by Kent French, March 14, 2024
This Lent (February 14-March 30), our worship and Church School curriculum follows A Sanctified Art’s Wandering Heart series, reflecting on the sometimes mercurial discipleship of Peter and the words of a favorite hymn, “Come, O Fount of Every Blessing.” Come on Sunday and we’ll reflect on Matthew 18:15-22, in which Jesus gives challenging instructions about how to work through conflict and forgiveness with someone who’s offended you. When Peter shows a real interest in learning more about it and asks “How many times should I forgive…as many as seven times?” Jesus responds: “Seventy times seven.” That’s a lot of forgiveness. In preparation,… Read More
by Kent French, March 06, 2024
*Daylight Savings Time Begins this Sunday, March 10. Turn clocks ahead one hour.* This Lent (February 14-March 30), our worship and Church School curriculum follows A Sanctified Art’s Wandering Heart series, reflecting on the sometimes mercurial discipleship of Peter and the words of a favorite hymn, “Come, O Fount of Every Blessing.” Withstanding Hard Times Sometimes the news seems too hard to hear. A challenging medical diagnosis. The end of a relationship. A job layoff. A debilitating accident. A financial setback. We’d rather turn the other way. We’d do anything to change it. Our response might be “No, no, no!” To put… Read More
by Amy Norton, February 29, 2024
This Lent (February 14-March 30) our worship and Church School curriculum follows A Sanctified Art’s Wandering Heart series, reflecting on the sometimes mercurial discipleship of Peter and the words of a favorite hymn, “Come, O Fount of Every Blessing.” On Sunday, we’ll be continuing our Lenten journey with Simon as Jesus bestows a new name upon him and cements him forevermore in our narrative as Peter. This nickname, Petros (or Kephas, in Aramaic), might best be appreciated by English speakers as “Rocky” (or maybe “the Rock,” if you’re a Fast & Furious fan). And what an exultant moment for Rocky this is. Blurting… Read More
by Amy Norton, February 20, 2024
This Lent (February 14-March 30) our worship and Church School curriculum follows A Sanctified Art’s Wandering Heart series, reflecting on the sometimes mercurial discipleship of Peter and the words of a favorite hymn, “Come, O Fount of Every Blessing.” On Sunday, we’ll be continuing our Lenten journey with Peter (still named Simon at this point in the narrative), back out onto his boat in the middle of a stormy sea of Galilee. In those days, before aquariums and marine biology and underwater cameras, the ocean’s depths were a foreboding mystery that still very much inhabited the cultural zeitgeist as the realm of scary… Read More
by Kent French, February 15, 2024
This Lent (February 14-March 30) our worship and Church School curriculum follows A Sanctified Art’s Wandering Heart series, reflecting on the sometimes mercurial discipleship of Peter and the words of a favorite hymn, “Come, O Fount of Every Blessing.” Jesus’ first disciples were everyday people: minding their own business, mending their nets, supporting their families, worrying about expenses, paying their taxes, fretting about the future. First and foremost among them was Peter. He’s a compelling guy, often impulsive, leaping before he looks, getting it wrong at least as much as he gets it right, making promises he can’t keep. Much… Read More
by Kent French, February 08, 2024
This Lent (February 14-March 30) our worship and Church School curriculum follows A Sanctified Art’s Wandering Heart series, following the sometimes mercurial discipleship of Peter and the words of a favorite hymn, “Come, O Fount of Every Blessing.” This is the last Sunday before we launch once again into the season of Lent, those 40 days when we commemorate Jesus’ days in the wilderness and seek to deepen in our own faith and spiritual practices. This Sunday, we’ll offer a prelude to Lent, as we lean into the Wandering Heart series described above (check out the link). Often, before the… Read More
by Amy Norton, February 01, 2024
January 21-February 4, our worship continues following our Church School curriculum from the autumn, Seeking Peace Together, as we learn in worship alongside the youngest members of our community. We had just chosen the hymn In the Bleak Midwinter for our Advent midweek worship when we turned to planning some of our post-Christmas Sundays, and noted humorously the seeming incongruence of “Celebrating the Harvest” during the depths of the “Bleak Midwinter.” The text this week forms the basis of the holiday of Sukkot, or the Festival of Booths, that our Jewish siblings still celebrate to this day. In part a… Read More
by Kent French, January 25, 2024
January 21-February 4, our worship continues following our Church School curriculum from the autumn, Seeking Peace Together, as we learn in worship alongside the youngest members of our community. Peacemakers join God in caring for the Earth. On Sunday, we will revisit the second Creation story in Genesis (chapter 2, verses 4-23) and imagine what it would have felt like to wake up in the original Garden of Eden: What would we notice? What would surprise us? Where would our sense of wonder go? How does this original, primal wonder inform our relationship with this Earthly garden today? How much… Read More
by Kent French, January 18, 2024
January 21-February 4, our worship continues following our Church School curriculum from the autumn, Seeking Peace Together, as we learn in worship alongside the youngest members of our community. This Sunday, we pick up where our Church School curriculum left off in November, pre-Advent and Christmastide. And we start back in with a radical concept of wartime hospitality and a doozy of a biblical story to ground us (2 Kings 6:8-23). The story is so strange to our modern sensibility, that it comes across like creatively re-imagined history, with a whole lot magical realism thrown in. And yet, as we… Read More
by Amy Norton-Benfield, January 11, 2024
Dear Ones, I hope you will join us at 9:45am downstairs in Willett Hall on Sunday for our annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Intergenerational Morning of Service! There are service activities for every age and ability (drawing, scrubbing, tying, painting, connecting, and more!), and every little bit helps! Afterwards, in worship (also in Willett Hall), we’ll be delving into this year’s theme from The King Center: “It Starts With Me”. We’ll hear two stories of unlikely individuals called to join a movement they knew nothing about; and thanks to their leaps of curiosity, ended up making a whole… Read More
