Auckland Unitarians

Speaker:- Rachel Mackintosh Worship Leaders:- Ted Zorn, Kate Lewis Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 5th November 2023 Our recently retired minister, Clay Nelson, died on Thursday (2 November 2023). Those of us who have known Clay are grieving. So, we’ve changed this service to reflect on coming together in grief and the wonder of life. Rachel MacIntosh, Clay’s wife, will present a talk that C...

Speaker & Worship Leader:- Kate Lewis. Recorded 19th November 2023 @ Auckland Unitarian Church. I’m very aware that this is the first service since Clay died that we’re not using one of his talks. I’ve been on the calendar for months, and Ted and I decided that this would be an alright topic for today since we’re hurting and I hope that some of these words may be useful for all of us in dealin...

Speaker & Worship Leader:- Viv Allen Viv Allen led a service centred around a reading of a  Clay Nelson sermon from February 2020 For more information see:- https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/curiosity-may-be-harmful-to-cats-but-how-about-to-unitarians-2/

Speaker:- Mary Ellen Warren Worship Leader:- Ruby Johnson Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 29 October 2023 For more information see https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/world-polio-day/

Speaker:- Grant Williams of Maritime Union of New Zealand Worship Leader:- Rachel Mackintosh. For more information see:- https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/a-wharfies-story/

with Karn Cleary Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 15 October 2023 For more information see https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/flower-communion-4/

Speaker:- John Maindonald Worship Leader:- Shirin Caldwell Recorded 8 October 2023 @ Auckland Unitarian Church John Donne (1572-1631), who wrote the words that I want to ponder today, lived in England in troubled times. He was born to a staunchly Roman Catholic family at a time when it was illegal to be a practicing Catholic. For more information see:- https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/no-person-is...

Speaker:- Peter Lineham Worship Leader:- Ruby Johnson I was very struck by an article in the Washington Post on 21 August of this year by Perry Bacon jnr.... Recorded 1 October 2023 by Auckland Unitarian Church For more information see:- https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/finding-your-home-in-the-church-community/

Recorded @ Auckland Unitarian Church 24 September 2023 Speakers & Worship Leaders:- Rachel Mackintosh & Betsy Marshall In early 2014, our Unitarian community was coming to terms with the fact that after only eight months, due to visa issues, we’d lost the American minister we’d contracted for two years. Fortunately the Ministerial Search Committee wasted no time in resurrecting itself to i...

Speaker & Worship Leader:- Rev. Clay Nelson Recorded @ Auckland Unitarian Church 17 September 2023 Here is a factoid about your minister I hope to have kept from you for nine years. In secondary school, I was a band nerd. I wasn’t the cool one playing the sexy alto sax like I wanted. Instead, I was consigned over my objections to playing the tuba. It was even more humiliating as I was one of t...

Speaker:-  Paul Watson of Essentially Men Worship Leader:- Ted Zorn Kia ora everyone, and a heartfelt thanks to Ted for that beautiful introduction. When I first met you Ted around 20 months ago I instantly liked you, and I think one of the reasons is because as you presented last week ‘You’ve always had a thing for language’. I think our brains connected quickly, my Auckland spelling, speaking an...

with Ted Zorn Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 27 August 2023 I’ve always had a thing for language. I think I inherited this from my dad. Dad wasn’t highly educated, nor widely read – the only magazines he ever subscribed to were Reader’s Digest and TV Guide, and I never knew him to read a novel — but he loved to play with language. He often used words that were either made up or some version...

With John DiLeo Recorded @ Auckland Unitarian Church, 20th August 2023 As we were driving home from last Sunday’s service, I was thinking on what I should talk about this week. During that service, we celebrated Clay’s years with this church as our paid minister, and we acknowledged that phase of our community’s life was coming to a close. During the Notices that day, Ted reminded us all of the ne...

Speaker & Worship Leader:- Rev. Clay Nelson Recorded @ Auckland Unitarian Church, 13th August 2023 As has been mentioned once or twice recently, and to my great sadness, I am retiring at the end of the month. Because I have loved all forty-one years of my ordained ministry in two denominations and my nine years with you, I want to scream, “Nah, this isn’t how I planned it.” But, ”Yeah, it is t...

Speaker & Worship Leader:- Rachel Mackintosh. Recorded 6th August 2023 at Auckland Unitarian Church. I met Clay 10 years ago at a residential training for community organising. The basis of the training was storytelling. At the opening of the training, all participants were asked to tell stories about a time we had spoken truth to power. Clay’s story was about taking the Anglican Bishop of Auc...

Recorded @ Auckland Unitarian Church, 30th July 2023 Speaker & Worship Leader:- Rev. Clay Nelson My father loved words. The  Oxford English Dictionary  and books on etymology, the study of the origin of words and how their meanings have changed throughout history, were never far from his fingertips. If he couldn’t find just the right word for the book he was writing, he had no reluctance in ju...

With Rev. Clay Nelson Piano:- Frank Chen Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 23rd July 2023 You might remember me telling you the story of the 1969 UUA General Assembly in Boston. It was at the height of the Black empowerment movement in America. For that reason, many Black UUs attended instead of the token few who usually came. White UUs were shocked and wondered where they all came from. They...

With Kate Lewis Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 16th July 2023 Many of us have lost a sense of belonging in one place or another, having made a life around the world from where we were born and grew up. There is a longing for a beloved past and people, and despair when we realize that when we go back everything has changed and feel grief at what has been lost. For more information see:- http...

With Paul Henriques. Recorded 2nd July 2023 by Auckland Unitarian Church. As many of you know, with Auckland Unitarian Church support, I initiated a pilot programme to help dyslexic children in Samoa in a joint programme with their Ministry of Education, Science and Culture. While there I came across information on Samoa’s nonviolent struggle for independence from New Zealand. Back in New Zealand,...

with Rev. Clay Nelson Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 25th June 2023 Over a long life, I often think about the choices I’ve made or were made for me. How have they determined who I am now? How have they pointed me in a positive direction or made my life a personal hell? They have surely done both. Has my life followed a script with little input from me, or has it been totally of my own makin...

Speaker & Worship Leader:- Rev. Clay Nelson Recorded 11th June 2023 @ Auckland Unitarian Church I keep getting enquiries about and objections to replacing principles with values (Here are links to the earlier talks on this topic:-  1 ,  2 ,  3  &  4 ). I thought I’d dealt with this issue but, apparently, not satisfactorily for some. So, let me try again. These changes did not come out of t...

with Alix Geard. Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 4th June 2023. I wanted to share something about what the future might look like: especially something new about what’s going on in the space around climate change and degrowth. I’ve been finding that quite depressing, though. I admit that I even asked ChatGPT for some examples of what I might say. The homilies it came up with were familiar, r...

Speaker:- Peter Lineham Worship Leader:- John DiLeo Recorded by Auckland Unitarian Church 28th May 2023. Perhaps the simplest way to introduce this Pentecost theme is to ask you to visualise this scene. The narrow streets of Jerusalem were in those days dominated by the huge temple on which King Herod the Great had lavished his attention, and was regarded as one of the greatest sites of the Roman...

Speaker:- Marlon Drake of  Te Ohu Whakawhanaunga , Worship Leader:- Rachel Mackintosh. Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 14th May 2023. Marlon attended Western Springs College and then moved to Wellington where he was a student activist at Victoria University, serving as President of the students association, campaigning against sexual violence and in favour of mental health support for studen...

with Rev. Clay Nelson. Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 7th May 2023. This morning is the fourth in a series of musings about what it means to be a living tradition. (Here are links to talks  1 ,  2 , and  3 .) How have we changed? Who decides what it means to be a UU today? And who owns the congregation? When the eight members from diverse backgrounds were appointed to  review Article II Byl...