Grace to you and peace, from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ!  I am grateful for many conversations this week around the subject of faith, trust, and belief, sometimes noting differences among them and sometimes simply naming how difficult it can be to live into any of them.  To read the scripture lessons from Genesis and Matthew as our lectionary text for this Sunday feels no mere coincidence as a result.  How do we lean into or build our faith and our trust in God?  I look forward to sharing together in community, which always has the effect of bolstering my own faith.  I hope you’ll join us!

Following worship, I hope that many of you will stay for coffee and fellowship and that everyone interested in supporting our children’s programming will join in conversation to further plan this summer’s Peaceable Kin-dom for school aged children.  Tell all your friends about its return on June 27-29th, when we will be celebrating Nature and Creation!

Blessings and peace, Lisa

Grace to you and peace, from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ! On this first Sunday of June, we celebrate Communion together.  So, those of you who are worshipping from home may want to prepare for yourself a portion of bread and cup so that you may share with us.  We will also be celebrating together the mystery of the Trinity, God in three persons as we understand God’s presence in our lives as creator, redeemer and sustainer.  We will answer together the question of how we perceive God and pray together that the beautiful dance that is the Trinity might be a model for our living together in unity, as well.  Children are welcome to participate in the service in every way, with separate children’s programming beginning again soon.

Blessings and peace, Lisa

Grace to you and peace, from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ!  We are blessed with a glorious weekend, one on which we honor the many who have died in armed conflict through the years.  This Sunday also is Pentecost, when we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the Church.  It is a tradition in the Church worldwide to wear red on Pentecost, symbolizing the Spirit!  Imagine the array we will have in the sanctuary when you do so on Sunday! 

Our focus texts tomorrow inspire us to conceive of church in hopeful ways, and you are invited to come dream dreams together.  We are a congregation, a church that has been mightily blessed by the examples of our forebears.  We worship in a building preserved through the financial gifts of generations, with tradition that has developed through millennia.  We also serve the community well because of the gifts of current and past members.  With the sale of the parsonage, we have been provided the means to continue the work of this church for even longer.  How we do so is up to us, and we are committed to sharing with the community the blessing of this particular gift of a century ago.  Where housing was provided through the parsonage, many of us have been discussing the housing shortage in our area and how we might be part of alleviating the struggle for so many.  In the months ahead, in conversation with different community organizations who are also committed to vibrancy for all on the Blue Hill peninsula, we look forward to creatively supporting our neighbors.  Come and be part of the conversation!  Come worship together the One who has given us all good things! 

Blessings and peace, Lisa

Grace to you and peace, from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ!  The United Church of Christ took as its motto in 1957 the line from John 17 in which Jesus prays “that they may all be one.”  This passage falls in the lectionary for this Sunday and asks that we regard the church and its many members closely and to ask ourselves hard questions regarding why we continue to be so divided.  Won’t you come join us as we discern together how to best love each other and the whole world?  What greater challenge and charge have we to answer?   
Blessings and peace, Lisa

Worship at Home Materials:  We will be offering worship in-person as well as on Zoom this coming Sunday. Coffee & tea are available after the church service. We ask that if you have not yet been vaccinated you attend worship via Zoom. 

A Reading from the Book of Acts                  Acts 17:22-31       

A Reading from the Gospels                          John 14:15-21

Message                “Spawn”                           Pastor Lisa

Dear friends, the memorial service for Rob McCall, longtime minister here at the First Congregational Church of Blue Hill (and inspirational friend to many around the peninsula and beyond), will be on Saturday, May 13th at 2:00 p.m.  The service will also be available via Zoom and streamed live on our Facebook page. The Zoom link will be as follows: 

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/88390626374

Meeting ID: 883 9062 6374
Passcode: 362452
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