What if the parts of your story you'd rather skip past are the exact parts God intends to use? In week two of Preparing for the Kingdom, Matt makes the case that empathy isn't something you import from somewhere else — it's something you learn by going back and telling the truth about your own life. Along the way: Brit Barron having a panic attack in a voting booth, a friend's Pacific Islander tattoos, the psychology of splitting and integration, and Paul writing to a church where two groups genuinely couldn't stand each other. The claim underneath all of it is that Jesus prefers to dwell in diversity — and that we are only ever made alive together. Join us Sundays at Dwell Church of the Peninsula.

What if diversity isn't a program the church runs, but a capacity the church builds? This week we opened "Preparing for the Kingdom" with a conversation between Matt and leadership team member Eunice Nichols about the harm of flattening a person into one dimension — and the slow, graceful work of learning to hold difference without losing each other. Eunice tells two stories twenty years apart, and the second one is the hard one. If Jesus' kingdom is diverse from day one, then belonging is something we practice now. Join us Sundays — and the three-week small group experience starts this week.