Hot take: My least favorite thing about this upcoming holiday season is the American cultural understanding of what is appropriate to eat on Thanksgiving and Christmas. If I’m honest, I’d rather have Mariano’s fajitas for Thanksgiving and Jimmy’s lasagna for...
My mother recently found my first Bible packed away in her attic, a hardback, blue NRSV edition with my name, Heather Beard, engraved on the front cover. Inside the Bible, tucked safely away, we also discovered my first footprints, hospital card and baby bracelet....
Around here we’ve always called the start of our fall activities Promotion Sunday — that being today. It means very little, honestly, particularly for adults — because, well, we don’t actually promote. (We never stop aging, despite our best attempts.) Promotion Sunday...
Preparing for Worship - Heather Mustain, associate pastor. This past Monday evening we hosted an iftar dinner with our Turkish Muslim friends from the Dialogue Institute to learn more about the holy month of Ramadan. Yusuf began the program by discussing four portals...
Preparing for Worship - Heather Mustain, associate pastor. Today is fondly known around Wilshire as Deacon Ordination Sunday. Deacons, in our Baptist tradition, are members of the church who have been nominated and identified from within as those who already...
Preparing for worship - Heather Mustain, associate pastor. Today is the third Sunday of Advent, the day we light the pink candle in our Advent wreath. Pink, or rose, is the liturgical color that symbolizes joy, and this Sunday is more formally known as “Gaudate”...
Preparing for Worship - Heather Mustain, associate pastor. Today ends Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week, a national campaign to draw attention to the problem and prevalence of hunger and homelessness in America. In partnership with Housing Forward and...
Preparing for worship - Heather Mustain. The late Phyllis Tickle, in her book The Great Emergence, suggests that every 500 years the church has its own rummage sale, cleaning out old forms of spirituality and embarking on the process of finding new ones. Today we...
Preparing for Worship - Heather Mustain, associate pastor. What a special Sunday we lived together one week ago. Maybe, like me, today you come to this place feeling many things — eager yet reserved, excited yet aching, expectant yet hesitant. The memories and...
Preparing for Worship - Heather Mustain. Today we sing a hymn with words written by Ken Medema. Many of you know and love Medema’s work. But for those who don’t know him, his official bio states, “For four decades, Ken Medema has inspired people through...