A creative collaboration between Trinity United Methodist Church and Sellwood Faith Community

Crisis after crisis seems to be erupting around us. Gas in the building means we have to cancel worship. Local high school in lockdown with reports of an armed student. Spending hours hunting down a booster shot to protect against Omicron. I find myself addicted to...

Peace seems so hard sometimes. Especially when we make it about a perfect, serene state, free from conflict.  Peace is actually the transcendent, that which we encounter not when we avoid conflict or sorrow or difficulty, but rather what we find when we embrace...

I am somewhat of a traditionalist when it comes to the church season of advent. Hope, peace, joy, and love are the four Sundays, period. I think because at my core this is what Christmas means to me. Christ is our hope, his is the way of peace. Joy is all about...

One of the things I miss most in worship is singing together. We have been singing in our homes, or humming along to the hymns in the sanctuary for months and months. I miss the sound of all our voices combining. I miss the feel of giving full voice to powerful words...

Every year our community asks folks to make promises. We base these promises on our membership vows to support the church by our prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness. This is both a practical act and one of spiritual formation. Our parish is funded by the...

This Sunday we will be celebrating All Saints Day.  It’s a Sunday where we remember those who have died in the past year, but what I have found is that so often people long to also name others, some who have been gone for years.  It is important that we honor the...

This week I was afraid to speak, which is not something that usually happens to me.  The school board was discussing a vaccine mandate for students 12 and up.  I was sitting in my house, zooming in to the conversation, and I knew that the protestors who had disrupted...

In the back of our sanctuary at Trinity was a somewhat unsightly pillar. Years ago the pews around it had been removed and it had different colors of paint on it, reflecting the different sanctuary updates over the years. Then we tried to paint it to match the other...

This week the parish voted on becoming a reconciling community. The vote passed unanimously! This means the people of the parish affirm the following statement from the Reconciling Ministries Network, an organization that equips and mobilizes United Methodists of all...

For the past 6 weeks we as a parish have been exploring our why statement, We believe everyone needs a safe space to be loved for who they are already. Our why statement was created and refined by our leadership team and will continue to evolve as we as a parish adapt...