From Rev. Ben – When I was starting out as a pastor—more than 27 years ago now—it was traditional in Presbyterian churches to designate a Sunday in early to mid November as Stewardship Sunday. The assumption behind this designation was that congregations would tie their annual budgets to the calendar year, and having a Stewardship Sunday in November would give the session…

From Rev. Ben – In uncertain times, worship becomes more important, at least that’s how it has been in my life. And we are living in uncertain times. As I write this note (Friday afternoon), the election is trending in ways that I personally find to be encouraging, but I’m trying not to hold my breath. In all of the craziness, I…

From Rev. Ben – Happy Halloween—and a Good Reformation Day to you. This week’s service is organized as an observation of Remembrance Sunday, which we Protestants observe (when we observe it) on the first Sunday of November, as close as possible to All Saints day and All Souls day (which this year are tomorrow and Monday). Thank you to everyone who put together…

From Rev. Ben – In this week’s celebration we are observing “Reformation Sunday,” which falls each year on the Sunday closest to October 31, the date when Martin Luther kick started the Reformation by posting his 95 Theses, or questions for debate, on the door of the chapel at the University of Wittenberg in Germany. In honor of Reformation we are singing…

From Rev. Talitha – I hope you will join us this week for Celebration. This week Rev. Ben has been away on vacation so you get to see plenty of me… plus a special guest. I will be on vacation the weekend of Halloween so I decided to bring out my Halloween costume early. With great thanks to the Yule Feast Closet…

Dear Church Family, We are living through strange times, and this week’s celebration hopes to give some tools for spiritual strength for these strange days. Here is a link to the celebration play list: You can submit comments and prayer requests via our Comments Form at mpcfamily.org/comments . We’d love to hear from you! If you are visiting today, we hope you’ll fill out…

From Rev Talitha: Dear Church Family, Happy World Communion Sunday! This church holiday was started by Presbyterians in 1933 and is a time when we focus on our goal of unity across the church worldwide. This week’s Celebration is brought to you by a good number of the 68 congregations that make up the Presbytery of San Francisco. It includes portions in…

From Rev Ben: We have officially passed the Fall equinox, which means it’s fall. 2020, with all of its craziness is 75% gone, though it seems like there cannot yet remain a quarter of the year. Our community continues to worship each Sunday because we know that by being faithful in our celebrations we bear witness to those things that endure in…

From Rev Ben: A week after we started sheltering in place for COVID-19 we were supposed to have had a Sunday celebration featuring four writers from our congregation sharing work they had done in response to climate change. I was really looking forward to the worship service, and was disappointed when the writers were displaced by the pandemic. But six months into…

From Rev Talitha: Please join us for Celebration! This week’s online celebration is truly one of a kind; never before have so many stuffed animals come to church. As I mentioned in this week’s Contact, it is a chance for us adults to try to follow Jesus’ mysterious challenge: “change and become like children.” During such apocalyptic times it is important to…