; but whatever the future, our siblings in Christ in The Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East will continue to serve God’s people.”
The concert—an encore presentation recorded in the spring of 2024 at Christ and St. Luke’s Church, Norfolk, in the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Virginia—will air online at noon and 7 p.m. ET April 18 on The Episcopal Church’s Facebook page and website. Viewers will have the opportunity to make donations to the offering during the event.
The Good Friday Offering, often collected during Good Friday liturgies, was first gathered in 1922 by The Episcopal Church to support Anglican ministries in the Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East that were impacted by the devastation of World War I, the Spanish flu pandemic, and social and political unrest affecting Armenian Christians, among others in that region.
Over a century later, the Good Friday Offering supports ministry in a wide variety of places, including al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza, which has continued to provide essential health care services in the midst of war; St. George’s Anglican Episcopal Church in Baghdad, Iraq, and its medical center; an eye clinic at Christ Church in Yemen; All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Damascus, Syria; and All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Beirut, Lebanon.
Find information about ways to give and downloadable resources—in English, French, Mandarin, and Spanish—at iam.ec/goodfridayoffering.
“It is easy to feel powerless in the face of the human suffering we have witnessed in the Holy Land, but with a gift to the Good Friday Offering, we can help The Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East turn despair into hope for thousands of God’s people across their region,” Bishop Rowe writes.
For more information, contact Archdeacon Paul Feheley, Middle East partnership officer, at pfeheley@episcopalchurch.org or (212) 716-6222. |
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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.
For the first 5th Sunday of 2025 (March 30), The Beloved Community raised money to support the LGBTQ Center of Durham. In total $2000 was raised as a love offering to support the vital work of the LGBTQ Center. |
If you would like to coordinate an outreach Sunday, please let us know. The other 5th Sundays in 2025 will fall on June 29, August 31 and November 30. |
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Although June is still a few months away, it's time to start planning for Pride Month. As we did last year, we will hold a Pride Sunday Gathering in June. We will also participate in OutRaleigh! and Pride:Durham, NC. We need a small group to help plan for our Pride events. If you are interested in volunteering for this effort, please email revphillip@belovedcommunitydurham.org or talk to Phillip on Sunday. |
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. |
THANK YOU REV. GABE LAMAZARES |
Thank you Fr. Lamazres for being with The Beloved Community on Sunday, April 6. It is always a pleasure to have you with us. We are grateful to you and to all those at St. Philip's who support The Beloved Community. |
DISCERNMENT: QUEER YOUTH GROUP |
One of the dreams for The Beloved Community at The Trees for 2025 is to begin offering a youth group for queer youth and allies. To make this dream a reality, we need a small group to plan, advertise, and run the group. Here's how you can help: Be in prayer for this period of discernment, for a team to come together to support this ministry, and for queer youth who need to know that they too are God's Beloved. Join the team! Help us dream about how we can support queer youth in their faith journeys. Spread the word to others about this ministry.
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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, Laurie, Maureen, Melody, and Paul. |
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
United States of America
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