'Celebrate Jesus' event set for Saturday, June 7, in Grand Forks
Part of a worldwide celebration taking place that day, the event will include a community walk, starting near Grand Forks Central High School, and ending with a worship rally at Town Square.
Participants will gather at 10:15 a.m. in the high school's parking lot at the intersection of University Avenue and North Fifth Street.
Beginning at 11 a.m., the walk will feature music, singing, vehicles, banners and signs. Several vehicles will display "Celebrate Jesus" banners and broadcast music as participants walk east on University Avenue and south on Third Street to Town Square. A wagon will be available for anyone who has mobility issues and would prefer to ride.
"It's a fun, nice, easy kind of thing," said Chine, of Grand Forks.
The rally, beginning at 11:30 a.m. at Town Square, will include worship, fellowship, prayer, salvation opportunity and food. Scott Rhinehart of Grand Forks will serve as MC.
Several speakers, including pastors, will offer encouraging words; prayers for the Grand Cities, the states of Minnesota and North Dakota, the U.S. and the world; and an opportunity for salvation and rededication, Chine said. "Prayer stations" will be available for individual prayer and counseling.
The "Celebrate Jesus" event — held for the fifth time in Grand Forks — does not focus on or promote a specific church or faith denomination, Chine said, but rather is "an opportunity to praise the name of Jesus" in a family-friendly atmosphere.
It is intended to bring together various churches, organizations and neighboring communities to exalt Jesus Christ "outside the walls of church and organizational buildings," according to the event announcement. "(The goal is to) foster a sense of community and shared faith, bringing together individuals from diverse backgrounds to honor Jesus. The day is filled with joy, music, unity and fellowship that transcends denominational boundaries."
Nationally and internationally, the event has been known as "March for Jesus," Chine said, and was first held in Texas in the early 1990s.
In 2023, the local organizational team changed the name to "Grand Cities Celebrate Jesus" to better reflect "a more family-friendly, community-friendly" purpose, he said, but it remains part of the March for Jesus organization. The team includes members from about 10 churches, as well as nonprofit organizations and businesses.
Funds for the event are raised through charitable donations, partnerships, church registrations and the sale of t-shirts and caps.
Similar events are expected to be held in about 30 cities across the U.S. and in eight other countries, Chine said. Grand Forks and Bemidji are the only cities in North Dakota and Minnesota, respectively, to hold such a gathering.
"It's really a unique event from a Christian perspective," he said, "but it's so difficult to get people to want to put in the time and effort, and get away from their comfort zone."
Each year, "Celebrate Jesus" is held on Pentecost weekend in the church calendar. In the Christian tradition, Pentecost marked the birth of the church and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to all nations.
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Miami Herald
6 hours ago
- Miami Herald
‘Ahead of his time': Loved ones remember G. Holmes Braddock and his legacy
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Los Angeles Times
19 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Jim Crow meets ICE at ‘Alligator Alcatraz'
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White Floridians in particular so fell in love with the concept of alligators hungry for Black babies that it birthed an entire industry. Visitors to the Sunshine State could purchase souvenir postcards featuring illustrations of googly-eyed alligators chasing crying Black children. There was a popular brand of licorice called 'Little African,' with packaging that featured a cartoon alligator tugging playfully at a Black infant's rag diaper. The tagline read: 'A Dainty Morsel.' Anglers could buy fishing lures molded in the shape of a Black baby protruding from an alligator's mouth. You get the idea. When I first learned of all this, naturally, I was unmoored. I was also surprised that I'd never heard of the alligator bait slur. Why doesn't it sit alongside the minstrel, the mammy and the golliwog in our cultural memory of racist archetypes? Did it cross some unspoken line with the vulgarity of its violence? Perhaps this particular dog whistle was a tad too audible? 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'Alligator Alcatraz' is proof that alligator bait never went away. It didn't evolve or get slicker. It's the same old, tired cruelty, rebranded and aimed at a new target. The goal is exactly the same: to manufacture consent for suffering and ensure the most vulnerable among us know where they stand — as props, as bait, as punchlines. And no joke is more vulgar than one mocking the pain of your neighbors, whether they were born in this country or not. Ezra Claytan Daniels is a screenwriter and graphic novelist whose upcoming horror graphic novel, 'Mama Came Callin',' confronts the legacy of the alligator bait trope.
Buzz Feed
a day ago
- Buzz Feed
I Was Raised In Purity Culture. Then I Began Wearing A Secret Purchase Under My Clothes.
I met my husband in college, and we dated for five years prior to our wedding. I brought a whole host of fear-based ideas about sexuality to our marriage. Due to purity culture, which primarily targeted girls in the 1990s with a message that their sexual purity was their most prized asset, I could not help but believe a crown of stars awaited me if I stayed a virgin, possibly until death. In my all-girl Catholic high school theology class, we had learned virginity was a gift. We were told to imagine our sexual purity as a beautifully wrapped present. If we ever felt pressured to give in to the sexual advances of our male counterparts, we were to consider what it would be like to hand our future spouse a gift with tattered wrapping paper and bedraggled ribbons. As I entered college and wrestled with my faith, the book I Kissed Dating Goodbye, written by a young pastor named Joshua Harris, caused a huge splash in Christian circles. 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In church circles, I heard about the importance of good wives making themselves available and pleasing to their spouses. I rarely if ever heard the same for husbands. After our first year of marriage, I became pregnant, and then a year later I became pregnant again. In spite of the grace my husband offered me during our sleepless years, my hang-ups over not having enough sex remained and even intensified. When my children were still young, I took a job teaching at a Bible college in Tennessee. I was surprised at how many of my students married while they were still undergrads. Some of them were barely out of high school. I frequently overheard these young women discussing their two bridal showers: one thrown by elders to receive housewares and another thrown by friends to receive lingerie. It was a two-pronged preparation for the bride that said: Here is what you will need for your home and for your husband. But where was the ritual to prepare a young woman who was not getting married ― but who was still a whole person? I wondered. Does she not still need a cast iron pan? Does she still not deserve beautiful undergarments? I tentatively began to look for answers, but most of the books and podcasts I found in the 2010s that spoke to sexuality within monogamy skirted the issue of female desire. I was still hearing sermons about sexual purity as an absolute, and reading blogs by women who endorsed frequent sex as a safeguard against a husband's infidelity. Then an unlikely source helped me to course correct. I read an account of an American expatriate in France who discovered that French women reportedly spent 20% of their income on lingerie. At first I couldn't believe all of these women were forking over so much money on something that most people would never see, but I realized they were doing it for themselves. To please themselves. To feel good about themselves. I started to amass my own wardrobe of lingerie. I still wore the modest suits of a professor, but underneath were the reminders that I was more than a teacher with sensible shoes. In 2018, Joshua Harris denounced I Kissed Dating Goodbye and publicly apologized for the hurt caused by it. The following year, Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber published Shameless, an indictment of the shame-laced ways the church has indoctrinated young people about sexuality. By this point, I was beginning to lose my footing in my own marriage. My husband and I had moved across the country and were navigating new jobs and life with adolescent children. Natural growing pains were surfacing: We were two people who met before our brains were fully developed — before we knew who we truly were. The strains of our life together were pulling us apart. I started to visit social media accounts about lingerie as a way to relieve stress. Learning about the materials, the construction, the history, and the style of the pieces was soothing. I also discovered the women running these accounts, like the French women I'd read about years earlier, wore their lingerie not for a partner but for themselves. They were celebrating their own sexuality. Perhaps this was Victoria's Secret: not that she used a satin chemise to attract but that she kept a ruffle-trimmed slip in her boudoir to remind her of who she was. Seventeen years after we wed, my husband and I met in a courtroom, and, with the stroke of a judge's pen, our relationship was legally dissolved. My marriage was my only significant romantic relationship, and I mourn the familiar rhythms of that life. I am left with countless existential questions about what I do now, what I want... and an expansive wardrobe of lingerie. For the first time in over two decades, I am single. I am not afraid of falling in love again, but I am afraid of abandoning myself to someone else's narrative about who I am. I go on dating apps, sift through pictures of men flexing their muscles and cuddling their dogs, and then I delete the apps. In therapy, I discuss my hang-ups about all of this. 'What is the purpose of dating? For you?' my therapist asks. I do not have a clear answer, but I know those two words, 'for you,' are essential. I am 43 years old and just now beginning to unpack what sex and monogamy mean for me — and not because a pastor or book club defined it for me. I am still a person of deep faith, but I am no longer a member of a church. I am in a season of deconstructing beliefs that have done me far more harm than help. The path forward for me may be paved with rubble, but it is edged with lace and satin. In this new chapter, which I could never have envisioned as a young newlywed, I realize what all these lingerie-loving women I've come across know about intimate apparel: It is a symbol of their superpower. They wear pieces that allow them to simply feel good in their bodies. When we feel good in our bodies, we can talk back to the shame. We can celebrate the marvelous capacity our bodies have to experience desire and pleasure. This is a wondrous thing ― no matter one's size, shape, skin color or creed. Obviously, wearing lingerie is just one of countless ways through which a person can access that freedom, but for me (and many others), it serves as a gentle yet potent reminder of my commitment to seeking the kind of liberation that has eluded me for much too long. Recently I purchased a luxurious royal blue loungewear set. It sits in a gold cardboard box, tied with a matching royal blue ribbon. I have not decided if I will wear the set for a special occasion, like when I find true love again, or simply when I'm having a good hair day. What I do know is that the decision is not one to fear — especially because I am the one making it.
