Jeremy L. Berg

The kids are back in school! This summer was the first without any “day care” programs, with all three free ranging and being shuttled back and forth to sports camps, etc. Keri and I alternated days working at home to make sure the kids didn’t kill each other, ate some actual meals, and got to various activities.

Now a strange silence fills the house after our three kids all get on the SAME BUS THIS YEAR at 7:30. In this stillness, my contemplative soul can breathe again and find space conducive to creative pursuits. But in the stillness and quiet, many of us can also feel and hear the deep sigh of weariness that broods just beneath the surface.

Summer nights at the ball field, afternoons shuttling kids, weekends at the lake, and so on, all have a way of distracting us from the heaviness of the news cycle and chaos of our divided world. Some of us really do well to lean into these healthy distractions for a season, especially those whose work compels them to weigh in, speak out, and help lead people through the ideological minefield and help point people toward God’s truth and justice.

Fall also means kicking off a new year of Sunday evening Bible teaching and discussions at MainStreet Covenant. This Fall we are opening up the Book of Acts to see how the first Christians tried to live out their faith amidst their own cultural challenges in their own politically fraught times. However imperfectly they represented Christ, their deep fellowship and strikingly different way of life summed up by the Greek word koinonia was compelling and the Jesus movement proved to be a powerful force for good in the ancient world.

Many today, myself among them, see many parts of the church as fanning the flames of some of the worst impulses at work in our country, and therefore is not a force for good, but rather part of the problem. The church is stoking fear in the hearts of many, rather than spread faith. The church is deepening the divides, rather than demonstrating the unity of the Spirit. The church is peddling in conspiracies and deception, rather than speaking the truth in love. The church is condemning and cancelling our “enemies,” rather than loving them. The church is mobilizing aggressive culture-warriors, rather than training up an army of peacemakers. The church is pointing out the speck of sawdust in other peoples’ eyes, while ignoring the 2×4 in our own eye. In a word, the church is often far from embodying the virtues and teaching the values Jesus laid out in the Sermon on the Mount, beginning with the Beatitudes.

Last fall our church went through The After Party curriculum together leading up to the 2024 election, trying to move toward a better Christian politics. Today I resonate with the invitation from Curtis Chang, the co-creator of The After Party. I want to have the Beatitudes in the back of our minds, or forefront, as we open the Book of Acts together and observe the posture of the first Christians living out the Way of Jesus in their own tumultuous times. The story of Acts and the spread of Christianity is very much a story of how “the meek inherited the earth,” not by political might but by radical acts of kindness and proclaiming the Crucified King and His Kingdom of Love and Grace. Read Chang’s invitation below and then join the MainStreet community Sunday evenings at 5pm at St. Martin’s By the Lake as we kick off our fall study this week.

From Curtis Chang:

We’re almost one year out from one of the most contentious elections in American history and we’re asking a pointed question: Are we more divided or united than we were at this time last year?

The answer, of course, is obvious. And painful. Our social and spiritual fabric feels more frayed than ever. It’s not just our ideological differences, though we have those in spades, but it’s also what The After Party calls “disappearing relationships.” Friends lost. Churches split. Family dinners turned quiet (or worse, very loud).

But what if our divisions aren’t just a problem to be solved but rather a mirror being held up to our own hearts? What if the deeper issue is not who we voted for, but how we’ve normalized this lack of peace, this absence of mercy, and this turning away from the most vulnerable among us? 

That’s why, this fall, we’re turning to the Beatitudes.

Jesus’ opening words in the Sermon on the Mount aren’t campaign slogans or policy prescriptions. They are a description of a new kind of person — and, as a result, a new kind of politics. A politics of the poor in spirit. Of the mourners. Of the meek. A politics that hungers and thirsts not for power, but for righteousness. A politics that blesses the peacemaker.

The Beatitudes are not just personal virtues. They are public architecture. They form the spiritual infrastructure for the kind of communal life we desperately need right now. If The After Party asked us to consider how we do politics, the Beatitudes show us who we must become in order to do it well.

Over the next eight weeks, we’ll explore one Beatitude at a time. We won’t pretend these are easy teachings. But they are timely. And more than that, they are hopeful. Because if Jesus’ blessing lands on people like this, it means there’s still a way forward for us too.

We begin with the first: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus didn’t say that to the proud or the powerful. He said it to the weary. The spiritually bankrupt. The ones who had nothing left but a deep awareness of their need.

Maybe that’s you. Or maybe it’s someone you love. This week, think of someone who feels spiritually drained by the chaos of our political moment, who’s given up hope that things can be different.

Reach out. Remind them: they’re not alone, and they’re not crazy to feel the way they do. Share with them what we hope you’ve found in The After Party: a place where weary souls are met not with shame, but with welcome. A place where humility and hope are not signs of weakness, but signs that the kingdom is near.

Warmly,

Curtis + The After Party Team