A note from Rev. Ben: For celebration this week we will be joining Presbyterians from across our denomination and around the world in a worship service produced by the Presbytery of Boston. The worship service is led by The Rev. Cindy Kohmann, one of the outgoing co-moderators of the General Assembly. Elder Vilmarie Cintrón-Olivieri, the other outgoing co-moderator, also makes an appearance in…

From Rev Ben: For celebration this week, I have been trying to improve my post-production video skills using Apple’s iMovie software, and I’m having fun—maybe too much fun—as I learn to edit. The link to Celebration, with all of its splicing and fading and subtitles, is below. This week, Talitha has been ably representing the Presbytery of San Francisco at our denomination’s…

For our online celebration this week we will joining with a wide diversity of American Christians in observing Juneteenth, which is a day set aside to remember when the last community of enslaved Americans learned of their emancipation. Given all of the conversations around race and white supremacy that are happening in our congregation, in our communities, in our nation and in…

It’s hard to believe it, but we have reached the middle of June, which means 2020 is almost half gone; it also means we are halfway through Pride month. This week we will be observing Pride in celebration and I’m glad we are. There is a lot going on in the world right now—a pandemic, an up-swell of voices proclaiming #BlackLivesMatter and…

What a week it has been. Please join us for online Celebration to reflect, mourn, pray, and hope together. This is a communion Sunday, so we will invite you to bring your own bread and cup to the table; you may partake of it during the youtube service, or, if you prefer to break bread in community, save it for the zoom…

We have made it through the season of Eastertide in social isolation and now Pentecost is here. I love the holy day of Pentecost, and I think we have put together a really wonderful online celebration for this year’s rather nontraditional celebration of the Christian Church’s birthday. You can submit comments and prayer requests via our Comments Form at mpcfamily.org/comments . We’d love to…

As we head into a beautiful Memorial Day Weekend and our hearts long for the gatherings, parties, and remembrance ceremonies of previous years, we hope you will join us for church online. Our new ritual is to gather on Sunday mornings on YouTube for worship, and zoom for coffee hour.  You can submit comments and prayer requests via our Comments Form at mpcfamily.org/comments .…

 On Friday, the celebration committee met to start brainstorming around what it might look like for us to gather in person for celebration once the county allows us to do so. We had lots of good ideas—from meeting out of doors, to making use of several rooms on a Sunday—but really we have no idea what will happen because we don’t know…

As shelter-in-place orders have kept us from worshiping in the MPC sanctuary for Sunday Celebrations, I have made it a personal goal never to film a video for online celebrations from the same place in my house. Recently I invested in a powerful light that makes it possible for me to film in front of windows, but still, I’m running out of locations in my house and yard…

It is hard to imagine it, but this is our eighth online celebration, and while I cannot say I feel as if the process is getting easier, I can say that we’re getting better at making it happen. I appreciate all of your patience, support, and feedback along the way.