An American oil company has plans for a new refinery and sends someone to Scotland to buy up an entire village, but things don't go as expected. 

Join us for this unique whimsical, fun, philosophical look at life, priorities, nature, community and personal evolution. 

The evening will be hosted by Sam Choi, Co-Director of the Faith & Film Series.

We are pleased and privileged to welcome Dr. Lisa Bowens from Princeton Theological Seminary for the seventh annual Berkeley Palmer Lecture.  Join us for an evening of fellowship and insightful biblical scholarship for modern times.

Speaker: Dr. Lisa Bowens

American history and biblical interpretation are intricately connected. Many African Americans utilized scripture in their struggle for liberation and justice. This lecture will explore the writings of black interpreters of the Apostle Paul from the1700s to the mid-twentieth century and will demonstrate the significance of these interpreters for American history and for the church. Along with examining some of their writings we will explore the following questions: What can we learn from these interpreters? What can they teach us? Why do they matter?

Location: First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley

Instructor: Marilyn McEntyre, PhD / Online zoom

These 90-minute workshops will address a different topic each month. Each session will include a brief presentation, prompts, a bit of writing and workshopping time, and suggestions for developing a particular writing practice. Handouts offer guides for cultivating new dimensions of your writing. We will talk about language, faith, form, and what a lively, committed writing life entails. All levels of writing experience are welcomed!

A lunch conversation with Dr. Lisa Bowens of Princeton Theological Seminary
For students and faculty of UC Berkeley, GTU, and other schools

Many African Americans utilized scripture in their struggle for liberation and justice. This conversation is an opportunity to explore the writings of black interpreters of the Apostle Paul from the1700s to the mid-twentieth century and consider the significance of these interpreters for American history and for the church. At this free luncheon, Dr. Bowens will share a brief presentation on these themes, and then open the time up for conversation.

Online / zoom

Join us for an online conversation with Jason Porterfield, author of Fight Like Jesus (2022), a book that challenges readers to embrace the radical peacemaking of Christ. In this interactive event, Jason will explore how Jesus waged peace throughout Holy Week, offering interesting insight into the events leading to the cross—and what they mean for peacemaking today. Sounds timely, right? Drawing from his years of ministry among the urban poor and his theological study, Jason will guide us in understanding how we, too, can cultivate God’s shalom in a world desperate for peace.

After discussing his book—which has been described as a compelling narrative of Holy Week and a practical guide for everyday peacemaking—we will invite questions from participants.

An NCB Workshop Retreat

How did Jesus respond to political power and social injustice? What were his reactions to violence and oppression? And how are we called to respond to our own current political and social moment? In Fight Like Jesus: How Jesus Waged Peace During Holy Week (Herald Press, 2002), Jason Porterfield guides his readers on a gripping biblical journey through the final week of Jesus’ life, demonstrating how Christ consistently and creatively found ways of fostering peace despite violence, mistreatment and oppression. Join New Testament scholar Dr. Michael Barram for group bible study, followed by a response from local pastors and poets, for an eye-opening and hope-filled time of fellowship and breaking of bread.

Co-sponsored with Lyrical Opposition and Kairos San Francisco

This month's film selection is the comedic classic Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. 

The evening will be hosted by Doug Dunderdale, Co-Director of the Faith & Film Series.

Instructor: Marilyn McEntyre, PhD / Online zoom

These 90-minute workshops will address a different topic each month. Each session will include a brief presentation, prompts, a bit of writing and workshopping time, and suggestions for developing a particular writing practice. Handouts offer guides for cultivating new dimensions of your writing. We will talk about language, faith, form, and what a lively, committed writing life entails. All levels of writing experience are welcomed!

A New College Berkeley Conference

Join some of today's leading experts on the Inklings as we discuss the timely topic of global unrest and the lessons of war as seen through this legendary group of friends. Together we shall grapple with questions such as:

• What were the Oxford Inklings up to when the winds of war were blowing?

• What can we learn from Lewis, Tolkien, Barfield and Williams during two world wars and the rise of fascism in Europe?

• When "the center cannot hold," how shall we then live?

Join us for a very special preview screening of The Forge of Friendship, an upcoming documentary film series about the almost 40-year friendship between C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. With insights from the filmmakers, our special guests, sections of the new, about-to-be-released film series will be shown. This memorable Faith & Film event opens NCB's "Learning from the Inklings in Wartime" conference. 

Join us for a viewing and discussion of The Zone of Interest (2023), a landmark film exploring moral complicity and apathy. Idyllic familial domesticity is juxtaposed with atrocity. Let’s discuss the psychological and moral spaces where the “zones of interest” allow individuals to justify action or inaction within oppressive systems and the broader societal implications. Bring a friend! Discussion led by Sam Choi.

Online/zoom

Join our monthly Radix Live event, as host Matthew Steem invites Mark D. Baker to talk about his book, Centered-Set Church: Discipleship and Community Without Judgmentalism (IVP Academic, 2022). A "centered-set' is an alternative to either a "bounded-set" (churches with hard boundaries that can repel newcomers or make it difficult for them to join) or a "fuzzy-set" (churches with so much inclusion that they lack a vital sense of shared faith and identity). This Radix Live event will include a conversation between Mark and our two panelists, who have used a centered-set approach in their ministries, and time for your questions

About the Retreat / Online zoom

The word “Lent” is related to Latin cognates meaning long and slow (“lente,” “lento”). Like Advent, Lent is a speed bump in the year, inviting us into reflection, confession, and prayer, a time of remembering God’s costly love for us. We enter the retreat seeking God’s Light in the darkness of war, political tensions, environmental devastations, social turmoil around the globe, and seeking God’s Light, too, in the privacy of our own hearts. 

Instructor: Marilyn McEntyre, PhD / Online zoom

These 90-minute workshops will address a different topic each month. Each session will include a brief presentation, prompts, a bit of writing and workshopping time, and suggestions for developing a particular writing practice. Handouts offer guides for cultivating new dimensions of your writing. We will talk about language, faith, form, and what a lively, committed writing life entails. All levels of writing experience are welcomed!

Division, fear and egregious behaviors abound in this political moment. Is there something in Christianity that points a way toward unity and harmony? Is there potential to make the task of political engagement more charitable, hospitable and, in a word, Christ-honoring? In this workshop, Dr. “Joey” Alan Le will examine the relationship between human dignity and the Imago Dei. The image of God can be understood as a collective appreciation of otherness. When Christians learn to see beauty for what it is — as being and as difference — then they can finally see all things and all people, even political adversaries, as God’s beautiful, valuable, and dignified creations. Come and join for some informed discussion and relationship-building around this timely, important topic. 

For Valentine’s Day, Faith & Film is presenting “About Time”, a warmly moving romantic comedy written and directed by Richard Curtis, the writer/director of “Love Actually” and the writer of films like, “Four Weddings and a Funeral”, “Notting Hill”, “Bridget Jones Diary”, and “Yesterday”. Richard Curtis movies, frequently derided by critics for being “sappy”, “oddly naff”, “baggy”, and “a flimsy bit of mildly romantic, putatively comic Anglophile bait”, are also much beloved and financially successful. Categorized as (what used to be called) “chick flicks”, (mostly male) critics deem them as mawkish and aesthetically weak-minded. So why is “About Time” so beloved by so many people? Would Jesus like “About Time”? Would Jesus like Valentine’s Day? Join us for a thematic movie!

Co-sponsored with Peninsula Covenant Church

In this all-day workshop, you will acquire practical handles on how to pray and journal - two spiritual disciplines that complement each other and help us personally, and collectively, to navigate these changing and uncertain times.

Location

Peninsula Covenant Church

Fun, revealing, engrossing - Jerry Falwell, Jim Baker, Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swagger and Colonel Sanders - they’re all here. Bring a friend. Discussion led by Sam Choi.
“Just the ticket,” as stated by the London Evening Standard, to understand the evolutions of fiercely religious characters whose initial motives to help the poor and needy become compromised. A big tap into a cultural moment that has persistent reverberations we continue to feel today. A dutiful chronicle of televangelists ascension, power, wealth and decline and a complicated human at the center. 

“A riveting, unleashed and award-worthy performance from Jessica Chastain (Oscar winning role) playing a central character full of tension and contradictions” - Times U.K. 

Instructor: Marilyn McEntyre, PhD

These 90-minute workshops will address a different topic each month. Each session will include a brief presentation, prompts, a bit of writing and workshopping time, and suggestions for developing a particular writing practice. Handouts offer guides for cultivating new dimensions of your writing. We will talk about language, faith, form, and what a lively, committed writing life entails. All levels of writing experience are welcomed!

WON'T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR? is Academy Award-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville's (20 Feet from Stardom) documentary about the life and work of children's programming/public TV pioneer Fred Rogers of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Through extensive footage and interviews with Rogers' widow, Joanne; their two adult sons; and a host of colleagues and friends -- including Yo-Yo Ma (whose son is one of the documentary's producers) -- Neville digs into the legendary man who remains a symbol of friendship, kindness, and make-believe for generations of adults. The film documents how Rogers, who hailed from Pittsburgh's upper crust and was trained and ordained as a Presbyterian minister, dedicated his life to service, faith, and young children.

The Gospels of Matthew and Luke actually portray the birth of Jesus in quite divergent ways, emphasizing different themes that will resonate throughout their accounts of the messiah’s life, death, and resurrection. What the two infancy narratives have in common is an understanding that Jesus was born and lived his life entirely within the context of the world-conquering military and political power of the Roman Empire. Grasping that historical context really matters for those of us today who seek to understand the Gospels as we ourselves read from within a contemporary environment characterized by empire. Join biblical scholar Michael Barram and local pastors for a fascinating exploration of the Gospel birth narratives within their imperial contexts, and an engaging discussion about how those accounts can help shape and form our communities of faith for our own contextualized participation in God’s mission in the world today.

Online/zoom

Christians are called people of the Way (Acts 9:2): We follow the Way, live the Way, and prepare the Way. Advent is an opportunity to reflect on this adventure into which God invites us.

Carve out time in the press toward Christmas to prepare your hearts for walking the Way in the year ahead. Join us for a morning of prayer, reflection, and readying ourselves to continue our great pilgrimage with Christ.

Division, fear and egregious behaviors abound in this political moment. Is there something in Christianity that points a way toward unity and harmony? In this workshop, Dr. “Joey” Alan Le will examine the relationship between human dignity and the Imago Dei. The image of God can be understood as a collective appreciation of otherness rather than an individualistic capacity. When Christians learn to see beauty for what it is — as being and as difference — then they can finally see all things and all people, even political adversaries, as God’s beautiful, valuable, worthy, and dignified creations. This aesthetic attitude holds the potential to shift and elevate the Christian ethic, making the task of political engagement more charitable, hospitable and, in a word, Christ-honoring. Come and join for some informed discussion and relationship-building around this important topic.

Instructor: Marilyn McEntyre, PhD. Online, zoom.

Stepping outside our imbedded frames of reference, widening or narrowing the frames that delimit and define our interpretations of experience, can be an exhilarating experience. We'll do some exercises designed to help us notice frames, reframe and see what happens.

These 90-minute workshops will address a different topic each month. Each session will include a brief presentation, prompts, a bit of writing and workshopping time, and suggestions for developing a particular writing practice. Handouts offer guides for cultivating new dimensions of your writing. We will talk about language, faith, form, and what a lively, committed writing life entails. All levels of writing experience are welcomed!

Dr. Ruth Padilla DeBorst, a theologian, author, educator, and leader at Casa Adobe in Costa Rica, a Christ-centered community committed to embodying concrete expressions of love of neighbor, will speak on the whole gospel's call to ecological justice, the well-being of creation and its peoples. There will be opportunities for Q&A and conversation with others.

Location: Oakland City Church

“It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us”––Teologia en Conjunto: The Practice of Theological Communal Discernment.

A workshop on the practice of theological communal discernment in times of cultural change.
Co-sponsored with the Latino-led Ministries for the Pacific Southwest Conference of the Evangelical Covenant Church.  For pastors, parachurch ministers, lay leaders, and all who are interested in the task of biblical and theological learning.

Location: Berkeley Covenant Church, 1632 Hopkins Street, Berkeley, CA 94707

Instructor: Marilyn McEntyre, PhD. Online, zoom.

Open letters addressed to individuals or groups but published for the general public can be surprisingly effective and persuasive, being both intimate and public, local and global. We'll practice these, and think together about to whom and why we might address an open letter at this time.

These 90-minute workshops will address a different topic each month. Each session will include a brief presentation, prompts, a bit of writing and workshopping time, and suggestions for developing a particular writing practice. Handouts offer guides for cultivating new dimensions of your writing. We will talk about language, faith, form, and what a lively, committed writing life entails. All levels of writing experience are welcomed!

Note: this is a one-time change to our usual rhythm of “First Saturdays” and it is taking place on the second Saturday in October.

Hosted by Doug Dunderdale, co-director of the film series. Join us!

An Associated Press team of Ukrainian journalists trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol struggle to continue their work documenting atrocities of the Russian invasion. As the only international reporters who remain in the city as Russian forces close in, they capture what become some of the most defining images of the war: dying children, mass graves, the bombing of a maternity hospital, and more. The film draws on AP reporter Mstyslav Chernov’s daily news dispatches and personal footage of his own country at war. It offers a vivid, harrowing account of civilians caught in the siege, as well as a window into what it’s like to report from a conflict zone, and the impact of such journalism around the globe. 

Academy Award® Winner: 2024, Documentary Feature Film; 
BAFTA Award Winner: 2024, Best Documentary

Has this election season been a little overwhelming?  Finding yourself either news-obsessed or fleeing from it altogether?  Rev. Dr. Steve Wong, Rev. Tammy Long, and Karen Seth will offer a space for processing the current moment, offering perspective, and practicing contemplative prayer to help center us beyond "fight or flight."  The goal is for a spiritual groundedness that frees us to give our attention to what it means follow Jesus and for the Church to bear faithful witness to the hope of the gospel in these uncertain times.  In this mini-retreat, there will be time for sharing, practical considerations, and prayerful contemplation in small groups.