by Kent French, June 22, 2023
This is a big weekend for us. On Saturday, we’ll have our postponed Strawberry Festival on the lawn, 11am-3pm. Emily and Stefan have been valiantly carrying this big event forward for us. WE STILL NEED MORE VOLUNTEER HELP — please click here to sign up. This is our annual welcome party for the whole neighborhood. On Sunday, we’ll have our June, end-of-program-year all-parish meeting. In some places, church annual meetings can be a dreary or tense affair. I’ve heard of some that devolved into fistfights. That’s not how we do things. Ours is a celebration, of all we’ve experienced over the past year and all we have to… Read More
by Kent French, June 15, 2023
This Sunday, June 18, we begin summer worship in Willett Hall at 10am (June 18-September 3). It’s the first time in three years that we’ll return to this type of worship and I have missed it greatly. Why? For those of you who haven’t been, when we worship all at the same level, in slightly closer proximity and visibility, and slightly more informality, it connects us better. Personally, I feel more clearly the creativity of God, the human connection with Jesus Christ, the synchronicity of the Holy Spirit and our connection as the living, breathing body of Christ in the world. Summer… Read More
by Amy Norton, June 08, 2023
Dear Ones, This week we’re traveling way back to some of the earliest roots of our faith, to journey with Abraham and Sarah. This is our first introduction to the characters of Abraham (then called Abram), and Sarah, and we meet them one day when God, somewhat out of the blue, instructs them to pack up their lives, leave everything familiar to them, and follow God to an unknown destination. To sweeten the deal, God explains, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those… Read More
by Amy Norton, June 01, 2023
Dear United Parish Family, If you’re reading this, chances are you have some feelings about being a teenager- whether it’s something you’re looking forward to with joy or anxiety, something you’re right smack dab in the middle of and trying to navigate, or something you look back on with a whole mix of memories, angsty and nostalgic all at once. And you know what? Even Jesus was a teenager, with all that that entails – he even got scolded by his parents once or twice! It’s a weird and wonderful time in our lives, and a time when it’s extra important (because it’s… Read More
by Kent French, May 25, 2023
This Sunday is the Day of Pentecost, when we remember that stunning moment when the Holy Spirit descended on a diverse crowd of believers and seekers, giving them the ability to understand one another despite language and cultural differences. The movement increased by about 3,000 people that day. Afterwards, God performed “many signs and wonders” through Jesus’ apostles (Acts 2). In our secular lives, it is Memorial Day weekend, a cultural marker of the start of summer. We center it around a national holiday that began in the 1860s to remember Civil War dead. And after World War I, it… Read More
by Kent French, May 18, 2023
During this Eastertide (April 9-May 27), we have been reflecting individually and collectively about our money stories: Remembering (April 30) what about our personal history has shaped our relationship with money, Releasing (May 7) what attitudes or feelings about money get in our way, Reimaging (May 14) how our money story can be different, And this Sunday, we look at Restoring (May 21, Consecration Sunday), how we can come into greater wholeness in our relationship. If you’d like to reflect on these themes on your own, I encourage you to check out the online study journal here. It is also Consecration Sunday, when we bring forward… Read More
by Amy Norton, May 11, 2023
Beloved, We’re halfway through our Stewardship season, are you ready to talk about money some more? As we’ve dived into the exploration of Our Money Stories, we’ve prayed, sung, and reflected on themes of Remembering and Releasing, and now we arrive at an invitation to Reimagine. A word of warning: reimagining can be dangerous- revolutionary, even, because dreams are powerful: just ask Joseph, of technicolor-dreamcoat fame, or Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Nevertheless, God instructs us to dream big- to reimagine our economic system so that it is grounded in God’s values of compassion, justice, and peace- instead of productivity, efficiency,… Read More
by Kent French, May 04, 2023
On Easter Sunday, Amy and I reminded all of us that we are called to be Resurrection people — people who see possibility and hope even in seemingly impossible situations. People who have the audacity to dream and work and live into a better future. We are currently in the 50 Days of Eastertide (April 9-May 27) in which we especially remember what it means to live into a Resurrection mentality and soul-ability. At United Parish, Eastertide also coincides with our annual Stewardship season, when together we re-commit ourselves to supporting the work of our collective ministry. Just like public… Read More
by Iuliana Mogosanu, April 27, 2023
Stewardship Season: Our Money Story Week One Theme: Recommit: to Remember This fourth Sunday of Eastertide, which is also my farewell Sunday of my role as a seminarian at United Parish for the academic year, we’ll begin our stewardship series by remembering what we were taught or how we learned about money and how it influences our relationship with money in our daily lives. The Bible talks about money and includes many stories that aim to teach us how to think about resources. We’ll look at the story of the manna in the desert, where God provided the Israelites with… Read More
by Amy Norton, April 20, 2023
Greetings to you, and peace, from the One who is, and was, and is to come! My favorite class in seminary was called “God and Money,” taught by professor emeritus, Harvey Cox. He was using the class to workshop ideas for his book The Market as God (which I absolutely recommend – it’s written for the layperson so no need for a religion or econ degree to understand it). A brief description of the book: “The Market comes complete with its own doctrines, prophets, and evangelical zeal to convert the world to its way of life. Cox brings that theology out of… Read More
