United Church of Christ Southbury

07/31/2026

🕊️ Friday Thoughts 🕊️

Greetings UCC Southbury,

I want to tell you something small and good. I took a real break this July, and it actually felt like one.

This spring I decided to push through my paper for school during Lent and Easter, which anyone who works in a church will tell you is the least sensible time of year to take on anything extra. But it meant that for months there was no bottom to the pile. That paper is finished now, and when I finally set the work down in July, there was nothing waiting underneath it.

So I come back rested, and glad, and honestly excited to get back into the life of this church.

August starts with Vacation Bible School, which is always one of the great blessings of our year and, let us be honest, one of the more laborious ones. It is worth every hour of it. If you have ever thought about lending a hand, this is the week to say yes and reach out to myself or Theo.

After that, I have been thinking we ought to spend some time together outdoors. We have a beautiful green out there and not nearly enough excuses to sit on it. So expect some fellowship after service outside.

One more thing. If you and I have not talked in a while, or if we have never really talked at all, I would like to change that. Reach out and let us put coffee or lunch or dinner on the calendar. I’d love to connect.

See you Sunday at the Table.

Grace and peace,
Shawn

Love ~ Mission ~ Faithfulness

This is the sequel to Psalm 51. David repented, truly, and lost the...

07/17/2026

🕊️ Friday Thoughts 🕊️

Greetings UCC Southbury,

This Sunday our summer in the Psalms brings us to Psalm 51, the prayer David prayed after the prophet Nathan confronted him over Bathsheba and Uriah. Songs have been written about it and people of all religions know the scandalous story. In the end we are left with no excuses, no performance, just a man asking God to do what he cannot do for himself: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

For centuries this psalm was used to shame people. On Sunday we will let it do what it was written to do instead: show us how a pattern breaks, and how a new way begins.

We water the garden. God gives the growth.

Grace and peace,
Shawn

Love ~ Mission ~ Faithfulness

Cesar Millan never gets angry at the dog. He knows the dog is runni...

07/10/2026

🕊️ Friday Thoughts 🕊️

Greetings UCC Southbury,

I unfortunately have to share some sad news with you all. Our beloved friend and member of the United Church of Christ of Southbury, David Merrill, passed away last Sunday afternoon, around two o'clock.

Most of you do not need me to tell you who David was. His art tells you. It hangs all around town. It hangs in our homes. Soon it will hang around our church, where it belongs, among the people he loved. An artist leaves behind his way of seeing. Even now, David goes on teaching us to look.

We are in conversation with his family about a memorial service here at our church, on a Saturday in August. As soon as the date is set, we will let you know. I'm sure many of you will want to say farewell in body, and be reunited in spirit.

I want to tell you where I found my footing this week. You may need the same ground.

This summer we are living in the Psalms. In worship. In Bible study. In our time spent reading and meditating on the words of God. And this week the Psalms stopped being our subject and became a real help to so many, myself included. Just today I stood at a graveside for a family outside our congregation, people who simply needed a minister, grieving someone I had never met. And I watched the Psalms do their work. I did not comfort that family. The Psalms did. Three thousand years old, and they still know exactly where it hurts. They are like magic in that way. Like poetry that speaks life into the soul. As the deer panteth for the water, so may we pant for them.

This Sunday we will be in Psalm 22, the psalm Jesus prayed from the cross. It is a psalm for the grieving, because it doesn't pretend. It starts in real sorrow. It falls all the way down. And at the bottom it finds something: the going-down is held, it's meant to feel a certain way, and the God who seemed far off was listening the whole time. If your heart is heavy this week, come Sunday. Bring the heaviness with you. This psalm has room for it.

Hold David's family in your prayers. Hold one another. And when you pass one of his paintings this week, in town hall or on your own wall, let it stop you for a moment. What we love does not simply vanish. It keeps speaking.

Grace and peace,
Pastor Shawn

Some psalms comfort. This one descends. It begins with the most ter...

07/10/2026

🛠️😇🛠️ Mission Trip Memories 🛠️😇🛠️

Many thanks to all that joined the Halo & Hammers team to help make a difference!

Love ~ Mission ~ Faithfulness

07/10/2026

📣 Vacation Bible School 📣

Join us for a Tropical Trek at Vacation Bible School ~ slots still available ~ registration open until July 10th
https://www.myvbs.org/stj-uccsby

Please see flyer for details or contact the church office with any questions.

Love ~ Mission ~ Faithfulness

07/08/2026

07/08/2026

07/07/2026

Mahjong is better with good company!

Join us at UCC Southbury for beginner lessons, open play, and a welcoming community of players who love the game and the time together.

New to mahjong? We’ll teach you.
Already playing? Pull up a chair.

Learn more here: https://www.uccsouthbury.org/mahjong--uccs.html

07/05/2026

A sermon that draws from depth psychology, Jung, and Ed Edinger. Ive been reading Edinger's the Sacred Psyche, a Psychological Approach to the Psalms and this sermon was inspired by him and a man named Neville we met in London.

"The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God." We hear that ve...