News

The May newsletter is available here.

Dear Church Family,

We are a diverse church – both locally and in covenant with other UCC churches – diversity abounds.  We welcome and cherish people who come to be the body of Christ for very different reasons and who understand that body of Christ and the larger issue of faith equally differently.    One of our great hallmarks is our desire to strive for deep understanding and connection even as we recognize that we need to hold any such endeavors or discoveries from them loosely as love and faith are unfolding enterprises.

In our tradition, believing matters deeply.  One of the gifts we bring to organized religion is our approach to belief.  In the UCC we more often talk about “how” we believe rather than “what” we believe.  We do so because of the unfolding nature of that belief which is not arriving at an answer but rather a giving of our full life force to a way and not just any way, but the way of Christ.  We emphasize the “how” of believing to keep us moving, exploring, praying, surrendering, discovering, learning, and, of course, following.

Yet we do not ignore the “what” of belief.  We have a beautiful statement of faith as a denomination – it never fails to move me when I read it.  It is available on our website, stockbridgeucc.org/learning-formation/  We don’t shy away from the task of making tangible how we understand God and how we understand our calling to live.  We identify as “non-credal” not to discourage such endeavors but rather to remember our diversity and to acknowledge that no statement or creed should ever be a “test of faith” rather they are ever-evolving “testimonies of faith.”   Statements of faith also give us something to hold onto together and remind us of the life-long and very real challenge of not letting faith remain some amorphous thing floating in the skies about but something that shapes both how we live and why.

Pastor Brent