Category: Worship

Celebrating 101 Years of ECM

4/20/2022

Wow! ECM at K-State is celebrating 101 years of ministry! Join us on Sunday, May 8th at Long's Park as we welcome guests from ECM and celebrate with them. And then on Sunday, May 15th we'll have guests from ECM with us at 9:30 a.m. (church basement or via Zoom) to share about what ECM is up to and answer our questions. We're excited to welcome these partners in campus ministry and deepen our relationship with them.

You can learn more about ECM on their website (https://www.ecmatkstate.org/) and you're encouraged to sign up for their e-mail list and/or follow them on social media.

Worship in the Park, May 8, 2022

4/20/2022

It's time for our annual Blessing of the Animals and Worship in the Park. Join us at (shady) Long's Park on Sunday, May 8th at 10:45 a.m. for this special service. Childcare staff will be on hand to care for young kids who want to explore the playground or the rest of the park.

After worship we'll have a good ol' fashioned potluck and friends from ECM at K-State (our campus ministry) are coming to visit with us so we can help them celebrate 101 years in ministry.

Things to bring to the park:
- your own lawn chair, if you have one
- a potluck dish to share
- your own tableservice, to reduce our use of disposable dishes
- your pet (or stuffed animal!) for a blessing
***If you have any questions about accessibility at the park, please let us know.

For those worshiping at home, please use the regular Zoom link. If you have an animal you'd like blessed at home, please reach out to Pastor Caela so she can arrange a visit.

Lenten Continual Prayer Day - April 8-9, 2022

3/7/2022

During this Lenten season the Deacons would like to offer our congregation a chance to center ourselves with prayer. We will be holding a 24 hour prayer vigil in our sanctuary. We will have 30 minute increments in which you can sign up for silent prayer beginning on April 8th at 6pm to continue until April 9th at 6pm.

Enjoy the quiet peace of our sanctuary and help us create a 24-hour period of prayer and reflection. A basket with materials to guide your time will be provided. You may want to read devotionals or scripture, draw or color, create music, or simply rest in God’s presence. Invite a friend to join you if you’d rather have company during your shift!

Sign up at uccmanhattan.org/sign-ups or contact the church office to reserve your space.

Can't make it to the building? You can still participate. We are hoping to have a Zoom room open for a portion of the vigil (we'll set up the computer in the sanctuary so you can log in to Zoom and focus your prayer time while viewing a live feed of our sanctuary). If this is something you're interested in, please reach out to Nell so we can coordinate the best time to open the Zoom room.

Staying Healthy: Steps You Can Take

1/8/2022

Here are some actions you can take to help keep everyone safe as we gather for worship and other activities:

Doctors and scientists are reminding us that it’s a good time to consider upgrading our masks. Cloth masks were good back in 2020 when we didn’t have access to medical-grade masks, but they are not nearly as effective in stopping the spread of COVID. Upgrading your mask to an N95 or double-masking will go a long way in keeping everyone healthy.
Getting vaccinated AND boosted when you’re eligible is an important way to love your neighbor (and yourself, since being vaccinated will greatly reduce your own risk immensely). Public health officials are urging boosters because they provide a much higher level of protection against the highly-contagious Omicron variant and they also help protect us from the earlier variants, which are still very-much with us. Let us know if you need help finding a vaccine.
Please err on the side of caution when deciding whether or not to come to worship and other in-person gatherings. If you’re experiencing any symptoms at all, if you think you may have been exposed to COVID, or if you’re recovering from COVID, please do not return to in-person activities at church until you’re certain it’s safe to do so. We are learning that, especially for those who are boosted, symptoms might be very mild, like a cold. That means staying home is especially important so we don’t accidentally spread the virus to others.
If you need a test, you can use this website to find one but please keep in mind that tests are just one piece of the puzzle. You might get a negative test and still be contagious because you're in the very early stages of the virus. If you're unwell at all, stay home. It's not worth risking others' health. (Even if you're signed up to help with something! Just let us know and we can find a sub for you.)
You may be in the process of reassessing whether you still feel safe coming to in-person gatherings. Know that it’s okay to pull back for a bit and opt for online connection if that feels like a better choice right now. We are so grateful to have the Zoom option for worship - let’s use it to help keep our community healthy!

This list was created at the end of December 2021. If you're reading it at a later time, things have almost certainly changed. You can also read our full COVID policies here. Thank you for loving like Jesus and doing everything you can to care for your neighbor.

Christmas Fund Special Offering

12/9/2021

The official name of the final UCC Denominational offering of the year is The Christmas Fund for the Veterans of the Cross and the Emergency Fund. The Christmas Fund has been caring for active and retired clergy and lay employees of the United Church of Christ for over 100 years, providing emergency grants, supplementation of small annuities and health premiums, and Christmas “Thank You” gift checks each December to our lower-income retirees.
United Church of Christ congregations and members have blessed the Christmas Fund with their generosity for many years. This year, your care and compassion will be especially appreciated by those servants of the church who are facing a time of need. We will take the offering at our Christmas Eve Service on Dec. 24, but if you'll be out of town or otherwise occupied on Christmas Eve, you can send your offering donation to the church office. Thank you!

Donate via PayPal

Service of Lament for Victims of Residential Schools

10/11/2021

Remembering the Victims of the Residential Schools: A Worship Service of Lament
Sunday, October 24th, 5:00 p.m. at the Leadership Studies Amphitheater (rain location: LS 126)

Join us as we lament the many deaths of Indigenous children and other atrocities committed at residential schools. This service will be led by Dr. Debra Bolton (Ohkay Owingeh/Diné/Ute) and area clergy. We welcome people of any faith background at this service, which will be grounded in the Christian tradition as we seek to invite followers of Jesus to confess the sins committed by our churches and recommit ourselves to dismantling systems that cause violence. There will be a follow-up educational event led by members of the Indigenous Faculty and Staff Alliance on Monday, November 1st at 7:00 p.m. at ECM (904 Sunset Ave) to help us all learn more about the wider context in which these acts of genocide occurred.

We will gather at the Staley School of Leadership Studies Amphitheater on K-State's campus. Parking is available just across the street since it's the weekend. Rain location is LS 126 (masks required indoors).

Sponsored by: First Congregational United Church of Christ and ECM at K-State

Please share:
our Facebook Event
our flyer (PDF)

Potluck and Hymn Sing - Oct. 1, 2021

9/20/2021

Many of us have missed our joyful singing of hymns together on Sunday morning, so we're having a real hymn-sing, outside, on Friday evening, October 1st. We have reserved Longs Park Shelter from 5:30-7:30 pm, so we'll have time for a fellowship potluck together, followed by singing as many of our favorite hymns together as we can before it gets too dark to see, or before we wear ourselves out with the songful efforts. Bring your own table service, plus food you'd like to share, plus a lawn chair if you'd like. Please DO bring a mask, since we will need those for the singing portion of the evening. Keyboard and hymnals will be provided. Come and join us for food, fellowship, and song together!

Music Updates September 2021

8/31/2021

Choir safety update

We had sincerely hoped to bring the choir back to our Sunday morning worship, beginning in September, but the resurgence of the COVID pandemic, and the particular virulence of the Delta strain, has put a hold on that activity. While we seem to be doing okay with quiet congregational singing in the pews (one hymn a Sunday, alas!), the prospect of rehearsing and performing as a choral ensemble in an inside space is not yet a safe one. Our church’s COVID Task Force will re-evaluate the situation in October, and we’ll see if we can reassemble later this fall.

Bells, anyone?

If we can’t sing, we can play handbells! We have a beautiful 3-octave set of Malmark Handbells that have been under-utilized for the past fifteen years or so, and now seems to be a great time to try to start a handbell choir. If you are middle-school aged or older, can read music reasonably well, and know your right hand from your left, this could be the musical opportunity you have been waiting for!! Please let Gretchen Lewis know if you’re interested, or if you think you could be interested, in learning to ring handbells. It’s lots of fun, and it’s a great opportunity for fellowship and music making. See Gretchen at church or email. Tentatively, I’m planning an organizational meeting and introductory rehearsal on September 12, after church at 12:15 up in the Conference Room.

How about percussion?

In early July, I attended the biennial Conference of UCC Musicians, which was held virtually from Hartford, Connecticut. The event began with a music reading session on Thursday evening July 8, and ended with a concert on Saturday afternoon. The first workshop I attended featured the amazing 80-something year-old Miriam Therese Winter, poet, song-writer, and member of the Medical Mission Sisters, who shared some of her songs with us. Other workshops I found stimulating included some huge puppets by Sue Aziz, an exploration of global hymnody in North American worship led by Patrick Evans, and my personal favorite, a presentation on the use of percussion ensembles in worship, led by Michelle Horsley. She offered very practical advice on starting a basic inter-generation percussion ensemble in the local church, and I’m mulling over the possibilities of beginning one here at First Congregational later in the fall. If you’re interested, talk to me, either at church or by email.

Gretchen Lewis, music coordinator

Revolutionary Love: Fall 2021 Common Read

8/18/2021

Learn more about the art.

Do you find yourself struggling to feel compassion for those who hold different values than you? Are you exhausted from trying to stay grounded and loving in the midst of turbulent times? Join us this fall as we sort through some of these complex realities together, guided by Valarie Kaur’s book, See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love. Beginning September 19th, we will use Kaur’s book in conversation with scripture texts from the Narrative Lectionary in worship for our fall sermon series.

Grab a copy of the book and read along with us….
OR just come to worship to get a taste of the powerful concepts from the book.
You can explore the Revolutionary Love concepts online.
For an introduction to Valarie Kaur and her work, consider watching the viral video that catapulted her into the national spotlight in 2016 or her TED talk.

More about the book from the publisher:

Valarie Kaur — renowned Sikh activist, filmmaker, and civil rights lawyer — has ignited the hearts of millions around the globe, making “Breathe and Push!” a mantra in movements for social change. Now in her stunning debut, Kaur declares revolutionary love is the call of our times, a radical, joyful practice that extends in three directions: to others, to our opponents, and to ourselves. It enjoins us to see no stranger but instead look at others and say: You are a part of me I do not yet know.

Drawing from the wisdom of sages, scientists, and activists—and her own riveting journey as a brown girl growing up in California farmland; as a young adult galvanized by the murders of Sikhs after 9/11; as a law student fighting injustices in American prisons and on Guantánamo Bay; as an activist working with communities recovering from xenophobic attacks; and as a woman trying to heal from her own experiences with sexual assault and police violence – Kaur discovers practices of revolutionary love to bring us longevity, resilience, and joy.

See No Stranger is a practical guide to changing the world, a synthesis of wisdom, a chronicle of personal and communal history—all joined together by a story of awakening. Revolutionary love is medicine for our times. It just might be our best chance for our collective future. (Source)

Teach Us to Pray Sermon Series - August 2021

8/6/2021

Once upon a time, Jesus’s friends asked him, “How should we pray?” For once, he answered the question instead of just posing more questions, and followers of Jesus have been praying that prayer in many languages and versions ever since. Join us worship online or in-person from August 8 through September 5th as we explore The Prayer of Jesus. We’ll be unpacking it bit by bit and we hope that this series will give you a sense of freedom as you explore your own prayer life as summer comes to a close.

Click to Share with Us

Click to share your questions, ponderings, observations and more as we move through the prayer together. Your responses will be shared with our pastors and you can indicate whether you're comfortable having them shared more widely or not.

Resources

Wright, N.T. The Lord and His Prayer.
Crossan, John Dominic. The Greatest Prayer: Rediscovering the Revolutionary Message of The Lord's Prayer.
Do you have other resources to share with us? Use the "click to share with us" button and let us know!

Compiled versions of the Lord's Prayer from Rev. Angela Menke Ballou
Compiled versions of the Lord's Prayer from Rev. Phiwa Langeni (with a couple additions by Pastor Caela)

<<Previous

Celebrating 101 Years of ECM

Worship in the Park, May 8, 2022

Lenten Continual Prayer Day - April 8-9, 2022

Staying Healthy: Steps You Can Take

Christmas Fund Special Offering

Service of Lament for Victims of Residential Schools

Potluck and Hymn Sing - Oct. 1, 2021

Music Updates September 2021

Choir safety update

Bells, anyone?

How about percussion?

Revolutionary Love: Fall 2021 Common Read

More about the book from the publisher:

Teach Us to Pray Sermon Series - August 2021

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How about percussion?

More about the book from the publisher:

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