Sunday Worship
Worship Streams for Sunday, October 24, 2021
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We will gather for worship at 10:00 am
Together is a good place to be! Whoever you are, you're welcome here.
In person worship in the church building at 4790 SE Logus Rd, Milwaukie OR 97222.
For the time being, face masks are required while inside the building.
We also ask that everyone follow social distancing guidelines.
Simultaneous live-streaming over the KMUCC Zoom Worship Space.
Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/984869259?pwd=YzQ0MEpRZXdYdE5JWDZ2SUYvZXc3UT09
Meeting ID: 984 869 259
Passcode: 314810
Join us by phone: (253) 215-8782 USA, or (301) 715-8592 USA
Impermanence
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As my younger son begins his senior year of college, as the days grow shorter and the trees brighten into their autumn colors, I’ve been thinking about impermanence and how we learn to love what doesn’t last.
You don’t have to pay close attention to cultural trends to know that the role of religious organizations is changing in American culture. Across the whole spectrum of Christian denominations membership and participation have been in steep decline for at least the last twenty years. (There is a slight upward trend among Mainstream/liberal Protestant denominations like ours in the last five years, but not a rebound to mid-twentieth century levels, and that’s another article…) It’s easy to look at the religious landscape and long to go back – back to how things used to be – to cling tightly to the past.
But I wonder if there is another way to live faithfully amid changes we did not anticipate or desire. I wonder if we can get curious about the way Christianity has changed across its whole long history and imagine what possibilities the current moment holds.
In 2014 Fr Richard Rohr wrote: “Much of what Jesus taught seems to have been followed closely during the first several hundred years after his death and resurrection. As long as Jesus’ followers were on the bottom and the edge of empire, as long as they shared the rejected and betrayed status of Jesus, they could grasp his teaching more readily. Values like nonparticipation in war, simple living, inclusivity, and love of enemies could be more easily understood when Christians were gathering secretly in the catacombs.” And then, almost overnight, the church went from the catacombs to the great Basilicas, from the margins to the very center of Imperial power.
Perhaps in our moment the church is being cracked not apart, but open, so that we can find our way all the way back to the teachings of Jesus, and to the original creed of the church: “now there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male or female, for we are all one in Christ.”* Perhaps we are being called to let go of all our precious markers of identity, become traitors to our ethnicity, class, and gender and become a new people. A people motivated by the transforming love Jesus taught and lived.
As we continue our fall worship series on “revolutionary love,” I invite you to think about the saints in our community who have loved others, opponents, and themselves well. Because even as the institutional church has often lost its way, saints and prophets have risen up within it, to call it back to itself. Some of them right here in our community. Who are or were those saints? What did you learn from them about loving well? What lesson of theirs shall we carry with us into the bright, uncertain, beautiful future?
Will you share your memory with the whole community during our November All Saints Day and Thanksgiving celebrations? Let’s gather and lean on our great cloud of witnesses.
*See Stephen Patterson, “The Forgotten Creed: Christianity's Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism,” 2018
Fall Market 2021
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Saturday, October 16, 2021 from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm
Quilts, scarves, pottery, puzzles, jams and jellies, crafts, baked goods, books and more.
In the church parking lot at 4790 SE Logus Road, Milwaukie OR 97222.
Please observe appropriate masking and social distancing. Thank you.
See No Stranger Book Study
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This fall, we are spending eight weeks putting Valerie Kaur's book, See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love, in conversation with the Gospel of Jesus.
Kaur is a civil rights activist, filmmaker, and Sikh faith leader; a visionary calling diverse allies to transform the world in revolutionary love. She asks, "What if the darkness of our world just now is the darness, not of the tomb, but of the womb?"
We're forming a weekly book group to engage in this work together.
Wednesday Evenings at 7:00 pm, September 15, to November 3, 2021
Meeting on Zoom
Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82042176033?pwd=VGxjc3c4cUVRcFBBL3pmSmtUbXRpdz09
Meeting ID: 820 4217 6033
Passcode: 502327
Or by calling: 253-215-8782 or 301-715-8592
Theology On Tap
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Theology On Tap: 7:00 pm on the 3rd Tuesday each month
This isn't a closed group or an event you need to have been to before. If you like to talk with your church friends about life, the universe, and everything, come on in!
Currently reading Reading Diana Butler Bass’ book “Freeing Jesus: Rediscovering Jesus as Friend, Teacher, Savior, Lord, Way, and Presence”
ZOOM gathering
Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86121354549?pwd=eThVUE1wZEVaVWZzM2VVcENHVGZqQT09
Meeting ID: 861 2135 4549
Passcode: 596986
No matter who ...
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No matter who you are, or where you are on life's journey, you're welcome here!
If you know that God's love embraces all persons equally, no matter their gender, race, or sexual identity...
If you understand that faith is a matter of mind as well as heart, and that taking the Bible seriously means it cannot always be taken literally...
If, for you, diversity, tolerance, and inclusion are strengths to be taught...
If you believe that Christ calls us to be nothing less than global citizens, that the social expression of love is justice and that spiritual concerns are inseparable from a commitment to the natural world...
If you have wished for a more open and embracing community of faith to nurture your spirit and raise your children, and haven't yet found a place of belonging...
... then please know that Kairos-Milwaukie United Church of Christ is the place for you.
Kairos-Milwaukie UCC seeks to create a community where participants can experience intellectual and spiritual excitement; a spirit of openness and acceptance, as well as love and laughter. We are a community where evangelism is in partnership with social justice; where personal spiritual growth and concern for the poor and disenfranchised go hand in hand; where nurture and action are two sides of the same coin; where love for tradition and a sense of urgency about the future are integrally linked. We are a community of faithful people who have known the joy of having been loved, accepted and affirmed by God. We are a community that celebrates our diversity as a way to understand and respond to the inclusiveness of God's love and the wideness of God's mercy.