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Mark your calendars for August 5-8, when Northfield will enjoy the return of the Vintage Band Festival (http://www.vintagebandfestival.org), organized by St. Olaf professor of music Paul Niemisto. Our church was one of the hosts at the first festival, in 2006, and once again our sanctuary will be home to several of the more than 75 concerts scheduled for the weekend. On Friday, August 6 at 12:30, we will host the Kentucky Baroque Trumpets (http://www.kybaroquetrumpets.com), and on Saturday, August 7 at 1:30, the Chicago Gargoyle Brass (http://www.gargoylebrass.com) will perform works for brass and organ. The music for our service on Sunday, August 8 will be provided by the Dodworth Saxhorn Band (http://www.dodworth.org). All events of the Vintage Band Festival are free and open to the public, and you are heartily encouraged to attend as many of these excellent concerts as your summer schedule can hold. Each concert needs the help of several volunteers; if you are willing to help, contact Patsy Dew (patsy.dew@gmail.com).
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Please click on the July 2010 Chronicle for church news & interesting events happening at First UCC this month! Please click on the June 2010 Chronicle for church news and interesting events happening at First UCC.
Jeff Barton has been in United Church of Christ programs and congregations since 1979 when he was a seminary intern at Parkview Congregational UCC in Aurora, Colorado. He has been a pastor, a campus minister, an associate pastor, a senior minister and a UCC conference association minister. Jeff has served the UCC in Idaho, New Hampshire and Montana for longer calls and in Wyoming, Wisconsin and Oregon for shorter terms and interims. He has served as an interim minister in four settings before ours, and is looking to continue to do intentional interim work for the extension of his active ministry career. Jeff has been with Casas Adobes UCC in Tuscon Arizona since February of 2009, with his last Sunday being July 11. He is a native of Minneapolis, and has academic degrees from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA and from the Iliff School of Theology in Denver. He now permanently resides among the mountains, rivers and people of the Portland, Oregon area, where he enjoys skiing in the winter and river rafting in the summer. He’s a 21 handicap in golf and prefers jazz and blues in his musical tastes. Jeff has two young adult children. Jed lives and writes in Billings, Montana. Katie (Carleton alum, 2007) has begin her graduate studies in medical school in Portland, Oregon. Jeff has a significant other, Rev. Mary Sue Evers, a UCC pastor in the Portland, OR, area.
Thanks to everyone for your generosity and good wishes, and may God’s blessings continue to shower down on this wonderful congregation. Grace and peace, Sandy
Blessings Numbers 6:22-27;Matthew 5:1-10; Psalm 23 (choir; arranged by Bobby McFarrin) There are two things that Ministers can do at the end of worship: they can send you forth with instructions about changing the world, or they can offer a blessing. Last week I gave you plenty of instructions (and copies of the handout are available for those of you who missed that sermon), so this week I will speak to you of blessings.
Sandy Johnson preached her last sermon at First UCC on Sunday June 27, 2010. It was a day of joy and sadness, food and fun.
The Church of Our Dreams Psalm 42; Romans 12:9-18; Luke 5:36-39 At some meeting or another, you may have heard me talk about “the church of my dreams.” That’s the church where things run smoothly, priorities are set and kept, volunteers are delighted to offer their talents, and the stewardship drive is always successful.
He will be ordained in his home church, Trinity UCC in Morengo, Iowa, on Saturday, July 24, at 3:00 pm. Click here for directions to the church — and to learn about the congregation that has nurtured and supported Damen along the way. A Who Do You See? Luke 7:36 – 8:3 Over the last 12 ¾ years I have drawn on many sources for my sermons: personal experience, movies, books, songs, visual art on the wall, even jokes, texting, and Facebook. But I never expected to use Terry Mitchell’s doctoral dissertation
Enough 1 Kings 17:8-24; Psalm 146 Two sermons emerged for me this week from the passage about Elijah and the widow of Zarephath. The first one is inspiring and the second one is troubling. Inspiration first. There is enough. |
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First UCC is happy to announce it has finalized an agreement with the Reverend Jeff Barton to be the interim minister. He will be with the church for at least one year, starting August 22. Jeff is committed to helping the church create a vision for the future and to restructure the church and programs accordingly. 
I am so grateful to everyone for the wonderful celebration of our ministry together, for the beautiful fabric art by Dawn Carlson Conn that was commissioned for the church in honor of my time with you, and for the substantial donations made to my seminary, Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. 
My time as minister of First UCC has been filled with blessings, so that’s what I preached about on my last Sunday.
When I taught college classes, I learned that the best way to get students’ attention was to number the items I was lecturing about. So I used that tactic to share my dreams for the future life of the congregation.
The Annual Report from United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities has a wonderful profile of Ruth MacKenzie, who was our 2009-10 Seminary intern. Click 
Our 2007-08 Seminary intern, Damen Heitmann, has been called to serve at First United Church of Little Falls, Minnesota. 
ll four Gospels tell the story of a woman anointing Jesus, but the version in Luke does not focus on the extravagance of the act. Instead, Luke directs our attention to a poignant question: “Do you see this woman?” 
The story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath got me to thinking about scarcity and abundance, and about what is “enough.”
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