Pastor Brian's Blog

@Home Series Overview We have all been spending more time at home and finding in it a mixture of refuge and confinement.   Home is where the heart is, as well as the place where we experience the limits of our humanness.   With Thomas Dumm’s Home in America (2019), we will tour five legendary American homes from Thomas Jefferson’s plantation house and Henry David Thoreau’s rustic cabin to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s little house, Emily Dickinson’s brick homestead, and Herman Wallace’s dream house.   Our exploration of these residential archetypes will help us consider how we imagine and inhabit life at home, especially in light of our faith.   June 7 MONTICELLO: Thomas Jefferson’s plantation home is an early American architectural masterpiece whose master was both a prophet of freedom and a practitioner of slavery.   In Psalm 84 , the poet declares the Jerusalem Temple’s beauty, a house of worship that Solomon built with slave labor.   Eve...

New guidelines from the governor and our bishop allow for our worship team to record videos in the Sanctuary with proper precautions. Religious services are now included as "an essential activity," according to Section 2.5.vi of the governor's COVID-19 Executive Order #30 (April 30, 2020): " To engage in the free exercise of religion .  To engage in the free exercise of religion, provided that such exercise must comply with Social Distancing Requirements and the limit on gatherings of more than ten people in keeping with CDC guidelines for the protection of public health.  Religious organizations and houses of worship are encouraged to use online or drive-in services to protect the health and safety of their congregants." In her recent response to the governor's revised order, the bishop has stated that "small groups, Bible study, council and committee meetings, and any other gatherings should still take place online."  However, p...