On May 12th, Pastor Aerii, Ruby Zubrod, and Linda Chasson attended the sentencing hearing for Karen Bryan over the embezzlement that happened in September/October 2024. It was with much prayer for Karen, the congregation, and those attending that we went into this sentencing hearing, awaiting to know what the judge would decide about restitution and accountability. The judgment is that Karen will repay nearly $23,000 in restitution to the congregation over the course of 3 y

Join us August 7-8, 2026 in Pueblo, CO for our upcoming Regional Assembly for the Central Rocky Mountain Region. Every two years, the entire region of churches gets together to worship and learn from each other. The theme this year is “What’s Next? Light, Hope, Expectation” There will be a strong focus on church buildings and planning and structuring for the future of congregation and churches.

Sometimes it’s a bit hard to know what to write about when it comes to this note in the newsletter. However, there have been many discussions in the last few weeks over the state of finances at the church, and church leadership feels it’s important to be as transparent as possible.

We’re sinking into summer and a change of seasons, although some days it feels like summer is already here. With summer comes a shift in the rhythm of life. I find that during the summer, we have really intense weeks of activities and then nothing at all. But such is church life, rhythms, and the falling away of rhythms.

We’ve been talking a whole lot during this season about being a resurrection congregation, about stepping into our faith fully and allowing Christ to transform us into whatever is next. We have a call right in front of us to do that. And it’s scary because we don’t know what resurrection looks like, just that it looks different than what currently is.

This week I spent time in a call where we dis-cussed the idea of paradox which is that “Paradoxes embrace ambiguity, expose our intolerance for uncertainty, push our boundaries, and, if we hang on long enough, often force us to deny the comfort of our ideology for a deeper wisdom that is a more honest reflection of the human experience and the human spirit” (Brene Brown “Strong Ground”).

We ’re spending this time before Lent talking about accidental saints, those people where we find God and they don’t exactly “fit the bill” for those we should find God in. Which, I think is actually the majority of us. When we talk about saints, we often think of individuals who have had their sainthood declared, but the fact is, ordinary people can and will do extraordinary things. As we continue to celebrate and remember 100 years in this congregation, we can’t help but

It’s a fresh new year (almost!), and it’s so close to the 100th Birthday of our congregation! Which is so exciting.

I don’t know about you, but I’m certainly ready for a break. I’m not sure where October went, and now we’re nearly halfway through November as I write this, and I’m not sure where November went either.

On October 13th, we hosted our first Faith & Blue event. This event is put on by the community and hosted at a church. It’s designed to connect Law Enforcement Officers and Agencies to the community through fun activities.

I ’ve been teaching the youth group kids all about incarnation and what it means to be an anointed one, just like Jesus is. We dove deep into what it means to be a leader and the qualities and skills that we want to have in good leaders. It led to some really interesting conversations! But we’re also in that season as a congregation too. Every year, at the end of the year, we work to build our slate of officers or leadership for the upcoming year. Some roles won’t change, an

I look at all these scriptures of women and men who took the risk for their faith to share it with someone else. And I look at the results of that risk. I see testimonies, over and over again, of the one moment when someone took the risk to share the gospel, and the results that became exponential from it. And then I look at the church as it is today. The protestant church, the rural church, the Catholic church, the urban church—and I see us floundering. We have forgotten ho

The thriving congregations team attended a Zoom call on July 22 nd , learning all about mission and vision and what exactly that means. We then met together to form an idea for what kind of grant we could submit. Working with the Breakthrough Structure and Vision teams, we decided to submit a request for $750 to help fund the meals for the Talking Sessions happening in September and October, which are all about the mission, vision, and values of our congregation. We also ask

I was asked recently by another clergy person if I was considering putting my papers in. This is clergy code for looking for a new congregation and seeing what possibilities are out there. I was a bit surprised by that question, but reflecting back, it does make a bit of sense. I’ve been here five years now. And those five years have been adventurous, and this last year in particular, has been fairly intense. I think we can all agree with that last sentence. From starting

The Thriving congregations team met as a whole with all the other team members (clergy and laity) from the 15 participating congregations. We’re working hard on putting together a grant proposal for $750.00 with a focus on mission and vision..

Diving deep into the next sermon series will see us exploring what it means to be afraid and how to live Unafraid. It’s based on the book, Unafraid: Living with Courage and Hope in Uncertain Times by Adam Hamilton

Spending three days locked in a room with other clergy and laity is always an interesting experience. But there were lots of great...

Our congregation was nominated to participate in a program called Thriving Congregations. When I initially brought up the idea to the...

The art of change and transition is truly an art form. But with it can also come change and transition fatigue. We’ve had a lot of these types of transitions going on recently, and unfortunately and fortunately, even more to come.

In 2021, the theme for the Central Rocky Mountain Region’s regional assembly was “God’s New Thing” and I feel that theme is so apt for us now.