unity

To Haven, From Your Pastor

Those gathered at the Installation of Ordination Ceremony at our 2019 Haven Retreat.

Those gathered at the Installation of Ordination Ceremony at our 2019 Haven Retreat.

The week after Haven’s retreat, which ended with the Haven community celebrating an Installation of Ordination service, Leah shares her reflections on what took place at the retreat, and where they as a community are at, five years from when the Martens arrived in Berkeley to begin the project that would become Haven. This “pastoral letter” is the second teaching in our series, “The Home We’re Building Together.”

Listen to Leah share her teaching below or read Leah’s notes and the text of the letter here.

Revolution. Seriously.

William Joseph Seymour was an African-American man born in Louisiana in 1870.  His childhood was not an easy one.  His parents, Simon and Phyllis were former slaves.  William was the oldest in a large family that lived in abject poverty.  He grew up in a dangerous time for African-Americans in the south.  The KKK actively terrorized the blacks of southern Louisiana, and violence against them was extremely common.