Hope Community Fellowship Fort Collins, 40898 County Road 13, Fort Collins, CO (2026)

07/13/2022

PUBLIC PRAYER AT PUBLIC SCHOOL, Take Two

April 2022 I blogged an edited version Joe Kennedy’s opinion piece explaining his habit of public prayer. Mr. Kennedy, a former US Marine, explained how public prayer resulted in his dismissal as football coach at a public high school.

“The Bremerton High School athletic director seemed sure that my experience training Marines to work as a team was all the qualification I needed to be a football coach. As I weighed the opportunity, I caught the movie Facing the Giants. It seemed an answer from God. I committed to coaching football and promised God that I would take a knee by myself in quiet prayer at the 50-yard line following every game, win or lose.”

Because he insisted on praying on the football field, Bremerton High School eventually dismissed Mr. Kennedy as JV football coach. He sued, claiming the school had violated his First Amendment right to freely express his religious belief.

Court after court ruled Bremerton High School was within their rights to fire Coach Kennedy. After every courtroom defeat his lawyers from First Liberty Institute filed an appeal to the next higher court. After years of appeals, the US Supreme Court agreed to hear his case. June 2022 the high court ruled the public high school violated Joe Kennedy’s religious liberty.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the 6-3 majority explained, “Both the Free Exercise and Free Speech clauses of the First Amendment protect expressions like Mr. Kennedy's. Nor does a proper understanding of the Amendment's Establishment Clause require the government to single out private religious speech for special disfavor. The Constitution and the best of our traditions counsel mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and suppression, for religious and nonreligious views alike.”

Beware legal advice from pastors. I have opinions, but my legal training consists of one semester of business law. Remember, three Supreme Court justices rejected the Constitutionality of Mr. Kennedy’s claim.

Regardless, come autumn Coach Kennedy will be taking a knee on the 50-yard line for a brief prayer; his act of public prayer inspired by a Hollywood movie.

What would Jesus do?

A few Hope Community participants pointed out Jesus’ instruction to pray in secret. It may seem strange to celebrate a Christian who overlooks Christ’s teachings, but let us judge not that we be not judged.

Instead, let’s examine ourselves. Are we living by the teachings of Christ? Or are we sliding into consumer Christianity, influenced more by our culture—even our Christian sub-culture—than by Scripture?

04/12/2022

OUR CULTURE OF CONFORMITY
(adapted from an interview published in the Wall Street Journal)

Towards the end of the 20th century films, documentaries and books assured us that the 1950s were years of conformity. An astute observer of present-day America might conclude that our own decade is more drenched with the spirit of conformism than were the 1950s.

Corporate managers and military leaders parrot nostrums about diversity, inclusion and sustainability that few of them believe. Museums and orchestras studiously avoid programming that might offend ideologues. Reporters and editors seize on stories—or ignore them—solely because that’s what everybody else is reporting.

Pulitzer winning playwright David Mamet critiques our culture of conformity in, "Recessional: the Death of Free Speech and the Cost of a Free Lunch." Most striking is how superbly out of place its author must be in the eminent environs of his chosen industry.

What is the source of our cultural impulse to go along with the crowd? Mamet points at his smart phone, “It’s that time-wasting machine. We’re all connected. But connected for what purpose? The idea that everybody has to behave the same way is part of the breakdown of what was a cohesive society.”

David Mamet grew up in Chicago. People went to different churches, they were from different ethnic backgrounds, their parents came from different countries, but somehow they built authentic communities. Their self-worth didn’t come from belonging to some uber-group.

Mamet says the “woke agenda” (his term) is basically an act, which explains why it works so well in Hollywood and New York City. “Nobody really believes it. Nobody really believes boys turn into girls and girls turn into boys. But somehow it’s become dangerous to question it.”

Mamet points to an oversized edition of the Torah on his coffee table. “It’s all there. Everything we’ve been living through.” The habit among America’s wealthy, privileged influencers of reviling the country that gave them privilege and influence is a re-enactment of biblical events.

He’s right about the biblical pattern: Prosperity, particularly unearned prosperity, tends to generate folly. “When do violent revolutions happen?” he asks. “They happen when things get too good.” We live in the “most prosperous country in the history of the world, and so what’s our response? We don’t need God. We don’t need the Constitution. We don’t need anything.”

“Twenty years ago a guy in my synagogue, he lent me some books. I said, ‘I’ll read them. But, when my friends come over, I’ll have to hide them.’ That guy responded: ‘I don’t.’ He changed my life. Did I really think I had to hide books from my friends? How sick was I?”

Mamet, an observant Jew, says he “would be thrilled to accept the Christian tradition and Christ as my Savior” but “I am prohibited from doing so by my own religion.” So he, too, conforms.

Like others who dissent from the dominant outlook of their post-religious peers, Mamet believes modern conceptions of human nature are hopelessly naive. A rosy view of human proclivities leads easily to groupthink and its invariable accompaniment, scapegoating. Since the existence of evil is undeniable, but supposedly cannot be intrinsic in all of us, evil must come from some disfavored group.

Which led Mamet back to biblical religion. “The Bible starts with perfidy,” Mamet explains. “Perfidy is everywhere in it. What the Bible is telling us is that the human race is unalterably flawed. It’s not a matter of doing away with the ‘haters.’ We have to deal with our own mind.”

Blessings,
Dan Nygaard

03/27/2022

PALM SUNDAY BRUNCH with HOPE COMMUNITY
10am Sunday 4/10
Hilton, Fort Collins on West Prospect
Reservation required
Reserve your space via email ... [email protected]
Reserve your space via text ... 970.310.7475
Join us !

02/28/2022

TO STAY & SERVE IN UKRAINE

~ Adapted from an article by Vasyl Ostryi, pastor of Irpin Bible Church in Ukraine ~

To us in Ukraine, the book of Esther has become real. The decree is signed, a 21stCentury Haman has the power to destroy a nation. The gallows are ready. Ukraine is the target.

Missionaries have left as have Western embassies and citizens. Oligarchs, businessmen, and those who can afford it have left, saving their families from war.

My wife and I decided to remain in our city near Kyiv, to stay and serve the people of Ukraine. Irpin Bible Church, where I joined the pastoral team in 2016, has bought a supply of food, medicine, and fuel so that we’ll be able to help those in need rather than burden them.

Ours is a family of six, we’re raising four daughters. What I worry about the most is my 16-year-old. We told our children, “Pack your backpacks. Pack enough things for three days.” Our younger children asked, “Dad, where are we going?” I told them we are not going anywhere.

How should the church respond to war and fear in society? If the church is not relevant at a time of crisis, then it is not relevant in a time of peace.

The church in Ukraine went through crisis in 2014, many churches actively supported political protests against the corrupt regime of Viktor Yanukovych. A prayer tent went up in Independence Square. Christians distributed hot meals. Churches opened their doors to protesters.

There were churches that supported the dictator’s regime and criticized the protests. Other churches tried to ignore the elephant in the room, avoiding politics. In the end, churches that distanced themselves from social issues and those that supported corrupt rulers have suffered reputational loss in Ukraine. Conversely, churches that stood with the people during testing times have the highest trust from society.

We believe the church is in a spiritual struggle. As tensions rose, our church had a week of fasting and prayer, gathering every night to bring our requests to God. Three days in a row the lights went out. We were forced to meet in the dark, adding a solemn atmosphere to our prayers for peace.

Prayer produced in us an inner strength to persevere, we’ve gained confidence and peace. We believe God is with us; that is the most important thing.

In this war our church is also a place of service. We’ve conducted first-aid trainings. People are learning how to apply a tourniquet, stop bleeding, apply bandages, and manage airways; giving them confidence to care for their neighbors if necessary. One brother told me he had planned to leave—he was no soldier. But he stayed to help the wounded, and to save lives.

The church premises can become a shelter. We’ve stocked a strategic supply of fuel, food, and material for dressing wounds; we’ve identified believers who are doctors, mechanics, plumbers—even those who have water wells.

We decided to stay, both as a family and as a church. When this is over, the citizens of Kyiv will remember how Christians responded. The church may not fight like the nation, we still believe we have a role to fulfill. We will shelter the weak, serve the suffering, and mend the broken. And as we do, we offer the unshakable hope of Christ and His gospel.

We might feel helpless but like Esther we will fast and pray. Ukraine is not God’s covenant people, but like Israel our hope is in the Lord. As we stay, we pray the church in Ukraine will faithfully trust the Lord and serve our neighbors.

Pray for Ukraine. Pray for Russia.

Blessings,
Dan Nygaard

11/29/2021

ADVENT ... WHAT IS IT?

Long before the church acquired institutional trappings, Christians were using the latin word adventus to introduce others to their belief that the divine had entered this world. Adventus means coming. Christians claimed the one and only true God had come in the person of Jesus. They went on to claim this same Jesus will return as King of kings and Lord of lords.

Advent today occupies the four Sundays prior to Christmas Day. It proclaims that Christians have an out-of-this-world hope. Advent reminds believers how that hope offers deep yet unexplainable joy, regardless of circumstances. And that hope and that joy nurtures deep peace—quiet assurance. All because we are loved unconditionally by the heavenly Father.

Advent defines the Christian’s present reality. Believers look back on the first advent of Christ as a helpless baby who matured into the Suffering Servant: the Savior who conquered death. Simultaneously, Christians live in expectation of the second advent when Jesus shall return to earth as its rightful Ruler, ushering in a far better reality than the one with which humans currently struggle.

Advent also confronts Christ-followers with a radical challenge.

It insists believers live both as children of God and as servants of others. What does that look like? Well, in his letter to Philemon, the apostle Paul challenged a slave-owner to cease being a master. Paul insisted he relate to slaves as sisters and brothers. Even more radically (and politically incorrect), the apostle Paul instructed a run-away slave to return to his master.

Christianity is a radical thing. For those who doubt its revolutionary chops, consider the Cross and recall Jesus’ demand that His followers take up their own cross and follow Him.

Consumer Christianity neuters discipleship, it wants a comfortable Christianity—faith that’s a win-win. The apostle Paul’s letter to Philemon is a slap in the face to all of us who seek a comfortable faith. Advent challenges Christians to live sacrificially; to live in this material reality as aliens and foreigners. It gently yet persistently reminds Christians that we are citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. Advent insists that the believer’s primary purpose in this world is to advocate and agitate for Christ’s Kingdom.

Finally, Advent warns unbelievers that the Kingdom of Heaven is coming. ~

08/31/2021

Many people have become unmoored during the pandemic. Many have turned to spirituality … if not religion. Lisa Miller is a clinical psychologist and the director of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute at Columbia U. In her new book The Awakened Brain ...

08/10/2021

THERE'S SCIENCE and THEN THERE'S "THE SCIENCE"

“I believe in science,” Joe Biden tweeted six days before he was elected president. “Donald Trump doesn’t. It’s that simple, folks."

What does it mean to believe in science?

Prof Steven Koonin of NYU served as the undersecretary for science in President Obama’s Department of Energy. In his book "Unsettled", Mr Koonin claims there are significant points where the popular perception about climate and energy is very different from what the science actually says. He explains, “Science, with all its certainties and uncertainties, becomes The Science” when it gets summarized and communicated. And important realities are lost in that process.

British science writer Matt Ridley draws a distinction between classical science—science as a philosophy and The Science—science as an institution. Science as philosophy was birthed and nurtured by the Enlightenment. It might be defined as “the primacy of rational and objective reasoning.” Science as institution was born and is nurtured by government funding.

Mr Ridley says the pandemic has exposed the disconnect between philosophical science and institutional science. He claims most popular science writers are cheerleaders for institutional science.

Institutional scientists have adopted a top-down view of the political world, which is odd if you think about how bottom-up the evolutionary view of the natural world is. He asks, “If you think biological complexity can come about through unplanned emergence and not need an intelligent designer, then why would you think human society needs an ‘intelligent government’?”

The pandemic has politicized epidemiology. This is partly the fault of outside commentators who hustle scientists into political boxes. But it’s also the fault of epidemiologists themselves, who press release data that fit their political prejudices while burying data that don’t.

The Science (politicalized, institutional science) has resulted in a loss of confidence in science. Distrust of The Science may be justified, but that distrust leaves a vacuum which is often filled by a superstitious approach to knowledge. To such superstition Mr. Ridley attributes public resistance to technologies such as genetically modified food, nuclear power—and vaccines.

Covid-19 vaccination, Mr. Ridley argues is “the lesser of two risks, at least for adults.” We have “ample data to show that—for this vaccine, and for others, going back centuries.” He opines that vaccinations may be “the most massive and incredible benefit of scientific knowledge” to civilization.

Social media enforces conformity through ‘fact checking,’ mob pile-ons, and blatant censorship. But conformity is the enemy of scientific progress.

The late physicist and noble laureate Richard Feynman claimed that science is a belief in the ignorance of experts. Mr Ridley claims The Science and the scientific establishment has morphed “into a church, enforcing obedience to the latest dogma and expelling heretics and blasphemers.” ~

Blessings,
Dan Nygaard

07/12/2021

HOW I LIBERATED MY COLLEGE CLASSROOM
(Adapted from an article by Prof John Rose, Duke University’s Kenan Institute for Ethics.)

Most students want freer discourse on campus. They want to be challenged by views they don’t hold. This has been my experience with undergraduates at Duke University, where I teach classes that require my students to engage with all sides of today’s hottest political issues.

True engagement, though, requires honesty. In an anonymous survey of my 110 students, 68% told me they self-censor on certain political topics—even around good friends. That includes self-described conservative students, but also half of the liberals.

To get students to stop self-censoring, a few agreed-on classroom principles are necessary. On the first day, I explain that no one will be canceled—no social or professional penalties for students resulting from things they say in class. If you believe in policing your fellow students, I say, you’re in the wrong room. I insist that goodwill should always be assumed, and that all opinions can be voiced, provided they are offered in the spirit of humility and charity.

I give students a chance to talk about the fact that they can no longer talk. I let them share their anxieties about being socially or professionally penalized for dissenting. What students discover is that they are not alone in their misgivings.

Having now run the experiment with 300 undergraduates, I no longer wonder what would happen if students felt safe enough to come out of their shells. They flourish.

In one class, students had a serious but respectful discussion of critical race theory. Some thought it harmfully implied that blacks can’t get ahead on their own. Others pushed back. My students had an honest conversation about race, but only because they had earned each other’s trust by making themselves vulnerable.

On a different day, they spoke up for all positions on abortion. When a liberal student mentioned this to a friend outside class, she was met with disbelief: “Let me get this straight: real Duke students in an actual class were discussing abortion and some of them admitted to being pro-life?”

I asked my students how many of them had an acquaintance who voted for Donald Trump. In a class of 56, 50 hands went up. I then asked them to keep their hands up if they thought this person’s vote was motivated by anything unsavory—sexism, racism, etc. Every hand but two went down.

Despite our masks, I could see that students were surprised. Turns out, their Trump-supporting cousin wasn’t the exception. When you actually know others, they aren’t an abstraction onto which you can project your own narratives.

On the last day of class, several students thanked their counterparts for the gift of civil disagreement. Students told me of unlikely new friendships made, and of strained friendships mended.

All of this should give hope to those worried that polarization has made dialogue impossible. Not only is it possible, it’s what people pine for.

Progressives, the power to make this a widespread reality on campus is in your hands; in so doing, you’ll remain true to your own tradition of liberalism. Conservatives, don’t write off the modern university; in continuing to support it, you uphold your own tradition’s commitment to passing down wisdom.

Both sides should support efforts that promote civil discourse. We’ll all be happier about the state of the country if we do. ~

03/30/2021

HOLY WEEK = SPECIAL WEEK

The week before Resurrection Sunday in the past has been identified as Holy Week. That does not make this week better than the other fifty-one weeks. It is, however, a different week—a special week.

In the past during this week churches hosted special services: Good Friday or Tenebrae services or Stages of the Cross. Maundy Thursday services or Last Supper commemorations. 2020 these were all cancelled, and remain uncommon this year. Shout-Out to Peak Community Church that’s hosting a Holy Week Art Installation this week each noon hour.

Challenge: make Holy Week 2021 your own special week. Read through and reflect upon the Gospel accounts of the arrest, trial and crucifixion of Jesus Christ. (There are many internet sites that allow you to listen to these Scripture readings.)

Here’s a reading schedule:

Tuesday Matthew 26.36 - 27.66
Wednesday Mark 14.32 - 15.47
Thursday Luke 22.39 - 23.56
Friday John 18.1 - 19.42

Saturday is for meditation. Set aside some time Saturday to do absolutely nothing but reflect upon what you read this week. Then, as the sun goes down, prepare to celebrate the most crucial event in human history.

He is risen! He is risen, indeed. ~

12/24/2020

CHRISTMAS EVE With HOPE

Hope Community's online Christmas Eve service

streaming now via

www.hopecommunity.org

vimeo.com/hope4foco

~

Hope Community Fellowship Fort Collins

07/13/2022

04/12/2022

03/27/2022

02/28/2022

11/29/2021

08/31/2021

08/10/2021

07/12/2021

03/30/2021

12/24/2020

Address

Opening Hours

Website

Alerts

Contact The Place Of Worship

Shortcuts

Share

Category