Click Here to View/Print our Spring '12 Cosmonaut Poster, Courtesy of Worlds End Images!
OUR EVENTS
The Row House Forum
Join us at the gallery called thefirstfloor at 351 Mulberry Street for excellent food, coffee and discussion. We meet Saturdays at 7PM. Look here for our next forum.
Using local talent, we host lectures and discussions on a ridiculous variety of topics. We also invite thoughtful speakers from around the country to help us “engage current culture with ancient faith.”
If you ever miss a forum, just download one of our podcasts.
Row House Concerts
Delighting audiences about four times a year. We try to book what we feel are “Artists of Substance.” That is, musicians, composers and collaborators who strive for excellence in their genre and have something redemptive to add to reality.
Our Outreach
Tom Becker, our Founder & Director, frequently speaks for local and national groups of all types on community building, the intersection of theology and culture, and interpersonal communication.
Tom blogs regularly here as well as on his personal site, thomasdarttbecker. He serves as the host of The Row House Podcast and is currently writing a book for emerging adults with Rob Ilderton, tentatively titled 28 Days.
Ordained as a Teaching Elder in the Presbyterian Church in America, Tom’s passion is to build build bridges for people inquiring into the claims of Christianity. He did that with college students for many years and is now continuing the project in the city he loves: Lancaster.
The Row House is so much more than a house along a row of homes on College Avenue in Lancaster. It’s really about building a “community within a community.” Actually within two communities: Our fair city and the church that goes by Jesus’ name. Through learning, feasting and enfolding, we are seeking to assist Christians and congregations by providing an embassy for arts, entertainment and discussion that is hospitable to all people.
The kind of people we hope to see come through our doors (and back out with a renewed mind and enlarged heart) are:
- skeptics, inquirers and debaters
- students of any age, but especially those in high school and university
- our neighbors right here in the West End of the city
- thoughtful folk, whether or not they are convinced Christians
- our friends and their friends from across beautiful Lancaster County
- Christian leaders, culture-shapers and activists who care about our community
- new residents, the displaced, the hurting, the lonely, the broken
So, if you are one of those people above, please know you are welcome to join us for our events, to post comments on our site, to drop by and chat.
We are Christians. And we say as modestly as possible that we long to build a bridge to those who are not. Why? Because of our common humanity. Created, fallen, being redeemed is the paradigm we live by and want to commend to everyone.
Our dream in starting this endeavor is that individuals and groups will utilize our events, concerts and communication offerings to fulfill their own sense of call in building God’s kingdom.
If we can demonstrate a speck of God’s reality found in Jesus Christ, then we’ll be happy.
We hope to see you soon!
-Tom Becker, Founder & Director
Some of Our Convictions
- That the development of a theology of place is critical to the furtherance of Christian commitment in our world.
- That incarnation and personhood are fundamental doctrines of historic, orthodox Christianity – often neglected but offering the key to understanding God’s work in our world.
- That bridges must be built to our neighbors through modest demonstrations of good works and civil conversations about critical ideas.
- That the Kingdom of God, as our Lord Jesus taught it and brought it, defines all of reality. God’s Kingdom is more than a mere abstract notion, an institutional religion or a nice moralistic system; Rather, it liberates its followers to be truly and thoroughly human.
