"I will put my teaching in their minds and write it on their hearts..."
Jeremiah 31:33
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Calendar of Upcoming Events | |
Below are the weekly programs. You can find brief descriptions of these weekly programs on our website. Clickable links are in blue and italicized. | |
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SUNDAY Choir Practice, 9 am in person, Sanctuary
See Tom Ludwig, if interested
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Below are the upcoming non-weekly events on the calendar happening at McFarland UCC for about the next month. All events are on the McFarland UCC calendar with Zoom links and additional information in the details/description area. Click the event on the McFarland UCC calendar to see the details. | |
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Saturday, September 7, 9:00 - 11:00 pm, Befrienders Orientation, (In person & Online), Multipurpose Room
Sunday, September 8, 9:00 - 9:45 am, Choir Practice, Sanctuary
Sunday, September 8, 10:00 am, Worship, Birthday and Communion Sunday
Wednesday, September 11, 6:30 - 7:30 pm, Healing Prayer Service (In person & Online), Sanctuary
Wednesday, September 11, 7:30 - 9:00 pm, Befrienders Training Meeting, (In person & Online), Multipurpose Room
Thursday, September 12, 6:00 - 8:00 pm, Finding Common Ground and Changing Hearts and Minds, Sanctuary
Sunday, September 15, 10:00 am Outdoor Worship Service & Celebration of Life for Rev. Cathy Carlson with luncheon to follow
Sunday, September 15, Monthly Younger Youth Monthly Meeting
Wednesday, September 18, 6:30 - 8:30 pm, Befrienders Training Meeting, (In person & Online), Multipurpose Room
Wednesday, September 25, 6:30 - 8:30 pm, Befrienders Training Meeting, (In person & Online), Multipurpose Room
Thursday, September 26, 6:30 - 8:00 pm, Creation Care Ministry Team Meeting, (In person & Online), Multipurpose Room
Friday, September 27, 7:00 - 9:00 pm, Fall Equinox & Fire Ceremony with Jessica Riphenburg, Outdoor Firepit
Tuesday, October 1, 6:30 - 8:00 pm, Racial Justice Care Team Monthly Meeting, (In person & Online), Multipurpose Room
Wednesday, October 2, 6:30 - 8:30 pm, Befrienders Training Meeting, (In person & Online), Multipurpose Room
Thursday, October 3, 6:30 - 8:30 pm, Justice & Peace in Palestine (In person & Online), Sanctuary
Sunday, October 6, 10:00 am, Birthday & Communion Sunday
Sunday, October 6, 5:30 - 7:00 pm, Teen Youth Monthly Meeting.
Wednesday, October 9, 6:30 - 7:30 pm, Healing Prayer Service (In person & Online), Sanctuary
Wednesday, October 9, 6:30 - 8:30 pm, NO Befrienders Training Meeting, (In person & Online), Multipurpose Room
Thursday, October 10, 6:00 - 8:00 pm, SaLT Monthly Meeting - Rescheduled from 9/12, (In person & Online), Multipurpose Room
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News at McFarland UCC
(Note: Clickable links are blue and italicized.)
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Sing!
The MUCC choir will resume rehearsals on Sunday, September 8. We rehearse every Sunday at 9:00 am, and we sing at about one worship service per month. We welcome back previous singers and always welcome new ones! You do not need to have any experience or the ability to read music. The only requirement is enthusiasm! If you have any questions, speak with or email Tom Ludwig.
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We're Receiving New Members This Sunday, Sept. 8th!
If you'd like to join with this group please contact Pastor Bryan immediately. Still time! (608-577-8716).
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Postcard Writing Campaign to Get Out the Vote-Starting this Sunday
MUCC is partnering with Reclaim Our Vote*, a campaign of the Center for Common Ground, to encourage under-represented voters to vote. We will send 500 postcards by mid-October to people of color in South Carolina and Texas who are registered to vote but have not voted in the past couple of election cycles.
After Sunday services (except Sept. 15) you are invited to write postcards, following a template provided to us by Reclaim Our Vote. We will have postcards, pens, markers, and the script on the tables outside the sanctuary for anyone interested in writing a few postcards.
These handwritten postcards have an impact on the people who receive them. We understand that information is power, and we work to empower voters. Join us!
*Reclaim Our Vote is a grassroots, volunteer-run campaign that focuses on increasing BIPOC voter turnout through post-carding, texting, and phone banking. Through our get-out-the-vote work, we provide early voting locations and times, voter registration deadlines, information for free rides to the polls, and phone numbers for county election officials.
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Pre-registration is requested by Wednesday, September 11, but not required, so sufficient materials may be available.
Questions? Contact Amy Cavi, Becky Cohen, or Kathy Schwenn.
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Sound Bath - Chakra Balance and Affirmations
Sunday, September 15, 3-5 pm in Fellowship Area
Judy Taber and Araceli Wehr have a connection with Karen Jedele and helped coordinate this opportunity.
What is a Sound Bath?
A sound bath is a meditative experience where participants lie down or sit comfortably while sounds and vibrations from various instruments are played. These instruments can include singing bowls, gongs, chimes, drums, and other harmonic tools. The term "bath" implies that the participants are immersed in the sounds, allowing the vibrations to wash over them, promoting relaxation, stress reduction, and sometimes even spiritual or emotional healing. The intention is to create a therapeutic environment where individuals can let go of tension, quiet the mind, and enter a state of deep relaxation or meditation.
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Bill Stoneman, the current McFarland Community Garden Coordinator, expressed the following in the email with this invitation, "We appreciate our opportunity to garden on your church’s grounds and we look forward to seeing you on the 15th." | |
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Send Your Pictures!
The deadline has been extended to September 15. We need you help! Our goal is to update our bulletin board in the fellowship area and our website with fresh photos of our vibrant community! Find recent photos or take photos and submit them to Ginger, our administrative assistant, via email or her office mailbox. If photos are provided, it will be assumed that you grant us permission to have and use the photo. If the photo contains an image of a minor, a parent/guardian will be asked to sign a Minor Photo Release Form.
Let's showcase our "A Church With Heart" spirit!
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THURSDAY, SEPT. 26 | 7 PM | ZOOM
On Thursday, September 26 at 7 pm, the Interfaith Peace Working Group of Wisconsin will offer a live, hour-long Zoom session on the crisis in Gaza.
The session will begin with a presentation by Dr. Peter Makari, one of the most well-informed Church leaders in the United States on developments in the Middle East and Gaza.
As Global Relations Minister for the Middle East and Europe for the United Church of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Peter works closely with the Middle East Council of Churches and with faith communities internationally. Having recently returned from Jerusalem, Peter’s presentation will provide an opportunity for us to hear, first-hand, about the latest developments in Gaza. A question-and-answer session and discussion with Dr. Makari will follow the presentation.
This event is designed to assist spiritual leaders and members of churches and other communities of faith and conscience to understand, from a faith perspective, what is taking place in Gaza. It also offers an opportunity for people and communities of faith to consider what they can do to realize the widely shared hopes of people for peace, an end to violence, and reconciliation in Gaza and Israel/Palestine.
We present this hour-long event in the spirit of faith, hope, and love and welcome all who are hoping and praying for peace to participate in it.
This event is free and no registration is required. Use the button below to access the presentation.
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Mt Morris AME Church Invitations
Racial Justice Ministries members and others have attended events at S.S. Morris Community AME Church in the past as part of our attempt to build relationships with a primarily African American congregation in the area. Their pastor sent these invitations for folks in our congregation to participate if possible, and this is being promoted by our racial justice ministries group. Pastor Bryan will be offering a prayer at the October 6th service in honor of Mt. Morris's anniversary celebration. We look forward to getting to know the congregation of Mt. Morris and to sharing several events and opportunities for discussion and collaboration in the year to come.
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CROP Hunger Walk
Sunday, October 20, 2024
Over the years, McFarland UCC has supported John and Jean Sheild and their commitment to the CROP Hunger Walk. Just as last year they are doing a "virtual" walk to raise money. If you choose to support John and Jean Sheild and the CROP Hunger Walk, you may make a donation online with the link below or mail a check made out to CROP to First Congregational Church, Attn: Jeff Rabe/John & Jean Shield, 1609 University Ave., Madison, WI 53726 by Wed., October 16. Jeff Rabe is the chair of the Madison Area CROP Walk and has agreed to take care of the "paperwork" for John & Jean. Questions? Jeff Rabe 608-232-2142 or jrabe@firstcongmadison.org
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Weekly Creation Care Tips
Reduce/Reuse/Recycle
This week’s Tip: Reuse & Recycle: What to do with used aluminum foil? Your first option would be to wash used foil, dry, fold, and reuse it again as it is safe to keep using it & helps to reduce the environmental impact of mining. Once it is no longer usable, wad clean foil into a ball the size of a baseball & put it into your Pellitteri Recycling container. You can save small pieces to mold together into a ball. If left flat, the recycling machine will recognize it as paper & send it to the wrong place for recycling. The dirty foil should be thrown into the regular garbage. Make sure that the item is aluminum by noting if it remains in a ball shape (good to go), or if it does not (though it may look like foil, it is not & needs to go into the regular garbage, or possibly with other snack bag plastic recycling at the Village Hall; an example may be cracker packaging).
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A Few Words from Pastor Bryan
...and Barbara Brown Taylor
Well I sure had a wonderful vacation the past two weeks. Went to my brother's condo in South Carolina once again. Such a beautiful and soulful place. I feel refreshed and renewed, though it's been quite a busy week and it's amazing how quickly things can return to "way too busy." I know many of you are also feel it with the summer over and the school year and all the programs kicking in. I'm doing my best to keep things in some semblance of balance. Let's try to help each other with that.
One of the things I very deliberately did during vacation was to take a break from the news and from "the world out there" for the most part. That was a gift, and it gave me lots of time to reflect.
Among other things, I found myself thinking lots about truth. More specifically, I found myself reflecting on the fact that I have very little confidence at this point in history that we have access to reliable information about what's really going on in the world.
Oh I'm not naive. There have always been vested interests with reasons to twist and manipulate the news and to dictate the dominant narrative and course of public awareness and conversation. But in these days of network and cable infotainment and dark unaccountable and unrestricted money being pumped into all of our systems, it seems that just about every news source has an obvious ideological agenda or is run by a corporation or powerful (and usually narcissistic) individual with a privately owned and skewed perspective that is clearly NOT about a commitment to truth.
I'm not cynical or jaded. I'm actually stubbornly hopeful, thank God. But the crisis when it comes to access to truth seems worse than ever to me. Part of it is the internet and what AI and social media algorithms are doing to all of us. It's a complex stew of external manipulations and internal obsessions that we are all addicted to and upon which we willingly and compulsively feed. I'm no exception. When is the last time any of us have gone a day without looking at our cell phone or some device?
As I said, I just have very little confidence in any of the major corporate owned media sources. Maybe the BBC. Maybe PBS. Better than most, but still. Follow the money...
All of this made me think more about Jesus. And it struck me in my reflection that one of the reasons I'm so powerfully drawn to Jesus is because in him I see a human being who was all about embodying, living, and standing for truth. No games. No unhealthy ego. No manipulation. No distortion. No half-truths. I like to capitalize it. Truth. Jesus said, "I am the Truth" in John 14:6 (a much-misunderstood text in my opinion). He said, "...the Truth will set you free" in John 8:32 (that verse is also on the entrance to the CIA headquarters in Langley, VA).
But the verse that really grabbed me is that last conversation Jesus had with Pilate, the Roman leader who put him to death on a cross and an enemy of the empire. Most of us have at least heard how Pilate responded to Jesus by asking that fated question, "What is truth?" But here's what Jesus said before that in John 18:37. When Pilate asked Jesus if he was king of the Jews and thus a threat to Caesar, Jesus said;
"For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice."
You know over the years I've found myself in countless complicated conversations about Jesus, religion, what the Bible does and doesn't say, who Jesus was and why he came. And after almost 50 years of being the Bible nerd and Jesus freak that I am, it's all gotten pretty simple for me. I usually wind up just saying something like, "Look--all I really care about is what's most real and most loving. In other words, what's True. That's what I'm looking for." Often I end my prayers by saying, "I pray in the Name of Jesus, and in the Name of all that's good, and beautiful, and true." Because for me it's the same thing.
And that leads me to Barbara Brown Taylor. Here's a quote from her that I shared this week with our morning devotional group.
“Having been brought up with a definition of faith as adherence to a set of beliefs, I have more and more begun to turn instead toward a definition of faith as openness to truth, whatever truth may turn out to be. And, I have learned to prize holy ignorance more highly than religious certainty and to seek companions who have arrived at the same place.”
Faith is "openness to truth, whatever truth may turn out to be." Yes. That's what I long for. And that's the Path of Jesus, at least as I understand it.
So let's be a community of truth seekers who are doing our very best, with the Spirit's help, to access, discover, and discern truth, live truth, love truth, stand for truth, and share truth (as we walk humbly with God) with the world. And also to call out the lies when we must, but I'll leave the implications of that for another time!
Hope to see you soon,
Pastor Bryan
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