Oct. 23, 2025

By Rev. Riz Prakasim

“Simon son of John, do you love me?” Jesus asks Peter three times in John 21:17. And three times, Peter affirms his love. Each time, Jesus responds not with sentiment, but with a call to action: “Feed my sheep.”

That call continues today. Recently, our youth group took part in that same invitation by partnering with Northeast Youth and Family Services to pack 160 meal kits for their clients. Each meal packed was a tangible expression of love—a way of saying, “Yes, Lord, we love you,” through service to our neighbors.

You can’t love people well without trying many ways to meet their needs. Love in action demands imagination and flexibility. To innovate in the church world is simply to be creative in how we care for others—the hungry, the lonely, the overlooked. In the early days of the Christian movement, this was precisely what caught the world’s attention. Followers of Jesus lived with such compassion and inventiveness that the Roman Empire took notice. They created new systems of care for the sick and poor, founded hospitals and schools, and built communities where all could belong.

The monasteries that emerged centuries later continued that legacy of holy innovation. Benedictine communities practiced shared decision-making where even the youngest had a voice—an early echo of democracy. Syrian monasteries taught girls to read and write when few others did. These were not just creative ideas; they were expressions of deep, active love.

When the church takes part in God’s new thing, it becomes an engine of possibility. Love drives invention. Compassion fuels courage. The question Jesus asked Peter—“Do you love me?”—is not just for the disciples of the past, but for us here and now.

Our youth didn’t just pack boxes; they participated in something sacred. They imagined a world where no one is forgotten, where God’s love shows up in practical, nourishing ways. If we aim for love, we will inevitably bump into innovation along the way.

We’re not called to have great ideas. We’re called to have great love and to feed God’s sheep wherever they are found.

Oct. 9, 2025

By Rev. Riz Prakasim

Early in the morning on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone was moved away from the entrance. — John 20:1

This month we begin a new sermon series called Emerge. Over the next few weeks, we’ll explore transformation—not just as a nice idea, but as a deep reality of the Christian life. From creation itself to Mary’s courageous “yes” that brought Jesus into the world, to the sealed tomb where God’s power overcame death, transformation runs through our story. It’s part of our own lives, too, even when we can’t quite see it.

At the end of Jesus’ life, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus tenderly laid his body in a new tomb and rolled the stone shut. Mary came “while it was still dark” and found that something had already happened — something hidden, silent, and unstoppable. The first whisper of resurrection began in darkness.

Author Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us: “New life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark.” Darkness can feel uncertain, lonely, even frightening. Yet it is also where God works quietly and powerfully. The dark is not only the place of endings—it is the womb of beginnings.

Think about the caterpillar. When it’s time to change, it doesn’t step neatly into a new shell; it becomes a cocoon, dissolving into something unrecognizable before forming wings. Transformation is rarely tidy. But everything needed for the butterfly was already there.

So it is with us. God has planted in each of us—and in our church—the seeds of who we are becoming. But there’s no shortcut to emergence. We must let go of what was, step into the unknown, and trust the Spirit’s hidden work.

We are in a cocoon season right now as a community, waiting and trusting as God shapes what comes next. These seasons can’t be rushed, but they are sacred.

Hear the good news: The dark is not empty. The tomb is not wasted space. The cocoon is not a dead end. This is where God is closest, knitting new life we cannot yet see.

Let’s walk this journey together, leaning on one another’s prayers, presence, and hope. When we emerge—individually and as a church—it won’t be a return to what was, but a transformation into what we were always meant to be.

Sept. 28, 2025

By Rev. Riz Prakasim

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you. – Philippians 4:8-9

Peace be with you. We enter this season of Fall with renewed momentum and direction. We have moved into a new phase together, as not only are we having joint worship twice a month, but we are also using the same sermon series, which means we are now using the same liturgy more or less for the next few months.

In September, the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area officially sanctioned our merger path with Falcon Heights UCC by voting in favor of our two faith communities coming together. Also in September, we had our first Interim Joint Board retreat at St. Paul’s UCC, in which we got to know one another, which is the foundation to building a healthy relationship. In addition, we attended to items of business, including planning the next steps ahead as we prepare to permanently transition to the Falcon Heights location.

One of our exercises included growing our theological imagination. We asked elders to imagine what a church publication or local newspaper might write about the new church five, 10 or 15 years from now. Here are some of the headlines they came up with: The Spirit is Alive, It Was God All Along, New Roots Bear Fruit on Garden Avenue, Merged Church Opens Third Mission Site, Local Church Focal Point of Community Action!

For change to happen well, we first need to create psychological space for that change by imagining what is possible. Before we can plant new seeds of ministry, we must first picture what the garden might look like. Imagination is holy work. It allows us to move beyond what is, into what could be. It invites us to dream about new forms of worship, new ways of caring for our neighbors, and fresh opportunities to embody Christ’s love in the world.

The apostle Paul encouraged the early church to set their minds on what is noble, pure, admirable, and praiseworthy, cultivating their holy imagination and then to putting those things into practice. This guidance feels especially timely for us now. What we choose to focus on shapes the kind of community we are becoming. If our imaginations are filled with fear, we risk shrinking back. But if our imaginations are filled with what is excellent and life-giving, we create the conditions for the Spirit to move among us.

As we look ahead, let us imagine ministries that are both faithful and bold. Picture classrooms filled with children learning about God’s love, fellowship halls where meals are shared with neighbors, worship services alive with song and joy, and partnerships that bring justice and compassion into our community. Each of these visions is a seed waiting to be planted, watered, and nurtured by our shared faith.

May we meditate on what brings joy and life and, more importantly, put them into practice. And as we do, we can be confident that the God of peace will be with us—guiding, sustaining, and surprising us with new life at every turn.

Sept. 18, 2025

By Rev. Rick King

It happened at our house four years ago. My wife, Linda, and I became pretty much the only ones who consistently ate meals together at the kitchen table. Somewhere along the way we gave up trying to have nightly family dinners, mostly due to the clashing schedules of our emerging young adults who worked or had classes during the usual mealtimes.

Not that this is a tragedy. Our 1,500-square-foot 1941 home on California Avenue in Como Park was built without an enclosed dining room. I suspect none of the other houses on our block do either in what seems to have been built as a working-class neighborhood of starter homes during World War II. We have a cute little dining nook in the kitchen, enclosed in a plaster archway with bench seating on two sides and a chair on the third, with a bright, sunny southern exposure that makes it especially wonderful in the winter.

But the disappearance of group dining is part of a trend. Last year, in an Atlantic magazine piece, “Why Dining Rooms are Disappearing from American Homes,” Nolan Gray described this architectural trend in new homes and renovations of “great rooms” that have taken the place of the traditional dining room, because people don’t use them anymore, preferring to eat alone in other spaces while watching TV, scrolling on their phones, or working on laptops.

On the one hand, it makes efficient use of square footage at a time of rising building costs. But this trend toward eating alone in spaces other than around a dining room table is appearing in other ways in American life.

In the magazine’s January cover story, “The Anti-Social Century,” Derek Thompson described a small Mexican restaurant near his home in North Carolina. The bar—formerly a busy gathering point loud with conversation and popular with regulars—is now lined with carry-out bags which customers come in silently to pick up and go eat at home. Probably alone. The restaurant itself seldom has dine-in customers anymore.

As Thompson writes, “Self-imposed solitude might just be the most important fact of the 21st century in America.” Robert Putnam’s book “Bowling Alone” came out in 2000, bringing to our national attention what former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called “an epidemic of loneliness” in America.

But what if all this represents a tremendous opportunity for local churches like ours to become “table-centered communities” again? Whether a regular neighborhood dinner, a monthly meetup of congregants at Stout’s for conversation or “theology on tap,” or an alternative, dinner-church-style worship service—where people regularly gather to cook dinner together and share a common meal and worship service—all these are ways this new church can be counterculturally communal again, offering an antidote to the loneliness epidemic.

What possibilities do YOU see?