Category: Minister

Dear UUCF Community,  One of the things that my wife Michelle and I are loving about living in Michigan are the birds! In all the places we’ve lived before, we’ve never seen so many birds, especially close to where we live. Our apartment has a little patio on the back and two windows on the front. Believe it or not we now have SIX birdfeeders. Six. Never in my life have I ever had six bird feeders. Never say never, right?  Well, one interesting thing that’s happened as a result is that Michelle has really gotten into taking pics of…

Rev. Karen Madrone, September 21, 2023 Recently one of my minister colleagues posted a question on Facebook that got me thinking about our congregation and the ministry we create together. My colleague asked, “what do you enjoy about being part of a congregation?” The answers varied but the consistent theme was, “Congregations are the last place left in our world where we build multigenerational connections. They are a place where we are together, not for transactional relationships, i.e., you help me, I help you, but for learning and growing together.” In our UU congregations in particular, we come together across…

In my short time serving the people of UUCF, I have been very impressed with the caring I’ve seen between community members. The stories of folks checking in on each other after a crisis and stories of folks just checking in on each other to say hello, have been inspiring to me. I have had several conversations with the chair of the Caring Cooperative and we have talked about ideas to facilitate even deeper connections. I’m excited to see where these ideas take us! As the UUCF community continues to evolve, change, and grow, it’s important that everyone knows that…

Rev. Karen Madrone, July 28, 2023 These are questions that long time UUers struggle explaining to visitors to UU congregations. People come to our congregations for many reasons. Sometimes it’s because they want a space for their children to learn about religion in a non-dogmatic way. Sometimes it’s because they no longer want to be part of a former restrictive religion and want to find out what it might be like to be in a faith that encourages them to learn and grow. Sometimes they had no faith background at all but feel the need for community so they are…

On July 2 UUCF tried a new thing: an intentional multigenerational service. We are planning on having one multigen service every month and one service a month with a Message for All Ages. The July 2nd service was on Improv and being open to new things. It was quite appropriate that the Sunday we try out something new the electricity was out. We made the best of it even though it didn’t go quite as we had hoped or planned. It was definitely an experience in being open to what we do not yet know. So why are we doing…

At our service on Sunday, July 2 we focused our service together around the idea of what it would be like to say Yes! to questions or ideas that others presented to us. Using the framework of Improv, we dived deep into the Improv rules and considered how they might apply to our UUCF community. Two resources that I want to share with you is Shonda Rhimes’ book “The Year of Yes” and Victor Frankl’s book “Yes to Life.” Two very different sources (we are UUs, after all!) but both talk about the importance of saying yes even – especially…