The Sacred Commons

The Sacred Commons The Sacred Commons is a convergent christian community of Youngstown. (for more on convergence click here: https://bit.ly/2F5Z09l )

03/15/2026

The Sacred Commons Church of Youngstown, Ohio.

Join us for service online only at 11:30am on YouTube and Facebook. Stay safe and warm!❄️ See you next Sunday in person ...
01/24/2026

Join us for service online only at 11:30am on YouTube and Facebook. Stay safe and warm!❄️ See you next Sunday in person for tacos! 🌮

Paraphrasing a young Simone fromPĂ©trement's biographical work.
08/23/2025

Paraphrasing a young Simone from
PĂ©trement's biographical work.

“So they often seem…to be preposterous.” It’s good to always be reminded of the (perceived) insanity of the saints. Pete...
08/19/2025

“So they often seem…to be preposterous.” It’s good to always be reminded of the (perceived) insanity of the saints. Peter Maurin was known for saying, “If I am crazy, it’s because I refuse to be crazy in the same way that the world has gone crazy.” The realm of God seems to be upside down in systems and patterns of hell-bent conformity. But the saints are torchbearers, running ahead, ushering in a foretaste of God’s future. To state, “The world is not yet with them,” is simply to observe reality. “Yet they are impregnators of the world...” The saints, by word and deed, bear a prophetic witness to the world that sometimes bears fruit in their lifespan, but more often does not. Many who died “did not receive what was promised,” yet they remained vivifiers “of whom the world was not worthy.” Dr. King called them the “maladjusted” who refuse to adjust themselves to systems of domination, bigotry, fear, and violence.

The Christian life is an inheritance of nonconformity by grace.

“We've always been holy troublemakers, creators of uncertainty, agents of a dimension that's incompatible with the status quo.” - Jacques Ellul

"From now on five in one household will be divided." Lk 12This week's lectionary reveals that discipleship creates the a...
08/16/2025

"From now on five in one household will be divided." Lk 12

This week's lectionary reveals that discipleship creates the antagonism of difference. Civil religion (an amalgam of religious rationalities and loyalties to power, the market, state violence, and social Darwinism) becomes a great impedance to faith/action in Christ. In the Gospel text we discover that families are not benign, but a primary site of civil religion. They are not neutral enclaves, but birthing grounds of a social vision that can be anti-Christ, regardless of religious affiliation. In other words, Christendom does not rid the world of idolatry. From slaveholding religion, the religious support of segregation, the oppression of women, the oppression of the LGBTQIA+ community, to the current rationalization of 30,000 Palestinian children killed or maimed, and the demonization/dehumanization of the immigrant - a matrix of harm and violence has often flown under the banner of a religious status quo. Secularism does not dissolve easily. Jude Lal Fernando sums it up, "Idolatry is called 'civilization. Everything is then used for domination."

"Those servants who know what their master wishes will act differently than the rest. This will cause stress and division. It is as if in a parade some begin marching to a different tune. The rest, those who marched to the common tune, will accuse them of upsetting the parade, and will seek to suppress or oust them." - Justo Gonzalez

"The challenge facing American pastors today is that we are tasked with trying to make disciples of people who are already thoroughly discipled." - Brian Zahnd

“The New Testament creates the cosmic atmosphere in which the Samaritan can dare to step outside his culture…” - Ivan Il...
03/10/2025

“The New Testament creates the cosmic atmosphere in which the Samaritan can dare to step outside his culture…” - Ivan Illich

“Their insight and experience of reconciliation in Christ are such that no estate in secular society can possibly correspond…They are always, in any society, in protest." - William Stringfellow

Jon Paul Robles

03/06/2025

Prayer and Reflection from Bloody Sunday Commemoration. Sunday, March 3, 2025.

Dr. Susanna Heschel words about her father, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, returning from Selma:

"When he came home from Selma in 1965, my father wrote, 'For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying.'"

Jon Paul Robles Diana Robles

Address

323 Wick Avenue
Youngstown, OH
44503

Opening Hours

11:30am - 1pm

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