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SPOT is a monthly Faith Formation offering that focuses on various spiritual practices we can use to grow deeper in our faith and relationship with God.

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Thursdays

7:30 am

Online

 

The renowned and beloved New York Times bestselling author of An Altar in the World and Learning to Walk in the Dark recounts her moving discoveries of finding the sacred in unexpected places while teaching the world’s religions to undergraduates in rural Georgia, revealing how God delights in confounding our expectations.

Barbara Brown Taylor continues her spiritual journey begun in Leaving Church of finding out what the world looks like after taking off her clergy collar. In Holy Envy, she contemplates the myriad ways other people and traditions encounter the Transcendent, both by digging deeper into those traditions herself and by seeing them through her students’ eyes as she sets off with them on field trips to monasteries, temples, and mosques. 

Troubled and inspired by what she learns, Taylor returns to her own tradition for guidance, finding new meaning in old teachings that have too often been used to exclude religious strangers instead of embracing the divine challenges they present. Re-imagining some central stories from the religion she knows best, she takes heart in how often God chooses outsiders to teach insiders how out-of-bounds God really is.

Throughout Holy Envy, Taylor weaves together stories from the classroom with reflections on how her own spiritual journey has been complicated and renewed by connecting with people of other traditions—even those whose truths are quite different from hers.  The one constant in her odyssey is the sense that God is the one calling her to disown her version of God—a change that ultimately enriches her faith in other human beings and in God.

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Thursdays
10:00 am

In person

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In a world fixated on outward appearances, discover the joy of cultivating an inward relationship with the Spirit, where virtues like love, joy, and self-control blossom naturally.

"The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." – Galatians 5:22-23a

The apostle Paul paints a beautiful picture when he describes the fruit of the Spirit, but all too often we reduce this list of virtues into a checklist of attributes to pursue and strive for. Pastor and author Eugenia Gamble contends that this understanding is backwards. The Holy Spirit is the One who grows and develops those attributes within us as we pursue our relationship with God. By tending that relationship, the virtues of God develop and blossom as a fruit grows on a well-tended tree.

Tending the Wild Garden explores the true meaning behind each of the virtues in Paul’s list, guiding us to discover anew what it means to be a deeply loved child of God indwelt by God’s Spirit. Gamble helps us to move beyond the checklist mentality of traditional understandings of the fruit of the Spirit, to cultivate our relationship with God, and to uproot the "weeds" that could threaten the flourishing of the fruit in our lives. Let the fruit of the Spirit be more than just words on a page—they’re the living expressions of God’s love within you. Dare to cultivate a life overflowing with love, joy, peace, and so much more.

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Thursdays

5:30 pm

Online

 

In this classic theological work, acclaimed theologian and religious leader Howard Thurman demonstrates how the gospel may be read as a manual of resistance for the poor and disenfranchised. Jesus is a partner in the pain of the oppressed, Thurman writes. The example of Jesus' life of suffering, pain, and overwhelming love offers a solution that ends our descent into moral nihilism. Although Jesus was scorned and forced to live outside society, he advocated a love of self and others that defeats fear and the hatred that destroys our souls and the world around us. Jesus and the Disinherited

reaches past anger and distrust toward a vision of unity.

 

Howard Thurman (1900–1981) was the first black dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University and cofounder of the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco, California, the first interracially copastored church in America. Life magazine called him one of the great preachers of the 20th century, and Thurman was a spiritual adviser to Martin Luther King Jr.

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STARTING SEPTEMBER 4, 2025

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