Includes a collage of voices from villagers in Homorodszentpeter as well as from members of Unity's Partner Church Team. Homily delivered by Rev. Rob Eller-Isaacs.

Includes a reflection on covenant by Rev. Karen Hering

On the eve of General Assembly in Minneapolis, join Lissa Gundlach, Worship Associate Ann Kirby McGill and Nathan Eckstein for a special service celebrating Lissa’s ministry at Unity and exploring dimensions of belonging to the larger body of Unitarian Universalists.

"It is easy to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great person is the one who, in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." Emerson’s words point toward a creative response to the inherent tension between independence and belonging. As we turn toward summer Rob and Worship Associate Nick Raths will offer the service.

Like concentric circles rippling out on a pond, we belong to ever expanding groups: first to ourselves, then to our family and extended families, our communities, neighborhoods, nation, the world, and to the planet itself. Janne and Worship Associate Katy Taylor will explore the roles of belonging and letting go.

Memorial Day service. Includes reflection from Michael Orange.

Flower Communion Sunday

As we express our gratitude to the volunteer Religious Education teachers who have made our Ministry with Children and Youth a reality, worship leader and Director of Religious Education, Kerri Meyer, will pause to reflect on the causes and the consequences of R.E.'s growth in both enrollment and commitment.  We wrestle with crowded Sunday School classrooms, but can we actually ever have “too many kids”?  As the psalmist sang, our quiver is full.  Now where shall we aim our bow?

Our Universalist forbearers used the phrase "our larger hope" to refer to their belief in universal salvation. How many of us have come to know God’s love because our mothers have given us the kind of love "we did not earn and cannot buy," a love that is so very much like grace.

Some of life’s important rites of passage come to us as a matter of chronological growth, development and an increasing ability to assume responsibility. Other transformations come to us much more subtly without fanfare.

We are transformed by forces outside ourselves but we can welcome or resist those forces.

From the days of the Pilgrims and Puritans, our free-church tradition has been shaped and transformed by history, maintaining its core message while responding to the social and spiritual signs of the times. Taking a look back into our past, Lissa Gundlach and Worship Associate Amy Kujawski explore directions of our shared faith in a quickly changing world.

Easter Sunday homily from Rev. Rob Eller-Isaacs. Includes the much requested A Story for All Ages delivered by Kerri Meyer.

It is so easy to be captured by the myth of progress. It’s not that there is no such thing as progress but it is neither inevitable nor orderly. As young people we imagine our personal lives will conform to certain patterns of progress. And as a culture we tend toward the assumption that progress is "onward and upward forever." There are aspects of the myth both personal and collective that need to be broken. Janne Eller-Isaacs and Worship Associate Hal Freshly will lead the service.

Welcome the Rev. Robert Balint, the 2009-10 Balazs Scholar from Starr King School for the Ministry. Balint is minister of the Unitarian Church in Meszko, the alabaster village in Transylvania where Francis Balazs for whom the fellowship is named once served. In addition to his theological studies, Balint has completed a degree in sociology at Kolozsvár Babes Bolyai University. He has been involved in the Unitarian youth movement and worked with local social and charity organizations. With others, he has started the Balázs Ferenc Historical Preservation Project, designed to preserve and promote Francis Balázs's spiritual and material heritage.

It is often difficult to find meaning in the midst of brokenness.  Perhaps a deeper question is attempting to find the Sacred in the midst of suffering.  What, if anything, is holy or redemptive in suffering?  How can our lives be changed for the better from our brokenness?  The age old question of “Where is God in my suffering?” is not easily answered, if answered at all.  How we respond to brokenness can be painful, as well as beautiful.  Join Coordinator of Youth and Campus Ministries Luke Stevens-Royer and Worship Associate Katy Taylor for a service on brokenness and compassion.

Reflections on scarcity and abundance.

For more than a hundred years Unity Church has faced south. We have been a liberal church for old St. Paul. Our congregation has largely come from the nearby neighborhoods of Ramsey and Crocus Hills. What might it mean for us to turn north? Caritas, the fourth form of love, calls us to come to know the neighbors we have yet to know.

When a person can "Friend" and "Unfriend" someone on the internet without ever interacting, what has friendship come to mean? Might it have something to do with the idea of face-to-face "presence?" Rev. Karen Hering explore dimensions of the Greek form of love known as philia, or friendship, in building spiritual communities.

A Standing on the Side of Love Valentine's Day service.

All our wise and heartfelt words amount to dust and ashes if we don’t live out our values in the world. Rob and Worship Associate Amy Kujawski will begin our series of services on love by taking a long, hard look at the way of love the Greeks knew as agape.

It is so hard to tell a decent story. It is even harder to tell a story that is actually true. By what power, by what authority do we tell the stories of our lives. The private stories, the public stories… The stories that insist on being told… With what strength of heart, with what sense of courage do we share our witness of the world? And, more deeply, what is the power of our honest word? Join us for exploration of courage and excellence in public life.

It doesn’t seem to make logical sense. How does it take courage to let go, to surrender? What are the costs and benefits for individuals and congregations of having the courage to surrender, to let go?

Martin Luther King, Jr. stood in the line of the prophets. Unitarian Universalist theologist James Luther Adams was a passionate advocate for the "priest and prophethood of all believers." This year we honor the memory and ministry of Dr. King by asking how we all might be both priests and prophets.

Is it possible to break out of a pattern of living that doesn’t fit any longer? People all over the world and even in our community can testify to the courage it takes to do so. Explore the dimensions of courageous and authentic living.

We begin each new year with a memorial service for those who have died in the previous year. Rob, Janne, and Lissa eulogize men and women whose lives have shaped the world of art or politics, literature or science.