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MADISON — “If you want to drain Christianity of its power, drain Sunday of its meaning and practice.” Recently Bishop Donald J. Hying of Madison has urged us to reclaim Sundays as a day for us to spend time nurturing our relationships with God, family, and friends. As the bishop says, they are meant to be “days free of servile work, dedicated to worship, prayer, time spent with family and friends, rest, study and works of charity.”

Bring your journey through Lent to a meaningful close by experiencing the events of Jesus’ last days. “Traveling with Jesus: Holy Week Drive Through” is a Covid-safe adaptation of our traditional Holy Week observances where you can drive your car through Bethel’s parking lot and see eight tableaus telling the story of the passion narrative in Mark’s Gospel.

As an institution, the Black church is the space in which we found a brief sanctuary from the ravages of slavery. It helped to secure living wages for us in urban centers at the turn of the 20th century. And it served as the headquarters for the Civil Rights Movement. However, in the last several decades, there have been attacks on the church that have been anything but harmless and good-natured. For years, the Black church has been the target of attacks in this country.

Over the course of the six hours of the Kingdom Justice Summit on Feb. 27, there were powerful expressions of lament about the experiences of Black people and other people of color. There were stirring challenges to action. Within those moments, though, there were also ideas for what churches and individuals could do to move the community closer to the kind of justice God envisions for our world. Here are a few of the ideas.

Many people who have suffered economically over the past year due to the coronavirus pandemic are not, unfortunately, a priority when it comes to receiving assistance and relief. With that in mind, Mt. Zion Baptist Church on Madison’s south side has launched a “COVID-19 Relief Stimulus” fund to support those that have been affected by COVID-19 due to being furloughed or having their hours and pay reduced. “I have been hearing from my [church] members quite a bit and people have been telling me, ‘There has been a reduction in my job hours’ or ‘I’m only working three or four…

Pastor Karla Garcia of S.S. Morris Community AME Church did not know Pastor Marcio Sierra, Jr. of Lighthouse Church, but she felt a nudge from God to reach out to him. S.S. Morris had been struggling with a deteriorating roof for several years. Now it was at a crisis point and the cost of fixing it was in the $50,000 range. Garcia was at wits end about what to do. “The Lord said, If you contact him, he will know what to do,” Garcia explained of the impulse to contact Sierra. So in September, she sent him a long message on Facebook. This…

Sprinkled over the head, like pixie dust, says Father Christopher Arnold from Trinity Episcopal Church in Oshkosh. That’s how some Christian clergy will be delivering ashes to believers on Ash Wednesday, as they recite the words: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, a 40-day season of prayer and reflection for Christians leading up to Easter. For many, the worship tradition includes receiving the mark of a cross, drawn on their foreheads, using ashes made from palm leaves from the previous year’s Palm Sunday. This year, the ongoing pandemic has…

Once upon a time in Madison, the Black churches provided a cultural gathering space for members of the community. So did the South Madison Neighborhood Center and iconic bars and restaurants. Over time, those anchors of the community went away or diminished in importance to a new generation. More Black folks moved into the city. What they found were no spaces where they could get a sense of their own culture, so they traveled to Milwaukee or Chicago, sometimes never ever spending a weekend in the city where they studied or worked.Rev. Dr. Alex Gee, pastor of Fountain of Life Covenant Church…

Fellow white Christians, our hope is flabby. This pandemic has tested the resilience of our hope, and we’ve come up lacking. Remember when people hoped this might end by Easter of 2020? The past year brought a litany of crushed hopes—schools reopening by fall, jobs resuming, that loved ones’ health be spared, that this could all just be over. And part of what hurt so much through this all was learning how to deal with unmet hopes. For white people especially, I am convinced that our hopes are often built on the expectation that things will continue as they always…

As Pastor Stephen Feith from Madison Church pondered all the racial injustices that came to the surface in 2020, he heard from colleagues about an idea that could make a difference – putting money into Black-owned businesses.He dug a bit further and learned that the only Black-owned financial institution in Wisconsin is Columbia Savings and Loan Association in Milwaukee. It is an institution with a rich history. Founded in 1924 to provide financial services to Milwaukee’s Black community, it has provided mortgages to Black families and capital to Black businesses for almost a century. So Feith talked with leaders at his church…