Welcome

I’m honored that you are here. My name is Emily Hansen Curran. You can read more about me in my “About Me” on the homepage of this little site, but here’s why we’re undergoing the project of starting a new church in 2024 in one of the most “unchurched” parts of the world.

I think there is a collective journey that many of us have been on—we’ve been part of churches or spiritual communities that caused us harm or shut us out or asked us to forget our very selves and lives or the lives of those around us in order to stay. And at some point, we made the very hard decision to walk away.  You’ve likely felt what Audrey Assad wrote in her song Be Still—the fear and exhilaration of actually naming what it is that you desire, fearfully looking it in the eye, and moving into what could be in spite of that fear. I can vividly remember that first rush of exhilaration, fear, and grief I felt when I finally decided to step outside of the authority and grip on truth that the biblical literalist tradition had on me.

Or maybe that's not your story, maybe you've never set foot in a church, or maybe you've never left the one you're in, but you have had your own sort of losses, of community or hope, where the road ahead was not what you thought it would be.

Often what comes next is hard and dark, but also a little bit hopeful. I like to think of it as a dark hope—the kind that the poet Jericho Brown names as a “darkness which should be praised”, “a quickening dark”. Or what the poet David Whyte names as the darkness and aloneness that allows us to see that “anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you”. But the hope from this darkness does not come easily or quickly, if it comes at all. My guess is that if you’re here, reading this, it’s likely that you’ve seen glimpses of this dark hope. A Good Friday kind of darkness. That is, a darkness latent with grief, sadness, loneliness, but also with possibility and maybe even life. Perhaps it’s why you’re here, still wondering about what could be.

But, I believe that there is life on the other side. And after you’ve stopped running, from fear or weariness or something in between, I believe that there is so much more. 

It’s why I’m in the process of starting a new church here in the East Bay—one rooted in what could be, but with the knowledge that we’ll never fully get there. What we’re starting won’t be for everyone, and it certainly won’t be perfect, but I’m hopeful that it could be a healing path forward for some of you, and for myself, and my family.

If you’re looking for a church that is progressive, liturgical, and centered around the life and death of Jesus, please consider joining our mailing list and coming out for one of upcoming events. We’re hoping to start hosting actual services sometime in late 2024.