Pastors' Blog
As we begin the new liturgical year, we celebrate Advent alongside the launching of our Negro Spirituals Royalties Project (more info here). We will center both our Sunday morning and Tuesday midweek worship around four spirituals: 1. Mary Had a Baby ...
November 21: Autumn All-Parish Meeting following worship, in the Sanctuary and on Zoom. Find out what God's doing in our midst.
Some of us will remember the Sunday School song: Zacchaeus was a wee little man, A wee little man was he. He climbed up in a sycamore tree For the Lord he wanted to see....
Beloved,
This week, we continue to follow along with our children and youth in their autumn Church School curriculum of “Seeking Justice Together” and “Setting Things Right” by diving into one of Jesus' parables, a story of a relationship ruptured and repaired, with a lot of confession and grace in between!
Our curriculum devotional reflects,
"The son, we are told, travels to a distant land where he quickly burns through his inheritance with “dissolute living.” It is...
REMINDER: Daylight Savings ends this Sunday, set clocks back one hour.
Shalom, Good People! This Sunday will be my first time preaching at United Parish. We’ll continue following alongside our Church School curriculum by reading from Leviticus 25:1-12, and hearing about the proclamation of the Year of Jubilee.
The actual proclamation of the Jubilee is quite short. The vast majority of the chapter (verses 8-55...
Dear United Parish Family,
This Sunday, we are talking about the Negro Spiritual and its role in our lives as Christians. This Little Light of Mine, Honey in the Rock, Go Tell it On the Mountain, Were You There When They Crucified My Lord, these and hundreds of others are part of the canon known to most Black Americans as Negro Spirituals. To most white Americans, they are African American Spirituals, or simply Spirituals. This Sunday, we are launching a brand new racial justice...
This Sunday's worship is at 3pm.There is NO 11am worship.
This Sunday, we will celebrate a milestone event in the life of United Parish. One of our own lifelong members, Alexandra "Lexi" Boudreaux, will be ordained to Christian ministry in the United Church of Christ (UCC). Lexi's parents first brought her into our congregation as an...
Beloved,
This week, we continue to follow along with our children and youth in their autumn Church School curriculum of “Seeking Justice Together” and “Caring for the Vulnerable” by reading from the Book of Numbers, and hearing a story of two very vulnerable people speaking up and challenging an unjust law.
Our curriculum devotional reflects,
"Laws and the systems that govern our lives have power, but that does not mean they are always right. Mahlah,...Dear Ones,
When I was little, my next-door neighbors were the previous owners of my parents' house, and we had a wonderful relationship. Their son babysat me, we fed their (stray) cats when they went out of town, and to this day I give the father, a local artist, a hug every time I see him around Marshfield. If their power went out and they came knocking for a space to warm up in, the door was always open. They were our neighbors, after all.
Growing up, the idea of 'loving my...
Many of us who grew up Evangelical-ish probably had to memorize some Bible verses along the way. The centerpiece of them was John 3:16: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
It’s a verse of promise, of salvation, of a belief in sacrificial atonement (which many of us, including your pastors, wrestle with). Those of us anywhere from the center to the far left of American...
One of the joys in being a part of a vibrant, Spirit-filled congregation is that we get to discern and nurture the call of ministers among us. As you'll notice on the back of our worship order each week we consider all of us, the members of United Parish, as ministers -- each in our own specialized ways and means of service. And some of us are called to ordained Christian ministry. This summer we heard from five of our past Seminarians as they are following...
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