Meaning

Whether we like it or not, change is an ever-present facet of church life. Clergy and community members come and go, buildings arise and decay, ministry priorities shift. But even when change is healthy and necessary, it can still bring anxiety. So the question arises: when the anxiety and disorientation of change comes up, how can church communities remain open to divine presence and stay true to their faith? Plymouth member Rev. ...

The Plymouth Church community works collectively to welcome recent immigrants to Minnesota through the work of the Immigrant Welcoming Working Group. But individuals in our community are also at work. Plymouth member Toni Azad teaches English to adults from around the world, from Guatemala, to Somalia, to Ukraine, to Afghanistan. We talked about her path to the work, and the significance of providing life tools to this population.

As this episode hits the interwebs, we find ourselves early in the season of Lent: a special time in the Christian church for contemplating our own spiritual state in the time leading up to Easter and the resurrection story. We’re invited to follow the example of Jesus, who spent 40 days praying in the wilderness before starting his healing work. At Plymouth, our Lenten theme is “Embracing the Wholeness of Creation,” and it provide...

This past month, Plymouth Church has hosted Transfer of Memory, an exhibit of portraits of Holocaust survivors, accompanied by brief biographical sketches of each person’s story. And so you may have seen photos of this episode’s guest, Manny Gabler, hanging near the door of Jones Commons and read how his family escaped the war when Manny was a baby and spent nine years in Shanghai before immigrating to the U.S. in 1948.

We started ...

This fall, the Plymouth community has been gifted with the presence of spoken word artist, rapper, teacher, and preacher, Pierre Fulford. Pierre brought his love of language and storytelling to the church’s Midweek Mingle Wednesday night activities, working with our youth to help them develop a spoken word piece that was performed at the October 16, 2022 9AM service.

Prior to our conversation, what I knew about Pierre was his passi...

Truth telling can mean different things in different contexts: from the legalistic reporting of objective facts, to the more vulnerable task of naming the motivations and underpinnings of events that are ambiguous or fraught. In this episode, host Chris Bohnhoff and talks with Plymouth Lead Minister DeWayne Davis about how truth telling has shown up recently in his involvement in the reparations work being done through the Minnesot...

To introduce our guest, Tara Bauer, I need to do a little quick nerding out. If you were to click around Plymouth’s website to the Clergy and Staff page, you’d see that Tara is listed as a Covenant Partner. If you’re not a seminarian you’d be excused for not knowing what that means, but it’s rooted in how the United Church of Christ thinks about sending people out into the world to do ministry. Unlike some denominations, the UCC as...

It's happened to all of us. An amazing idea comes to us and practically as soon as it does, our inner critic throws up a cloud of reasons why it can't happen: not enough resources, not enough know how, nobody to help make it real. And this doesn't just happen to individuals; institutions have their own inner critics who are skeptical of growth and new initiatives. In this episode, host Chris Bohnhoff talks to Seth Patterson about m...

Like many people, Plymouth member Kareem Murphy kept his distance from organized religion in his twenties. Then, in the midst of a successful career as an equity partner at a Washington DC lobbying firm, he found the right moment to re-engage with his spirituality. Now, as the Director of Intergovernmental Affairs for Hennepin County, Kareem integrates his spiritual self into all aspects of his life. We talked about his religious h...

Not long ago, Plymouth member Karen Barstad had a conversation with her sister about where they find the divine. Her sister’s answer was in nature; Karen’s answer was in community. From musical groups, to friendship circles, to groups whose purpose is to walk with people through life transitions, Karen has been a member of many sub-communities at Plymouth, and we talked about what meaning she has pulled from those often messy and i...

The summer of 2022 has not been an easy one for people in progressive spaces. We’ve seen the overturning of Roe vs Wade, multiple mass shootings, more instances of police killing of unarmed Black men, the congressional hearings on January 6, the war in Ukraine. . . all significant steps backward in terms of the struggles for peace and social justice. I sat down with Plymouth’s Lead Minister, DeWayne Davis, to talk through the quest...

How do you think about the study of history? Many of us were conditioned to think of history as a set of dates and names to memorize: a static set of facts that suggest the story of the past. But according to longtime Plymouth member Annette Atkins one studies history to bring today into contact with other times and populations. In the process, new questions emerge that lead to new understandings of both the past and the present.

What is your response to uncomfortable situations? How do you respond when confronted with a person or conversation that you disagree with, or that reveals a side of society or yourself that is hard to see? If you take your cues from social media or our popular culture, you might respond with anger, or defensiveness, or by distracting yourself from the source of the discomfort. But what does a spiritual path suggest as a more produ...

EJ Kelley has followed a unique path: in the midst of a successful career, he followed a persistent internal voice that kept telling him that he could do more to help the marginalized in our community. Instead of sticking it out until traditional retirement age and then devoting himself to philanthropy, he left his paying job and, as a way of recharging, started volunteering at the Groveland Food Shelf. As it happened, at the same ...