Excerpt from a recent email:
"Dear Fred,
I am thinking of letting my affiliation lapse. I'm glad you guys are around. I'm also looking for spiritual help with encouraging progressive Christian values in grassroots democracy.
For example, empathy is the soul of democracy, caring for fellow
citizens, leading to principles of freedom and fairness for all. Since
there are no resources at progressive Christianity and I'm really
focused there, I am strongly considering letting my affiliation lapse.
Please contact me when you get some freedom expanding resources. Thanks."
Dear Friend,
Thanks for writing. Few people let us know why they make these decisions and it is helpful to get some feedback, even if it is not necessarily positive. However I must admit that I am confused. Just about everything that here at TCPC over the last few years has been about promoting the very values that you write about. Over fifteen years ago we decided that if Christianity did not change and begin to focus on the teachings of Jesus rather than on creeds and religiosity nothing was going to change in our world. Since then we have been promoting a new kind of Christianity that focuses on compassion, kindness, nonviolence, forgiveness, non-judgment and other Jesus' teachings, as well as learning how to live in a "boundary-less" world. We believe that Jesus left us a path to experience a different world, and to experience a different reality.
We have just completed and are now distributing a children's curriculum that teaches the very values that you seem to be speaking of. We invested over $100,000 to create this curriculum through donations like your, along with some outside funding. It took three challenging years to create this beautiful educational package and frankly we are very proud of the way it turned out. We did that because concluded that we would have to start this process of change with our children or there will never be a significant change in the world. We have now sold over 200 units of this material and the orders are still coming in. The feedback that we are getting from teachers who are now working with this curriculum has been overwhelmingly positive. Many have reported that this is the best curriculum that they have ever worked with and that they, the teachers, are learning so much preparing to use it with their children. Some people are using it in their homes and small groups they have formed.
We are now working on adult materials for small groups and house churches based on the same teachings. We continue to try to distinguish ourselves from those who call themselves progressive who are concerned only about particular social justice issues because we believe that it must begin with our deep seated understanding about who and what we are as not only as Christians but as human beings.You have been a long and faithful supporter but I am not certain what other things specifically we could be doing with our small organization at this time. As you know if it were not for contributions from our affiliates and thousands of hours of volunteer work, including my own, we could not accomplish what we have done already. So I thank you for your past support and hope that I hear from you again sometime. Maybe you could write those "freedom expanding resources" and we could help you distribute them.
Warmly, Fred
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