Magnolia UCC

Sacred Silence
2025-04-30 11:00 - 23:30, 2025-04-23 11:00 - 23:30, 2025-04-16 11:00 - 23:30, 2025-04-09 11:00 - 23:30, 2025-04-02 11:00 - 23:30 (America/Vancouver)
Each week we gather in the Parlor at 11:00am on Wednesday for a time of sacred silence, time to still our minds and join together in creating sacred space in silence. Join us for this powerful time of community and prayerful being.

Chair Yoga
2025-04-30 10:00 - 11:00, 2025-04-23 10:00 - 11:00, 2025-04-16 10:00 - 11:00, 2025-04-09 10:00 - 11:00, 2025-04-02 10:00 - 11:00 UTC
Interested in maintaining or even regaining strength, flexibility, balance, good posture, inner awareness, and a relaxed body & mind? PHEW…! That’s sure a lot! Well, you can! Just join us each Wednesday a.m. in Pilgrim Hall at 10:00 am for chair yoga. No experience is necessary. Just wear loose clothing and your first lesson is Free. Then a one-time $15 fee is requested to help pay for the great videos on the big screen. Hope to see ya soon!

Congregational Info Session - Changing National Trends and How They May Impact MUCC
2025-04-29 19:00 - 20:00 (America/Vancouver)
As a part of the recent strategic planning retreat that the MUCC Coordinating Council attended (along with the MUCC Finance Team), Pastor Marci presented an overview of critical economic and demographic trends that may impact MUCC in the coming years. She has been asked by Council and the ByLaws Team to offer this information to the whole congregation. Join the Zoom!
Meeting ID: 841 4355 6656
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Congregational Info Session - Changing National Trends and How They May Impact MUCC
2025-04-27 11:15 - 12:00 (America/Vancouver)
As a part of the recent strategic planning retreat that the MUCC Coordinating Council attended (along with the MUCC Finance Team), Pastor Marci presented an overview of critical economic and demographic trends that may impact MUCC in the coming years. She has been asked by Council and the ByLaws Team to offer this information to the whole congregation. You can either attend the in-person session after Worship at 11:15 am on Sunday, April 27th in the Bell Tower Room or the Zoom Session at 7:00 pm on Tuesday, April 29th. Plan to come and learn more about the strategic challenges facing MUCC in the future and how we may adapt and meet those challenges!

Zoom Pub Theology
2025-04-23 19:00 - 20:00 UTC
This month’s question is ‘What does a ‘religion-less Christianity’ look like?’ So, grab a drink and join in the conversation! Join on Zoom. (Meeting ID: 886 8245 6539, Passcode: [REDACTED]

Learning Forum: Homelessness and the Meaning of Home
2025-04-21 19:00 - 20:00 (America/Vancouver)
For our April Learning forum, we are honored to welcome Dr. Josephine Ensign from the University of Washington who will speak on Homelessness and the Meaning of Home’. Loss of a home, whether through financial difficulties, divorce, illness, or natural disasters like wildfires, is a widespread and growing problem affecting all of us. Often thought of as only an urban problem, homelessness also occurs in suburban and rural areas throughout Washington State. What are the historical roots of homelessness, and what lessons can we learn from them? What are the common meanings of home to us, and how can we apply those meanings to our responses to homelessness in our communities? In this talk, author and professor Josephine Ensign leads audiences through a values clarification exercise that includes individual writing time. Professor Ensign will share her research on the history of homelessness in her hometown of Seattle, along with discussion of what these stories can teach us about the contemporary crisis of homelessness throughout our state and country.
Dr. Ensign (she/her), is a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. Her scholarship and practice as a nurse practitioner focus on trauma-informed care and health inequities for people marginalized by poverty and homelessness. She experienced homelessness herself as a young adult. Ensign is the author of several books including Skid Road: On the Frontier of Health and Homelessness in an American City, a 2022 finalist for the Washington State Book Award. Her latest book, Way Home: Ways Out of Homelessness, is forthcoming from Johns Hopkins University Press.
This session has been underwritten by a grant from Humanities of Washington. Advanced registration is required! You can register for this special learning forum here.

Easter Service
2025-04-20 10:00 - 11:00 (America/Vancouver)
Easter Sunday! Christ is Risen Indeed! Please plan to join us Sunday, April 20th as we celebrate Easter both online and in-person at MUCC! Our Scripture for the day will be John 20:1-18, John’s story of Sunday morning and Pastor Marci will be preaching and presiding. This will be a joyous celebration with plenty of sacred prayer, words of hope, amazing music (ending with a rousing rendition of the Hallelujah Chorus) and gift bags for the kids!
After Worship, all the young and young at heart are invited to the Easter Egg hunt outside on the front lawn and up to Pilgrim Hall for Fellowship with Mimosas and Hot Cross buns. Invite your family, friends, and neighbors to this joyous celebration of hope!

Good Friday Tenebrae Service
2025-04-18 12:00 - 13:00 (America/Vancouver)
Available all day via Facebook Live and via YouTube
Plan to join us via Facebook Live for this special online service as we meditate on an ancient Holy Week tradition that acknowledges the somber events that occurred in Jesus’ life from Palm Sunday to the night of Jesus’ burial.

Agape Dinner Celebration
2025-04-17 18:00 - 19:00 (America/Vancouver)
An agape feast or love feast is a communal meal shared among Christians. The name comes from agape, a Greek term for ‘love’ in its broadest sense. Plan to join us on Thursday of Holy Week at 6:00 pm, for a simple meal of soup, salad, bread, and dessert as we remember this special and holy meal that Jesus instituted on one of his last nights.
The mood will be celebratory as we bless and share our food and drink, hear the Choir sing, and enjoy community, blessed community! RSVP here to reserve your space.

Lent Bible Study - Walking the Passion
2025-04-17 13:00 - 2025-04-19 13:00, 2025-04-16 13:00 - 2025-04-18 13:00, 2025-04-15 13:00 - 2025-04-17 13:00, 2025-04-14 13:00 - 2025-04-16 13:00 (America/Vancouver)
Monday through Thursday, April 14th through April 17th, 1 pm via Zoom. Over four days, we will walk with Jesus through those final days using the Gospel of Mark as our guide.
Meeting ID: 865 6709 1590
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Lent Healing Service
2025-04-16 19:00 - 20:00 (America/Vancouver)
There is a great deal of chaos and upheaval happening in our world, our nation, our communities, our families, and in our personal lives. This environment is leading us to be fearful, heavy hearted, and overwhelmed. We are all holding so much grief, pain, guilt, shame, and trauma which leads us to feel depressed, disconnected, isolated, and even hopeless.
We hold all of this pain and heaviness in our minds, bodies, and spirits which can often prevent us from feeling joy, peace, hope, and love. For many of us, the season of Lent and more specifically, Holy Week, can be fraught with a variety of difficult feelings and emotions as well.
We all need a place where we can lament and let go of these difficult feelings and emotions so that we can be held in and receive abundant love which makes space for and ushers in healing, restoration, and renewal. If you need such space, and even if you don’t, join us for the Healing Service on Wednesday, April 16th at 7:00 pm PT via Zoom.
Meeting ID: 832 2950 9967
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Book Group
2025-04-14 18:30 - 20:30 UTC
The book group will be meeting in the MUCC Parlor at 6:30pm. The book discussion this month will be on House Made of Dawn, by N. Scott Momaday. Contact Marilee Gibbs at marileegibbs@comcast.net with any questions.

Special Liturgical Dance Worship Experience
2025-04-06 10:00 - 11:00 (America/Vancouver)
On Sunday, April 6th, MUCC will have a very special and unique worship experience. On that morning, we will experience the scripture story of the raising of Lazarus told through dance. We will be honored to welcome Betsey Beckman. Betsey directs the movement ministry at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Seattle and also offers her artistry to a variety of ecumenical and Interfaith settings. She has a background in dance that includes early foundational studies with the Cincinnati Ballet and danced professionally with the Greg Reynolds Dance Quintet and performed with this company for three years as principal dancer on the East Coast, including at Carnegie Recital Hall in New York City.
After moving to Seattle, Betsey continued Modern Dance studies with members of the Bill Evans Dance Company in the Seattle area. Her theological training includes a BA in Theology from Georgetown University, where she also helped to establish the Georgetown University Liturgical Arts Community, directed the Liturgical Dance Ministry and discovered the power of the arts to sustain and inspire the ongoing life of a worshipping community. She went on to earn a Master’s in Ministry at Seattle University, with an emphasis in spirituality. Please plan to attend this special Lenten worship experience on Sunday, April 6th!

Knights of the Square Table (MUCC Men’s Group)
2025-04-02 12:30 - 13:30 (America/Vancouver)
The men of MUCC (known as the Knights of the Square Table) meet monthly on the first Wednesday of every month at 12:30 with a rotating location at various local restaurants. Tom Ranken sends out email notices. The location switches regularly. It’s a purely social gathering! Tom Ranken sends out the email notification with the location and if you are not on that email distribution and would like to be, let Tom know! Contact him at tom@jthomasranken.com

Annual Food Drive with Scouts for Ballard Food Bank
2025-03-30 10:00 - 12:00 (America/Vancouver)
Join us and the Scouts collect food for the Ballard Food Banks!

Great items to donate are non-perishable foods including:

cereal
peanut butter
canned tuna
soup and chili
mac & cheese
rice
beans
pasta
coffee
shelf-stable juice
non-dairy milk

One Great Hour of Sharing (OGHS) Special Offering
2025-03-30 10:00 - 11:00 (America/Vancouver)
Each year, our congregation holds a special offering in support of the United Church of Christ efforts to support disaster, refugee/immigration, and development ministries throughout the world. This collection supports outreach for when a disaster strikes, or people are displaced or made refugees by violence or extreme poverty. OGHS supports ministries that engage in holistic development programs including health care, education, agriculture, food sustainability, micro-financing, and women’s empowerment. This offering supports the most vulnerable in our world.
You can make donations at magnoliaucc.org/giving and choose One Great Hour of Sharing Special Offering. Or you can write a check to MUCC and note OGHS in the memo. Thank you for your generosity!

Lent Taizé Service
2025-03-30 10:00 - 11:00 (America/Vancouver)
Taizé services are named from the place in which they were conceived by a monastic community of brothers in Taizé, France. Taizé services are usually characterized by three things: song, readings, and meditation. Short songs, often in the form of a single, simple refrain, are repeated over and over, similar to a mantra. It is a simple, meditative form of worship, calling us to dwell deeply on God’s presence around and within us. The emphasis of this sort of service is to help participants “experience” God through sensory-focused music and singing focused on our Lent theme of Abundant Love.
During this special Sunday Service, we will focus our service on the ancient practice of Taizé using prayer and chants to call us forward into worship and preparation. For this special worship, we will be blessed with the musical gifts of Caitlin Kelley and her violin!

Spring Work Party
2025-03-29 09:30 - 11:30 UTC | Magnolia UCC
Each quarter, we hold work parties to help maintain our beloved grounds and building! Plan to attend this Saturday morning work party this month to help keep our grounds looking so amazing! Starting at 9:30 am on March 29th, we’ll meet outside the church and be assigned garden maintenance projects. If we run out of garden projects, we may also be doing some facility projects. Plan to work outside though, bring gloves and garden tools!

Game Night
2025-03-28 16:00 - 18:00 (America/Vancouver)
Join us on Friday, March 28th from 4:00 to 6:00 pm for Game Night in Pilgrim Hall. Games could include scrabble, Yahtzee, monopoly, mahjong, playing cards (Families if you have specific youth friendly games, please bring them!). Feel free to bring your choice of beverage, snacks will be provided.
