Now is the time for our financial offering. [Particular donation info, e.g. Donations can be made directly into the baskets being passed around, or online through our website, by mail, or by email. If you donate to the loose collection, then half of your donation will go to the congregation while...

Why do we so readily hand over what's priceless for a meager sum of money—or a major sum, for that matter?

When I was in middle school, I was taught that every person, to some extent, holds a set of prejudices that impact our perceptions of others. We were asked to think about what our prejudices might be, and how they might inform our relationships and our movement through the world....

The offering that we take each Sunday isn't just a stale habit: it's an opportunity to recommit to this place, and to this people. Our offering is an affirmation—a “yes.” When we give, we say yes to something we value. With our gifts, freely given, may we say yes to the values of our faith.

I come on Sunday feeling weary, having worn out the snooze button on my alarm clock. I come on Sunday feeling frightened, having seared my eyes reading the latest news. I come on Sunday feeling burdened, having fretted about my work day worries....

We give to remind ourselves how many gifts we have to offer. We give to remember that we are part of something bigger than ourselves. We give because we believe in music and sacred space. We give with the faith that, together, we have enough.

This religious community exists by its mission as a fire exists by burning. But a fire cannot burn without fuel. And it is the time, the energy, the imagination, the vision, the creativity, the compassion, the love, and the financial support of the members and friends of this community that fuels...

A religious community is like a river formed from the many streams of our lives that meet and merge and flow to the sea....

The light of our chalice would soon flicker and die without the oil that nourishes its flame. And just as this flame cannot burn without oil, this religious community cannot survive or thrive without the financial, as well as personal, support of its members and friends—the oil that keeps the...

Every mother has a different story, though we tend to group them together. We like to think that partnered moms have it good and single moms have it rough, but the truth is that we're a diverse bunch....

An Austrian millionaire was in the news this month for giving away all of his fortune. Why? "For a long time I believed that more wealth and luxury automatically meant more happiness," he said....

In 1935, a US government truck pulled up to my grandfather’s house, a two-room sharecropper’s shack in which sixteen people lived. They were starving to death. Not malnutrition. Starvation. The truck brought surplus food, which on that particular visit consisted of a gallon of mustard. My father...

Last spring, I got a message from the universe. Now I don’t get too many messages from the universe; sometimes I don’t even get my phone messages. But this message was very loud, and it came at four in the morning in the form of a tremendous thud from my closet. This particular message was one...

Moses was a rancher. Long before he became a famous Biblical patriarch who led his people to freedom from slavery, he was a simple rancher. And this simple rancher was tending his flock on the side of a mountain one day circa 1527 BCE, when he came upon a small forest fire—a burning bush. He was...

We say in our church that the offering is a sacrament of the free church. What we mean by that is that we believe it is a blessing to be able to govern and support our religious community ourselves—to make possible by our generosity everything we dream of and do to live out our shared values.

This congregation is a theologically diverse religious community with membership open to all who are in accordance with our principles, mission and vision. We are a Welcoming Congregation to people of all sexual orientations, and we unconditionally welcome any and all of you to our community of...

I hope you all had the opportunity to meet someone new this morning, and I certainly hope to meet all our first-time guests this morning after the service....

Every week in our church we take up an offering. It's good to remind ourselves from time to time that the offering is symbolic as well as practical. We know that it is through pledges that we build our budget and fund our yearly programs and ministries of worship and religious education, pay our...

Fantasies sometimes reveal undisclosed information about ourselves: our hidden phobias, unspoken desires and unexamined motives. And group fantasies say much about our culture—our society's real values as opposed to the ideals that receive mainly lip service.