After Church on November 23
Mark your calendars! Let’s give thanks together! 🦃🍽️
We are so excited to gather as a church family for our annual Thanksgiving Dinner!
Join us immediately following the worship service on Sunday, November 23rd, for food, fellowship, and celebration. It’s the perfect way to kick off the holiday season with your church community.
More details will be coming soon, but for now, please save this date! We can’t wait to see you there!
Dear Church,
“Pace e Bene!” Peace and good things! St Francis greeted everyone with this phrase, and today you can see it all over Assisi, his home. I just returned from a pilgrimage to Assisi where I spent a little over a week with 13 other clergywomen studying, discussing, and visiting the places and stories of St Francis and St Clare. I will share more about this trip during a presentation after church one Sunday (probably in January after the holidays). I’m still processing so much of this trip, and the depth of learning I experienced.
What I find most compelling about pilgrimage is the idea that for hundreds of years, millions of faithful people have physically walked the same steps. Pilgrimage is an embodied spiritual discipline where we physically visit and lay eyes on the material things associated with the Holy. For medieval pilgrims, the goal was to visit a specific place (the basilica de Santiago in Spain, where the remains of St. James are buried, or Jerusalem itself) to receive pardon for themselves or a loved one so that they would enter heaven and not suffer in purgatory. I may not hold the same theology as these medieval pilgrims, or even the pilgrims that I share the space with today. What I learned through this experience was that the practice (or “spiritual discipline”) of going on pilgrimage flexes the powerful muscle of imagination. It’s not an easy discipline (with all the change after centuries have passed and the modern world around us) but in each location, I found myself activating my imagination to summon up images of what these places looked like in the 13th century. For example, I could envision St Clare walking down the road outside our hostel, leaving her family and expectations of marriage, filled with devotion and conviction to follow a life of poverty like Francis. This took the books I read and turned historical fact into lived reality (a humbling experience).
The most challenging place we practiced this spiritual discipline was outside a teeny-tiny stone chapel without any windows off the side of a highway (and really, in the backyard of someone’s modern house and garden). Somehow, this little stone church continued to stand for nearly a millennia — throughout wars, industrialization, and modernization. There, under an overpass, we were invited to imagine a medieval Lepersarium: a whole complex of buildings and community for the lepers outside of the city of Assisi. Here, regardless of whether you were born into nobility or poverty, all were rendered equal by leprosy. While they lived outside the city, they were not alone; loved ones would visit and bring food, and Francis and his brothers would care for them. They would have said mass in this …
This Sunday! October 26, 10am
Get Ready for a “Fully Alive” Worship Celebration!
This week is a Sunday you won’t want to miss!
Join us on Sunday, October 26th, at 10 am for our special All Music Sunday. Our sanctuary will be overflowing with sound and spirit featuring our Choir, Orchestra, AND Handbells!
Bring a friend!
This Sunday, October 19
Join Our Sunday Book Discussion: All Are Welcome!
Haven’t finished the book? No problem! We want everyone to feel comfortable joining our discussion this Sunday.
We’ll kick things off by providing a brief synopsis of the reading, so you can jump right into the conversation whether you’ve read every page or none at all.
Immediately following our worship service, grab a coffee and a snack at Fellowship Hour. Then, make your way back to the Sanctuary for the conversation. We’ll start the discussion approximately 15 minutes after worship concludes.
Come share your thoughts, listen to new perspectives, and enjoy some deeper connection with your fellow church members!
Reach out to the church office at office@churchofreading.org or 978-944-0205 to learn more.…
White Socks for the Outdoor Church of Cambridge
A majority of the ailments suffered by the homeless are foot-related. Having a clean pair of socks to change into when you get dirty or wet is essential for staying healthy on the street. Responding to this need, the Outdoor Church distributes over 8,000 pairs of socks annually. Help meet this need by participating in our October mission project.
“Sock it to me” – or to/for those in need!
Did you know that the phrase “sock it to me” most broadly can mean to give something your all, to do something with great impact, or to deliver a strong statement? That’s what we hope to do this month: to give, donating white socks knowing that these gifts will bless members of the homeless population served by the Outdoor Church. Please add white socks to your shopping lists in the month of October.
New, white socks can be dropped off at the church during weekly office hours, Monday-Thursday, 10am-1pm, or at 10 am worship on Sunday morning.
Deliver your socks by the morning of Sunday, October 26th, as we anticipate presenting our collection to a representative here at church on Oct 26th.
With the Riverside Renaissance Swing Band
Join us on Sunday, September 14, at 3pm for a benefit concert for disaster relief.
The Riverside Renaissance Swing Band will be playing a benefit concert at the church on September 14 at 3 PM to help raise funds for disaster relief. The afternoon will feature the best swing hits from the 1940s, and an energetic ensemble perfect for dancing and reminiscing.
One-hundred percent of the funds raised will go to United Church of Christ Disaster Relief Ministries, which partners with local aid organizations on the ground where domestic and international disasters strike. Funds raised from this concert will most likely benefit victims of Los Angeles fires and flooding in Texas.
The Riverside Renaissance Swing Band is a north-shore 18-person ensemble performing music from the 1930s to today, including many styles, like swing, big band, country, rock, and polka. The group rehearses in Peabody, Mass., under the direction of Henry Lucas.
The concert is a part of the church’s Sanctuary Arts programming, an initiative to partner with local musicians, artists, theatre, and arts organizations to host arts and humanities programming in its historic 112-year-old sanctuary in the heart of downtown Reading.
The suggested donation for the concert is $20. Cash, check or online donations accepted. If you would like to donate online, use the link below and select the dropdown Give to +Concert – UCC Disaster Relief.
