An Invitation

Like many of you, I was not raised in the United Church of Christ. I grew up in a non-practicing, nominally Protestant household, absorbing my early understanding of God and Jesus from the cultural signals around me in Edina: Garrison Keillor, kids who wrote “Jesus” on their backpack, over-the-top Christmas displays at the Galleria. This meant that when I first began to explore Christianity in earnest, I was not tightly shackled by theologies foisted on me by my parents or conservative youth pastors—ones that might have made me feel judged for who I was: a tattooed, queer, feminist, Buddhist scholar who is sometimes foul-mouthed, sometimes pink-haired.

In our church of 700+ members, you will find 700+ stories about one’s first encounter and understanding of Christianity. 700+ stories about how each of you learned and unlearned and learned again about Christianity, and how you continue to do so. Just among our newest members and visitors, we have some from more conversative Evangelical Christian or Pentecostal backgrounds, some from Catholicism, some from Unitarian Universalism, some from Hinduism. Each of us has followed a distinct spiritual path that led us to Mayflower/Creekside and to one another. Our diversity of spiritual experience and practice and belief about the divine is one of the beautiful things about our community, and about our wider denomination, the UCC. That diversity—and our non-doctrinaire positionality—reflects our God who cannot be contained by any conceptual boundary.

But it begs the question: what are the particular theological frames and practices that knit us together in our diversity of belief and practice in the UCC and Mayflower/Creekside?

In late January and early February, I invite you to join me over four weeks to re-discover the fundamentals that shape us and find your own place within them. Over four weeks starting on January 12, our adult confirmation classes between services will explore God and the Holy Spirit, Jesus, and Church (both the UCC and Mayflower/Creekside).

We offer a special and eager invitation to newcomers (members or visitors who’ve joined us this past year), but these classes are open to all. They will be short on presentation and long on discussion—so whether you’ve had lots of Christian Education or little, I expect you’ll learn new things, just as I learn new things about God from members of this church all the time.

—Rev. Susie