Minooka United Methodist Church

05/29/2026

Dear Minooka UMC Found Family,

Confirmation Sunday is always one of the best days in the life of the church. Young people publicly profess their faith in God, their desire to follow God in the Way of Jesus, and their willingness to do so as members of this congregation, Minooka United Methodist Church. Congratulations to Olivia and Piper and their families!

On Confirmation Sunday we experience the future melding into the present. On Confirmation Sunday we sit next to parents, siblings, grandparents, and other family members beaming with pride. On Confirmation Sunday we celebrate commitments made by the teenagers. But commitments are also asked of the confirmands’ parents and the entire congregation. In other words, everybody has a vital role to play on Confirmation Sunday.

But wait, there’s more! This Sunday we also celebrate Pentecost: a time when God’s Holy Spirit ignites a brand new day. Some speak like never before, others hear in ways they never thought possible. Questions and wonderment abound!

When Pentecost and Confirmation join together? That makes for a Sunday in which we embody hope.

Our guiding text for this Sunday is, as one would expect for this day, the story of the first Christian Pentecost as told by Luke in Acts of the Apostles. In my sermon, To Be Continued…, I will reflect on that story and celebrate the unique attributes of this current Confirmation cohort as we explore what is possible for our future together.

When Pentecost and Confirmation join together? It should leave us forever changed.

Pentecost and Confirmation together make for a great day to participate in worship in person this Sunday, May 31st, at 9:30 a.m. Of course we will also live-stream the worship experience on our Minooka UMC page and our Minooka UMC YouTube Channel.

All are invited to our welcoming and affirming congregation.

Whether online or in person, what could be better than witnessing hope embodied?! See you Sunday.

Plotting Goodness,
Pastor Dave

Minooka United Methodist Church is an inclusive gathering of found family learning to be more like Jesus and actively serving the community.

05/24/2026

Minooka UMC Worship - May 24, 2026

05/22/2026

Dear Minooka UMC Found Family,

We are in for a treat this week as our very faithful Lay Leader and Certified Lay Speaker, Chris Vause, offers the message, Following Our Ultimate Servant Leader.
Based on Jesus stories from the gospels according to John and Matthew.

Thinking of Jesus as servant leader reminds me of this article posted this week by United Methodist Communications about how to be compassionate—even when we don’t feel like it. The article quotes spiritual director, author, and professor, Frank Rogers, Jr. Rogers says, “When we are feeling compassionate, it's like our hearts are beating to the pulse of compassion, and neuroscience shows that our hearts do beat to different rhythms when we are in states of love as opposed to states of agitation or stress.”

Rogers teaches six dimensions of authentic compassion:
Pay attention: Take the time to genuinely pay attention to the other person in their experience.

Understand empathetically: Recognize the other person has fears they carry and that perhaps there is pain in their life.

Love with connection: Access that warm, loving regard that genuinely cares about the well-being of the other person.

Sense the sacred: Recognize that the other person is held by God with absolute love, care, and delight.

Embody new life: Desire that the other person’s suffering will ease and that they will have new life.

Moved to act: Respond with action to help restore the other person’s flourishing.

To paraphrase a popular song, what the world needs now is compassion, real compassion.

Participate in our worship experiences Sundays at 9:30 a.m. in person at 1210 S. Ridge Road in Minooka. Or via livestream on our Minooka UMC page or on our Minooka UMC YouTube Channel.

Whether in person or online, all are invited to our welcoming and affirming congregation.

Plotting Goodness,
Pastor Dave

Minooka United Methodist Church is an inclusive gathering of found family learning to be more like Jesus and actively serving the community.

05/17/2026

Minooka UMC Worship - Sunday, May 17

05/15/2026

Dear Minooka UMC Found Family,

Since Easter we’ve been exploring the overarching theme, Stories That Matter. We started by looking at some of Jesus’ post-resurrection encounters with his disciples. Encounters that always ended with Jesus giving his disciples (that’s us!) a mission—Go! Go where to do what? Jesus responds with way more than enough mission to keep us active for, well, ever: Go and tell, go and baptize, go and teach, go and make disciples, go and forgive, go and trust God loves you, go and remember Jesus is with you, go and feed those who don’t have enough to eat.

You all are living that mission in so many ways each and every day. Gathering to pray with and for one another. Gathering to learn with and from one another. Gathering to feed hungry neighbors. Gathering to use your voice and power to advocate for our nation to better use our resources to feed neighbors so that none go hungry. Gathering as a community firmly committed to being open, welcoming, and affirming of all our neighbors—especially our LGBTQ+ neighbors, whom some loud cultural and self-described Christian voices try hard to exclude. (What do I mean? Ask our new Soccer Sunday team for their experience with a self-professed Christian organization actively making life harder for anyone who doesn’t fit their bigoted views.)

All of that to say: I see you. I see you doing all you can to live as the disciples Jesus calls you to be and I’m so proud and honored to get to be your pastor. I will continue to strive to encourage you and equip for for that discipleship work. This journey through Stories That Matter is meant to do just that: encourage and equip.

Next, we went Back to the Beginning! in an attempt to read with new eyes some of the foundational stories in Genesis. After spending several weeks with the incredible, multi-layered poem of creation that begins Genesis—and, crucially, sets the stage for all the follows it—we are finally ready to move on to…another creation story??

Why do the writers and editors of Genesis 2-3 have a completely different creation story immediately follow the first creation story? Why would we ever think we are supposed to read them “literally” when the two stories are so very obviously incompatible with each other and unreconcilable to each other? All these centuries later, is it even possible for us to read the story many know as the Garden of Eden without reading it through the lens of Augustine? Might we instead begin to read Genesis 2ff as it was meant to be read—through the lens of Genesis 1?

That’s what we’ll explore this Sunday, May 17th, in my sermon Back to the Beginning! Unoriginal Sin.

Participate in our worship experiences Sundays at 9:30 a.m. in person at 1210 S. Ridge Road in Minooka. Or via livestream on our Minooka UMC page or on our Minooka UMC YouTube Channel.

Whether in person or online, all are invited to our welcoming and affirming congregation.

Plotting Goodness,
Pastor Dave

Minooka United Methodist Church is an inclusive gathering of found family learning to be more like Jesus and actively serving the community.

05/10/2026

Minooka UMC Worship - Sunday, May 10

05/08/2026

Dear Minooka UMC Found Family,

Did you know the origin story for Mother’s Day begins with the writer of a famous hymn and a couple of Methodists?? I sure didn’t!

Living in New England, Julia Ward Howe wrote the lyrics to “Battle Hymn of the Republic” in 1861. But neither her talents nor her interests stopped there. “Howe was an abolitionist, a women’s rights advocate, and a peace activist. In 1870, horrified by the death and destruction she had witnessed during the Civil War, Howe issued what has come to be known as her ‘Mother’s Day Proclamation.’ Howe urged the creation of an international body of women who could find ways to avoid war and bloodshed.”
(Source: Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum)

Meanwhile, in Virginia (an area that would become West Virginia), Ann Maria Reeves Jarvis reached similar conclusions. “Jarvis was convinced that mothers had to work for peace because they could see the ravages of war in their husbands and in their sons, in a way that was so focused and so clear that their voices would be powerful.” So she started clubs to talk with mothers about hydration for fevered babies, about sanitation, and about the importance of nutrition for children.
(Source: United Methodist Communications)

Ann Jarvis lived in an area containing both Union and Confederate troops and supporters. Boldly, she insisted that “the women’s groups she organized help both Confederate and Union troops who were sick or wounded. In 1868, despite threats of violence, she organized a ‘Mother’s Friendship Day’ to bring families from both sides of the war together to try to restore a sense of community.”
(Source: Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum)

Later, Ann’s daughter, Anna Jarvis, was a non-stop champion for creating Mother’s Day as a national holiday. Her dream came to life in 1914 when President Wilson issued a proclamation of the first national Mother’s Day.

But Anna Jarvis’ story did not end there. Capitalism quickly turned Mother’s Day into a huge windfall for sellers of flowers and greeting cards. Anna Jarvis rebelled against that crass commercialization. “In 1922, Jarvis endorsed an open boycott against the florists who raised the price of white carnations every May. The following year, she crashed a retail confectioner convention to protest the industry’s economic gouging of the day. In 1925, she interrupted a national convention of the American War Mothers because a majority of the money raised by the organization’s white carnation sales went into the pockets of professional organizers rather than going to aid World War I veterans.”
(Source: Smithsonian Magazine)

So there we have it: Mother’s Day is meant to be so much more than nostalgic sentimentality. The very idea for the day was born out of the need for non-violent solutions to our problems and an intense desire for peace with justice.

I’m convinced we could make similar statements about Sabbath at the culmination of the first creation story in Genesis. That creation story in general—and the Sabbath that concludes it in particular—are not about nostalgia or cheap sentimentality. Rather, they are radical calls for peace with justice. Peace with justice for you, for me, for us—but especially for the most vulnerable among us.

This Sunday, May 10, we honor mothers and all the women in our lives who have been as mothers for us. One of the ways we honor them is by reading about Sabbath (both in Genesis and in Deuteronomy) through the lens of justice and liberation. That’s what we’ll explore this Sunday in my sermon Back to the Beginning! Rest & Resist.

Participate in our worship experiences Sundays at 9:30 a.m. in person at 1210 S. Ridge Road in Minooka. Or via livestream on our Minooka UMC page or on our Minooka UMC YouTube Channel.

Whether in person or online, all are invited to our welcoming and affirming congregation.

Plotting Goodness,
Pastor Dave

Minooka United Methodist Church is an inclusive gathering of found family learning to be more like Jesus and actively serving the community.

05/05/2026

Hello Friends!

If you receive our weekly newsletter or have our church bulletin, you have heard of the garage sales taking place this week, May 7th, 8th, and 9th on Wabena and Wabasso streets, where all proceeds will go to MUMC.

The garage sales are being postponed until the fall. The garage sale facilitators are accepting donations to help make it a success and will continue to do so throughout the summer. If you have anything you would like to donate, please call the church office at 815.467.2322 to coordinate drop off.

Thank you all for your continued support. :)

05/03/2026

Minooka UMC Worship - Sunday, May 3

05/01/2026

Dear Minooka UMC Found Family,

“That religion, which I thought I professed and which was calculated to better the world, was something that was worthwhile for me to use my energies in propagating; and I did it. I could not help it.”
—Samuel Fieldan, an immigrant and Methodist Episcopal Church lay speaker.

Mr. Fieldan offered those words in his closing speech at the first May Day rally in Chicago way back in 1886. We don’t talk much anymore about May Day or worker’s rights. But, with publication day for this newsletter being May 1, it seems the perfect time to do so.

Caring about—and working for—labor rights is even older than eloquent Mr. Fieldan. Outspoken work for labor rights goes back to the beginning of the Methodist movement. In 18th-century England, John Wesley and the early Methodists ministered to coal miners and other marginalized workers and their families. The predecessor denominations that became the United Methodist Church have been advocating for fair labor practices ever since.

In 1908 the Methodist Episcopal Church adopted a Social Creed calling for an end to child labor, a fair and living wage for all workers, collective bargaining rights for employees and workplace safety practices. Some highlights:

“For equal rights and complete justice for all men [sic] in all stations of life.

For the protection of the worker from dangerous machinery, occupational diseases, injuries and mortality.

For the abolition of child labor.

For such regulation of the conditions of labor for women as shall safeguard the physical and moral health of the community.

For the gradual and reasonable reduction of the hours of labor to the lowest practical point, with work for all; and for that degree of leisure for all which is the condition of the highest human life.

For a release from employment one day in seven.

For a living wage in every industry.

For the highest wage that each industry can afford, and for the most equitable division of the products of industry that can ultimately be devised.”
(Read the whole Creed here.)

I truly admire this creed—but I don’t love how relevant it still is. Let’s consider what we might do about that.

Thinking about the connection between ourselves and all our neighbors and our need to advocate for ourselves and our neighbors brings me back to the poem that begins the Bible. It is not a typo in the bulletin, we really are experimenting with reading the same scripture as last week, but from a different version. Last week was The Message; this week The Voice translation.

Why? There is so much more for us to glean from that inspiring text! This week we’ll focus on how the opening story helps us know how to read the entire rest of the Bible.
That’s what we’ll explore this Sunday, May 3, in my sermon Back to the Beginning! The Preface.

Participate in our worship experiences Sundays at 9:30 a.m. in person at 1210 S. Ridge Road in Minooka. Or via livestream on our Minooka UMC page or on our Minooka UMC YouTube Channel.

Whether in person or online, all are invited to our welcoming and affirming congregation.

Plotting Goodness,
Pastor Dave

Minooka United Methodist Church is an inclusive gathering of found family learning to be more like Jesus and actively serving the community.

04/28/2026

A BIG Thank You to everyone who got involved to create yet another wonderful Forever Young Senior Luncheon on April 15th. What a joy it is to serve the community and facilitate connections.

Our final senior luncheon until the fall is on Wednesday, May 20th. We will begin taking reservations on Monday, May 4th. Call our office at 815.467.2322 to make yours. :)