Sunday Worship | Skyline United Church of Christ

Archive for Sunday Worship

Using Zoom

Posted by Nancy Montier on

May 28, 2020

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Join us on Zoom at 10:00 AM

Click on the zoom link – https://zoom.us/j/716026467 (this one is for Sunday service at 10 AM)
You’ll be taken to zoom.us, and a dialogue appears, usually at the top of your screen. Click on the button labeled “Open URL:Zoom Launcher”.
You’ll either get a box that says Wait for Host to Start the Meeting, or a box that says Join with Video / Join Without Video? Once the host starts the meeting, click either button to join the meeting – preferably with video so we can see you!
With your cursor on the zoom screen, once you are in the meeting, you can click on the microphone icon and the camera icon (lower left corner) to turn audio and video on and off. Keep audio off unless asked to turn on your audio.

Need help with zoom? Click here for a tutorial.

Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/716026467
Meeting ID: 716 026 467
Dial in by phone 1-669-900-9128

New: Access the Sunday Bulletin Here (at the time of sending this email, the bulletin is incomplete. It will be done by Friday evening, so come back anytime after that for the final bulletin!)

11:15 am Virtual Coffee Hour:
Zoom link https://zoom.us/j/716026467

Categories : Sunday Worship

Tags : online, remote, virtual, zoom, zoom instructions

Pentecost – the Power and Mystery of the Holy Spirit

Posted by Nancy Montier on

May 27, 2020

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This Sunday we celebrate the power and Mystery of the Holy Spirit!

She is that powerful, moving, invisible yet real presence, blowing into our lives as gently as each breath, or as powerfully as a hurricane. She is that energy heating up our lives as gently as a candle, or with the awesome power of a wildfire. Which version of the Spirit do you prefer?

This Sunday, we honor the moment when the disciples experienced the Holy Spirit and realized that they no longer needed the physical presence of Jesus. Each of them had his own inner conduit to God. So do we, if we dare to seek her.

Here’s how Luke (Acts 2:1-6) describes the moment, in the Message

When the Feast of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Without warning there was a sound like a strong wind, gale force—no one could tell where it came from. It filled the whole building. Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks, and they started speaking in a number of different languages as the Spirit prompted them.

There were many Jews staying in Jerusalem just then, devout pilgrims from all over the world. When they heard the sound, they came on the run. Then when they heard, one after another, their own mother tongues being spoken, they were thunderstruck. They couldn’t for the life of them figure out what was going on, and kept saying, “Aren’t these all Galileans? How come we’re hearing them talk in our various mother tongues?

The Pentecost spirit is captured in a powerful poem by William Blake:

Unless the eye catch fire,
The God will not be seen.
Unless the ear catch fire
The God will not be heard.
Unless the tongue catch fire
The God will not be named.
Unless the heart catch fire,
The God will not be loved.
Unless the mind catch fire,
The God will not be known.

Dare we catch fire?

I look forward to seeing you in worship this Sunday!

Categories : Messages from the Pastor, Sunday Worship

Tags : Holy Spirit, Pentecost, William Blake

Children’s Time this Sunday, April 19, Celebrating Earth – Virtual!

Posted by Nancy Montier on

April 17, 2020

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Children’s Time Zoom!

This Sunday, April 19. 11:30 AM
This week, we’ll look at creation and hear about Earth Day. Here’s what’s in store:

Story Time: Mirabella is a little fairy who appreciates all that God has created! Come along with her for a trip to see some of her favorite things.
Jokes Junction: Get ready to laugh (or groan!) at these corny jokes!
Art Sharing Time: Show us something you’ve made or color some of our Earth Day-themed coloring pages. Click the link, print and get creative!
After Service Family Chat: We’ll have a time of sharing to catch up and connect with children and families.

Children’s Time Zoom Meeting Sunday, April 19 at 11:30 a.m. (PST)
https://zoom.us/j/241524878

Categories : Events, Sunday Worship

Tags : Children, Earth Day, family, Storytellng

Connecting, Updates, Prayer and Palm/Passion Sunday

Posted by Nancy Montier on

April 1, 2020

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Here we are, in April, beginning another month of sheltering in place. What a time we are living through!

Even in the midst of this there are blessings. Among them has been the blessing of communicating with you through social media: worshiping, studying, praying and yes, even sharing birthday celebrations and happy hours together.

I am grateful to the virtual teams within our faith community, rising up to offer all kinds of support within and beyond us. I hope you were able to join the zoom crowd who worshiped online this week. If you missed it, you can find it here on our website. Many of us are using zoom for the first time, and here’s a helpful tutorial to get started. You can always call me on my cell phone! All of our computers are facing buffering challenges due to the overload on various platforms and the internet in general, please be patient.

Last Sunday, the 29th of March, I lifted up the theme of grief, so I want to offer a helpful article for you to better understand your own experience of grief.

Please continue to check our weekly email, our Facebook page, and our website for updates.

This Sunday is Palm/Passion Sunday— please find a palm, or a leafy branch, or a symbol of gratitude for praising the heroes of our time, and bring it with you for our service. And, before you sit down to participate in the Zoom service (here’s the link), please have ready nearby elements of food and drink to share in our agape meal, remembering Jesus and all those we love that we wish were here with us, and all those in need, especially during the pandemic. Finally, David G. is leading a Zoom Children’s time at 11:30 – read more here.

Prayer for today:

You have been our strength, O God.
At the beginning of the day you brought us from darkness into light.
At the ending of the day you lead us from busyness into stillness.
In earth’s cycles and seasons you offer us new life and fresh beginnings.
Be our strength this day and the strength of new beginnings in our world.
Be our help, O God, and the help of those who cry out in need.
~ by John Philip Newell, excerpt from Celtic Treasure: Daily Scriptures and Prayer

Prayer in music & videos:

Inspiration

Categories : Community, Events, Messages from the Pastor, Sunday Worship

Tags : coronavirus, Palm Sunday, prayer, virus

Video Recordings of Past Services

Posted by Nancy Montier on

March 27, 2020

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March 15 – Recorded at the church by Tom
March 22 – Wonderful interactive zoom service. Ken, Benjamin, Gabrielle and Pastor Laurie.
March 29 – Topic is grief, Ken, Benjamin, Gabrielle and Pastor Laurie.
April 5 – Palm Sunday, with Ken, Benjamin, Gabrielle and Pastor Laurie.
April 5 – Donkey Odie tells his story for Palm Sunday with David G.
April 9 – Good Friday with Ken, Benjamin, Gabrielle and Pastor Laurie.
April 12 – Easter Sunday Service with Ken, Gabrielle, Benjamin and Pastor Laurie
April 12 – Children’s Time, Easter Sunday, with Enriquita KittyKat and Edmund Caterpillar
April 19 – Sunday Service
April 19 – Children’s Time with Mirabelle Fairy and David G.
April 22 – 50th Anniversary of Earth day
April 26 – Sunday Service
April 26 – Children’s Time with Enriquita who learns how to be kind even when she can’t go out
May 3 – Sunday Service
May 3 – Children’s time (repeat of April 26)
May 10 – Sunday Service (Family Friendly service that includes Children’s time and story telling)
May 10 – Children’s time story: “The Waiting Room”
May 17 – Sunday Service
May 24 – Sunday Service
May 31 – Sunday Pentecost Service
June 7 – Sunday Service – (Sermon, scripture, sermon response only)
June 14 – Sunday Service (27 minutes)
June 21 – Sunday Service (34 min)
June 28 – Sunday Service (22 min)

Categories : Messages from the Pastor, Sermons, Sunday Worship, Worship

Tags : online, Online service, recording, video, virtual, zoom

Shelter-in-Place Virtual Worship Services and Gatherings

Posted by Nancy Montier on

March 18, 2020

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Photo by Paolo Nicolello on Unsplash

Virtual Worship, Bible Study and Prayer

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven… Now is the time for “shelter in place” here in the greater Bay Area. It is a time to refrain from embracing, i.e. physical distancing. And more than ever, it is a time for social and emotional connection.

Skyline is utilizing Zoom.us for our virtual worship services and weekly gatherings. Zoom links and numbers are listed below for accessing the events on your computer, your smart phone, or a regular phone call.

Sunday Services are being delivered by Zoom Meeting at 10 AM. (You will access all Sunday Zoom calls at this link or number)
Sundays, 10:00 – 11:00am
https://zoom.us/j/716026467
Meeting ID: 716 026 467
Dial in by phone 1-669-900-9128
Dial in by phone: 1-346-248-7799
Video of past services will be available.
Here is a video of our Sunday, March 15 worship, recorded and edited by our very own Tom Manley!
Pastor Laurie’s virtual bible study, Weekly on Tuesdays. 10:30 – 11:30 am.
First meeting – Tuesday, March 24⋅10:30 – 11:30 am
https://zoom.us/j/901784352
Meeting ID: 901 784 352 One tap mobile
Dial in by phone 1-669-900-9128
Dial in by phone: 1-346-248-7799
Pastor Laurie’s Prayer, Care, and Share time, every Friday from ⋅1:00 – 2:00 pm. Join us for a time of praying, caring, and sharing! If you’re at home, you’re invited to light your own candle, so we’ll all have our candles together. We’ll gather with a little meditative music, then spend some time lifting up our prayers together. In this stressful and uncertain moment, perhaps we need to turn to prayer even more than usual. Join us, breathe deep, and trust that the Spirit will be with us wherever we are. Whenever two or three are gathered in the name of God, even gathered digitally, the Spirit is in the space between, connecting our hearts and strengthening us. Hope to see you for our collective prayer:
https://zoom.us/j/910815155
Meeting ID: 910 815 155
Dial in by phone 1-669-900-9128
Dial in by phone: 1-346-248-7799

Categories : Church in the World, Community, Families, Messages from the Pastor, Our Church, Sunday Worship

Tags : bible study, coronavirus, prayer, virtual worship, worship

Love and Listen Deeply

Posted by Nancy Montier on

September 17, 2019

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This Sunday we gather to celebrate love, including a family friendly picnic with lots of games and activities for all ages, an encore performance of the “Parable of the Dancing Queen” and a beautiful worship service!

A friend of mine is getting married, and she and her fiancé recently asked if I would marry them. Of course, I said, yes. Here’s a poem she shared with me today, which in turn, I would love to share with you!

God is still speaking! Let us create the time and space within our hours, to listen deeply.

Why am I reaching again for the brushes
When I paint your portrait, God,
nothing happens.

But I can choose to feel you.

At my senses’ horizon
you appear hesitantly,
like scattered islands.

Yet standing here, peering out,
I’m all the time seen by you.

The choruses of angels use up all of heaven.
There’s no more room for you
in all that glory. You’re living
in your very last house.

All creation holds its breath, listening within me,
because, to hear you, I keep silent.

~ Ranier Maria Rilke ~

(Rilke’s Book of Hours:Love Poems to God, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

Categories : Messages from the Pastor, Sunday Worship

Tags : Rilke, stillspeaking

Pride Sunday – Welcome Home!

Posted by Nancy Montier on

September 12, 2019

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Last weekend Oakland celebrated LGBTQ+ Pride in a tastefully, over -the -top way!

This Sunday, September 15th, we will bring LGBTQ+ Pride to Skyline, in worship!

We will celebrate Pride with a family friendly service, featuring the Parable of the Dancing Queen, written by our very own Tim Carter, former Senior Producer at Sesame Street and winner of 14 Emmy awards!! Also featured are puppetry and costuming, from our very own David G. and Alegra Figeroid, artists extraordinaire!

After all, it’s a big year! Fifty years ago, the Pride movement began in the US. on June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in NYC. Just think of it….Skyline and Pride were both born out of the liberation and justice movements fifty years ago, as part of the evolving understanding of the equal rights of women, people of color, LGBTQ people, indigenous people, and the ecumenical interfaith movement, as well as the wisdom that with our evolving understanding of science and human development, so too must our faith evolve. Ours is a still speaking God!

Have you ever felt left out? Excluded? Singled out for being different? How did you feel? Did you ever want to run away from home, from school, from church, your country, from it all? Have you ever yearned to find other people who really saw you and understood you and loved you for who you are? Have you ever yearned to be free to sing, dance, and just be yourself? I think of Jesus’s parable for this Sunday, of the lost and found coins, sheep, and people; and God’s love for each and every one of us: seeking, finding, loving, and welcoming us home, just as we are.

When the UCC, Golden Gate Association in 1972, ordained Bill Johnson as the first openly gay minister in an historical protestant denomination and to become the first denomination to support equal marriage rights for same sex couples, we were saying welcome home! You are part of the family.

When, in 2008, at the height of the debate over the Prop 8 same-sex marriage legislation in California, Skyline hung a banner in front of the church entrance, proclaiming to every passerby “Support Marriage Equality. We do.” we were saying welcome home! You are part of the family.

And when I, Skyline’s pastor Laurie, blessed same sex couples for many years before it was a legal right, and urged all heterosexual couples I married to stand in solidarity with them, until the day that this became a legal right for all people, we were saying welcome home! You are part of the family.

Read more about UCC’s LGBTQ actions and programs.

Welcome home! It’s Pride Sunday! Children are especially welcome!!

Categories : Church in the World, Community, Messages from the Pastor, Sunday Worship

Tags : drama, gay pride, LGBT, LGBTQ, pride, skit, worship

Power of Love in the Midst of Destruction

Posted by Nancy Montier on

April 3, 2019

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The prophet Isaiah, thousands of years ago, described God’s creative power – bringing forth new life in the midst of destruction, within and all around us:

Thus says the LORD, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters,
who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick:
Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
The wild animals will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches; for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people,
the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise.
Isaiah 43:16-21

Join us this Sunday, as we awaken to this power of love within, and all around us.

Photo by ardito-ryan-harrisna-1194309-unsplash

Categories : Messages from the Pastor, Sunday Worship

Tags : Easter, isaiah, Lent, Love

Gratitude

Posted by Nancy Montier on

November 20, 2018

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Photo by Pro Church Media on Unsplash

It has been a hard week, especially for children and those with respiratory conditions given the poor air quality in the aftermath of the worst fire in California history. Yet, the faithful remnant arrived to worship on Sunday, donning our M95 masks, and focusing on gratitude and compassion. Special thanks to Tim Carter, David G. and Al Figeroid for their amazing Thanksgiving skit! (Please see photos and video below.)

We also offered gifts to support the people of Butte County, especially in Paradise and have opportunities to share more (please see article below).

We are reminded with every breath that we share the same air, and that we are more connected than we realize. May the breath, the Spirit of God, unite us together despite all that seeks to divide us. May we resolve to care more deeply for the earth, for one another, for future generations, and for poor people of color, globally and locally, who live in disproportionally more polluted areas.

May we remember, especially on this Thanksgiving, the heroism of Squanto who showed unconditional love to the Pilgrims despite his entrapment and enslavement by white skinned people; to those he could have easily seen as the enemy. May we remember that this sacred land that we live on was first their land. May we remember the wisdom of the Native Americans who recognized their deep connection with this precious planet.

Next Sunday join us for a conversation about becoming more conscious of our own white privilege, and a discussion after worship on Robin D’Angelo’s book, “White Fragility”. If you haven’t ordered the book, and don’t have time to read it, I encourage you to read this white paper.

Blessings and safe and easy travels, to all of you who are traveling for Thanksgiving.

I leave you with a quote written in Nov, 2016 about Thanksgiving by Dianna Butler Bass entitled, “Choose Gratitude”.

God, there are days we do not feel grateful. When we are anxious or angry. When we feel alone. When we do not understand what is happening in the world or with our neighbors. When the news is bleak, confusing. God, we struggle to feel grateful.

But this Thanksgiving, we choose gratitude.
We choose to accept life as a gift from you, and as a gift from the unfolding work of all creation.
We choose to be grateful for the earth from which our food comes; for the water that gives life; and for the air we all breathe.
We choose to thank our ancestors, those who came before us, grateful for their stories and struggles, and we receive their wisdom as a continuing gift for today.
We choose to see our families and friends with new eyes, appreciating and accepting them for who they are. We are thankful for our homes, whether humble or grand.
We will be grateful for our neighbors, no matter how they voted, whatever our differences, or how much we feel hurt or misunderstood by them.
We choose to see the whole planet as our shared commons, the stage of the future of humankind and creation.
God, this Thanksgiving, we do not give thanks. We choose it. We will make this choice of thanks with courageous hearts, knowing that it is humbling to say “thank you.” We choose to see your sacred generosity, aware that we live in an infinite circle of gratitude. That we all are guests at a hospitable table around which gifts are passed and received. We will not let anything opposed to love take over this table. Instead, we choose grace, free and unmerited love, the giftedness of life everywhere. In this choosing, and in the making, we will pass gratitude onto the world.
Thus, with you, and with all those gathered at this table, we pledge to make thanks. We ask you to strengthen us in this resolve. Here, now, and into the future. Around our family table. Around the table of our nation. Around the table of the earth.
We choose thanks.