December 2025 - Monthly Newsletter
- Helms Jarrell
- 5 days ago
- 4 min read
AT A GLANCE
Upcoming Events
Gathering Dates
2025 BCC worship gathering dates: Nov 30, Dec 7, 14, & 21
2026 dates: Jan 11-Epiphany party, Jan 25- Covenant Sunday, Feb 8, Feb 18- Ash Wed, Feb 22, March 1, March 15, March 29-Palm Sunday, April 5- Easter, April 26- Nina Simone Day, May 10, May 24- Pentecost, June 7, June 21, July 5- Funeral for the Empire, July 19, Aug 2, Aug 16, Sept 13, Sept 27, Oct 4, Oct 18, Nov 1- All Saints/Children’s Blessing, Nov 15, Nov 29. Dec 6, Dec 13, Dec 20.
Trinkets, figurines, baubles, and toys- Please bring your smaller-than-a-computer-mouse bits and bobs to Beloved Community Charlotte on Nov 30. We will use them throughout the winter season. You will be able to take them back home in February.
Community Life
Save the date for the Epiphany Party on January 11th at 5:00pm. Get your tickets now. QC Family Tree's team member, Teresa Bone, will be reaching out with ways to volunteer with set up, clean up, food supplies, and/or performing at open mic.
Leadership at Gatherings:
Date | Childcare | Prayers for the People | Creative Contemplation |
Nov 30 (Advent Season) | Laura P. | Judy and Tom J | Greg J |
Dec 7 (Advent Season) | Karim H | Christine N | Mattie B |
Dec 14 (Advent Season) | Tim N | Gretchen H | Seth P. |
Dec 21 (Advent Season) | Mattie B | Shelly M | Chris M |
Jan 11- Epiphany Party | party on , yall! | ||
Jan 25 (Epiphany Season) | Everyone together | tbd | tbd |
Feb 8 (Epiphany Season) | Greg J | tbd | tbd |
Governance
The next Governance meeting will be (date TBD) via zoom at 7:00pmHere’s the link: https://commonchange.zoom.us/j/7046546546
Here’s our Governance meeting agenda:
Check in
Debrief how the activation went, in terms of BCC leadership/hosting.
Looking ahead at 2026 calendar.
Working group updates
Comms
Justice praxis
Visitors
Budget/finance
Childcare
Misc
UCC grant status
Space updates
Close
Remember to RSVP
Please remember to RSVP to the Google Calendar Invite for BCC Gatherings so that we can make proper childcare arrangements.
Beloved Community School for the Common Good
forming a culture of justice, connection, and collective care.
Nov 30, 2025- Feb
Make the Path While Walking: Rhythms and Routines for Mutual Care
This third season of school for the common good, we journey as travelers who make the path by walking—trusting that each step of faith, care, and connection shapes the way ahead. Like Mary, we carry and nurture a future not our own, tending what is growing even when we cannot yet see its fullness.
Rooted in interdependence and mutuality, we seek to build eco-community: networks of care grounded in shared governance, mutual aid, and economic redistribution.
Our work is to plant, water, and build—trusting that the kin-dom of God emerges through our collective becoming. We practice this becoming not through grand gestures, but through the ordinary acts that sustain life: sharing meals, tending gardens, visiting the sick, repairing what is broken, marking sacred moments, listening well, exchanging stories, and mourning together. These small, steady gestures teach us that to be human is to be in relationship—to care and be cared for, to depend and be depended upon.
The rhythms of body and earth, through song, ritual, and embodied practice, teach us that each act of love creates a pathway toward wholeness. Together, we make the path while walking—an ongoing creation of community rooted in love, solidarity, and hope.
Interdependence and mutuality: building networks of care through mutual aid, shared governance, and economic redistribution.
Seasonal and embodied rhythms: engaging the body, the arts, and the senses through ritual, song, movement, and observance of cultural- social, imagination, historical, economic- and ecological cycles.
Activation= TBD.
Toolkit - Resources to use at home, with family, and in small groups. become a sponsor of the school to receive an all seasons pass to this toolkit or order a season at time. Here’s a link to a pdf of our toolkit for this season of the School for the Common Good. In it, you’ll find all sorts of DIY resources.
There's also a webpage dedicated to the toolkit.
Beloved Community Circles: Tim and Christine are hosting the community circle this season. Stay tuned for address, date, and time coming soon.
Ritual Gatherings: Bi-weekly practices of ceremony, creative contemplation, story sharing, and connection rooted in the Christian tradition at Ophelia Garmon Brown Community Center, 2647 Freedom Dr, Charlotte, NC 28208, from 5pm - 7pm.
Communications
Ways to stay up to date
Slack is a communication tool that BCC folks use to update each other throughout the week. If you want to join the slack, let Helms know.
If you don’t want to find us on Slack, you can still find updates on our Linktree.
You can also add the Beloved Community Charlotte Google calendar to your calendar.
If someone you know wants to join our belovedcommunityclt email list, email iamhelmsie@gmail.com and she’ll add you to the list.
If you want to schedule some time to connect with Helms, feel free to find a time that works for you using this link: https://calendly.com/helmsjarrell