Friday, May 30, 2025

One of our longtime leaders taught me something new about our church recently. We celebrated our 100th anniversary in 2013 with a massive granite plaque you can see on the east side of our sanctuary wall. That 4x8’ piece weighs some 1800 pounds, and required a special mounting system and removal of pews to put it in place. Not to worry, it’s not going to fall down—each of six iron bolts can hold up to 1000 lbs. That thing is steady and secure.

It brought to mind for me all that’s been… Read more

Thursday, February 1, 2024

One thing I’ve learned as I’ve gotten to know United Church polity is that it is really, really hard to change our church’s foundation.

Our administrative council voted a couple weeks ago in support of a remit to change the UCC’s Basis of Union to allow for an autonomous Indigenous… Read more

Wednesday, November 1, 2023

As many of you know, TEMC is proud to have recently amalgamated with a Welsh United Church. Wales has more than 1500 years of church history. But if you're like me, you're relatively unaware of that history. So I've planned a pilgrimage to Wales, devoted to learning about Christ's work through the church in Wales, past and present. Wales inherited a unique strand of the Christian tradition called Celtic Christianity. The Celts, called the Galatians in the Bible, were a people with a vast territorial expanse north of the Roman Empire. With no written language,… Read more