First Universalist Church of Minneapolis Sunday Service Podcast

As summer comes to an end, don’t miss our annual Backpack Blessing and worship service this Sunday, Aug. 27 at 10 a.m. The multigenerational service will offer children, youth, and adults of all ages the opportunity to reflect upon how we might carry the love of our church community and the tools of our faith with us wherever we go. Singing to Gather- I'm On My Way (:31) Words of Welcome and Call...

Rev. Ashley Horan, Aimee Bryant, and Dr. Glen Thomas Rideout lead worship with you at the bandshell at Lake Harriet. By the waters, we’ll embody the joy and talk the truths of willful change we can make to the ways we do community. We’ll live a little of love’s post-pandemic, not-far-along-enough-yet call. Truth be told, it has more to do with play and laughter and loving yourself than we’ve often...

We often exclaim church to each other as a place, a sanctuary, a place away from other places. Isn’t it at least as much a moment we make special together? A present-day prophet, the Black science fiction writer Octavia Butler describes “God is change.” How would your relationship with holy things shift if you were looking not for things that have become divine, but instead were on a hunt for the...

Shifted schedules, evening sunshine, produce that doesn’t fit anybody’s plan for the week, movies and music and sunsets that take our breath away and demand that we stop and pay attention. As summer stretches into August, the Big Questions call to us. ThisSunday, August 6, we ask: what are yours and ours, and how might we respond?   Singing to Gather- Dr. Glen Thomas Rideout (:32) Call to Worship-...

Paolo Dubuque and Dr. Glen Thomas Rideout talk about re-imagining musical ensembles and using collaborative music to change the world. We make music together for a finale of sorts we’re calling We are the ones, after June Jordan’s famous end to her poem, “Poem for South African Women.” Together, we make music as a community (that’s right–the featured artist is you! But shhhhh…it’s a surprise.), an...

Each Sunday in July, worship will feature artists and musicians sharing their craft and some reflections on how their art is connected to their spirituality. We continue this worship series with musician, composer, and First U Member, Ellis Delaney. Ellis is at once funny and wise, thoughtful and uninhibited, with a captivating voice that is matched by tender, sometimes funny, uplifting lyrics. Th...

Each Sunday in July, worship will feature artists and musicians sharing their craft and some reflections on how their art is connected to their spirituality. We continue this worship series with two artists who meditate on rhythm, form, repetition, and healing in this world and in worlds beyond our initial perceptions: musician Davu Seru and sculptural basketweaver (and First U member) Martha Bird...

Each Sunday in July, worship will feature a different local musician sharing their music and some reflections on how their art is connected to their spirituality. Dean Magraw is a consummate guitarist, playing with wit and soulful abandon. A performer like no other, he is part-comedian, part-philosopher and all-around musical genius. This past Sunday, he and Dr. Glen Thomas Rideout talked poetry,...

Each Sunday in July will feature a different local musician sharing their music and reflection on how their art connected to their spirituality. Sunday, July 2, we begin our July worship series with our own vocalist in residence, Aimee K. Bryant. Worship led by Dr. Glen Thomas Rideout, Aimee K. Bryant, and Sally Reynolds on piano Singing to Gather (:26) Words of Welcome (4:49) Time for All Ages (1...

On and on, the circle of love, welcome, learning and inclusion expands. What spiritual practices, orientations of the heart, imagination and shared work is needed if we are to move with and continue to stretch that circle? This Sunday, June 18, Lauren Wyeth, Director of Spiritual Growth for All Ages, shares stories and reflections on her learning, and her charge, for us as she prepares to depart. ...

In these days when the circle of who has autonomy over their body and what history we can teach in our classrooms grows smaller and smaller, we are called to remember that freedom is not freedom if it is for the individual, alone. Freedom is individual and collective—a personal experience and decision, and a collective commitment, experience, and responsibility. Universalism invites us to draw the...

This coming Sunday, June 4, we’re celebrating Flower Communion, and we could use your help! Bring a flower to share with the community (don’t worry: we’ll have more flowers available if you don’t have one). We’ll make a beautiful arrangement with whatever flowers come! At the end, we each get to take a different flower with us as a gift and reminder of beauty in our unity and difference. This spec...

Our humanist roots encourage us to believe in “the common good” as reliably universal–a value that, deep down inside, we all share. What do we do when our experiences of life challenge this idea? The humanist influences of our faith date back centuries to African, Chinese, South Asian and European philosophers. But what kind of humanism do we need in America today?  Singing to Gather- Dr. Glen Tho...

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote that “Love, like a carefully loaded ship, crosses the gulf between the generations.” This Sunday, love will make its way across the generations as we dedicate our children, welcome the wisdom of our Coming of Age youth, and care for each other in times of celebration and grief.   Singing to Gather- Gather the Spirit- Dr. Glen Thomas Rideout, Franco Holder (:29) Call...

Universalism calls us to become flame carriers in apocalyptic times. In community, with souls on fire, we reconstitute the world. Join us for worship with special guest and candidate for UUA President Rev. Dr. Sofia Betancourt as we begin our May worship theme, Carry the Flame. Opening Hymn- This Little Light of Mine- Dr. Glen Thomas Rideout (:33) Words of Welcome- Rev. Jen Crow (4:05) Story for A...

The Zen practice of shoshin calls us each to bring a “beginner’s mind” to every day we live. This Sunday, as we celebrate how our community has grown with new members, we are reminded to bring this same spirit to our relationships with one another. We can know each other more deeply with fresh curiosity. We can deepen our bonds with fresh compassion. We can build a stronger “we” when each of us ta...

The Environmental Justice Team from First Universalist Church leads us through an Earth Day service that invites us to consider what it is that we love in this natural world, and why and how we might get more involved in fighting for it. Join us this Sunday as the team ministers to us through music, story, and personal narrative, and helps chart a pathway of hope for how we might more fully live i...

62 years ago this week, the first human being went to outer space! Our perspective as Earthlings has never been the same. Life on Earth is the part of the cosmos which relentlessly resurrects. How can we become more responsible stewards of the seeds of Life, both on and beyond Earth? This Sunday, April 16, We invite you to bring the seed paper and annual giving commitment cards which you received...

With and without our permission and participation, life is forever seeking resurrection. Relentlessly, life finds a way in the harshest of circumstances, and even out of death comes new life. How might we join with this turning toward life? And how might we rebuild and resurrect ourselves, our relationships, and even this church in the shape of beloved community through our everyday actions? Join...

As we make the sometimes slow and halting turn toward spring and the emergence of new life, we continue our journey of pausing to pay attention. Together, we pick up the practice of noticing and naming the changes and losses among us and tentatively begin to trust again the turning and motion that life offers. This Sunday, April 2 we join each other in the collective practice of letting go as we d...

This isn’t a crisis, this is your life. These wise words arrived at my mental doorstep a few weeks back, and they stopped me in my tracks. How might I – and we – make space to breathe and reflect, to name and collectively acknowledge the losses and changes that have impacted us all in different ways over the last three years?  Opening Hymn- Come Sing a Song With Me (:29) Words of Welcome & Call to...

As Unitarian Universalists, we make covenants all the time. Our relational faith is built on covenant. Join us as we explore what it means to make horizontal and vertical promises to each other and to the oneness of mystery. Prelude- Seasons of Love, Franco Holder, piano (:23) Opening Hymn- Gathered Here- Dr. Glen Thomas Rideout (1:14) Words of Welcome and Land Acknowledgement- Rev. Jen Crow (5:35...

Robin Wall Kimmerer says that our deepest longing is to belong to each other and to belong to the larger community of life. She says that this longing is expressed in the idea of tending a garden, which is itself an expression of belonging on many different scales. There is a persistence in this belonging—one that speaks to us of our lives here, together at church, and of the audacity to plant see...

This Sunday, we begin our March worship theme, Persistence, with a focus on advocacy. Congregants leading some of our legislative advocacy ministries will share their stories along with guest speaker Rev. Terri Burnor, Senior Movement Builder with Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light. We’ll also share a special blessing with and for our trans* beloveds and families who have been under recent attac...

This Sunday, February 26, we close our February worship series on “Commitment” with a focus on what our bodies have to teach us. We will commit to practicing embodying our original Belovedness and also sit with the inevitable vulnerability of bodies– our own and each others’. As a part of these practices, we will also honor the anniversary of Trayvon Martin’s death and the founding of the Movement...