 Life is full of noise. We find ourselves scrolling constantly. Work doesn’t stop. The headlines don’t pause. The pressure to perform—to fix, to manage, to hold it all together—runs deep.
And yet...God is not in a hurry. And the Holy Spirit often whispers, not shouts. As some of you have heard, this fall, we’re creating space to return to the stillness of our Creator. Beginning in September, we’re launching a weekly Evening of Contemplative Practice here at St. Paul Congregational UCC. Every Thursday night at 7pm, we’ll gather—not to be entertained or instructed, but simply to be. To breathe. To rest in sacred quiet. To listen inwardly and together. Some weeks we’ll sing simple songs. Some weeks we’ll sit in silence. Some weeks we’ll pray with breath or body or scripture. It’s mostly lay-led, soft-lit, and spacious. You don’t need to know anything. You don’t need to have words. You don't need to get yourself all dolled up to come. You just need to show up. The natural next question might be: Why Thursday night? Why not just stick to Sunday morning? It’s a fair question. After all, we’re a small church. Do we really need another thing? But this isn’t just another thing. It’s another way. At St. Paul Congregational UCC, we believe worship should be relevant to all ages—and all spiritual temperaments. And we know Sunday mornings don’t meet every spiritual need. Some of us can't make it some Sunday mornings, but still long for community and connection to something larger than ourselves. Some of us have been hurt by the Church, and Sunday mornings feel overwhelming. Some of us crave a slower pace. A quieter room. A space where there’s no sermon, no singing unless we feel like it, no pressure to be “on.” Just stillness. Just Spirit. Just presence. Thursday evenings create a different kind of container—one where we can breathe deeply at the end of a long day, where seekers and skeptics and the spiritually weary can come without needing to perform or conform. It’s not a replacement for Sunday. It’s a complement. It’s a new rhythm that makes more room. And truthfully? Sometimes, the sacred shows up most clearly when we step outside our usual routine. This rhythm grows out of our commitment not only to deepen our spiritual lives, but to ground our work for justice in prayerful presence. The United Church of Christ reminds us that contemplative practice isn’t an escape—it’s an anchor. The world doesn’t need more burned-out activists or cynical believers. It needs rooted people. Rested people. People who can pause long enough to hear the still, small voice of God amid the noise. So if you're exhausted, curious, seeking, or simply ready for a different kind of spiritual rhythm…come to the quiet starting this September. You belong. Entering the quiet with you, Pr. Melissa  I went down my first water slide this past week. Not as a kid, not as a teenager on summer break—this week, on vacation, as a full-grown, forty-six year old adult who has lived through a few things. It wasn’t fear that kept me from it all these years. When I was growing up, our pools didn’t have slides. You swam, you splashed, you got sunburned, you went home. Slides weren’t as readily available as they are now.
My four-year-old nephew changed the terms. He and I made a deal at the local pool: He would brave the little slide in the shallow end if I would climb the stairs and take on one of the big ones. He agreed with the seriousness only a four-year-old can summon. So up I went, wet feet on hot steps, the smell of chlorine and sunscreen, the low roar of voices and water. I sat down, made the sign of the cross, and pushed off. It was fast and cold and ridiculous. I grinned and giggled the whole way down. I hit the water and came up laughing, hair in my face, eyes burning a little, heart wide open. My nephew was there, grinning, making sure I saw him on the deck, shouting, “Melissa, Melissa!” like it was some sporting event–as if I had won something. Maybe I did. The truth: It felt like joy. Not the careful kind I sometimes ration out after everything is done and the lawn has been mowed. Not the “I earned this” kind. Just joy. Immediate. Undignified. Undeniable. There’s a story we learn early about being a grown-up. It says that maturity equals control. Hold it together. Make good plans. Never look silly. Be the stable one, the responsible one, the person who knows how to keep all the plates spinning. That story has some value. But it can also pull us away from our own aliveness. It can turn our lives into a checklist and fool us into calling it faithfulness. I’ve been practicing a different story lately, though, and that story goes like this: Sometimes the most faithful thing is to let go, push off, and see where the water takes you. Not reckless or escapist. Just honest about the truth that life is not solved by resisting flow. Life is met by entering it. That slide reminded me how often I avoid firsts because I think firsts belong to younger people or some other magical people that aren’t me. But firsts can still belong to me. To you. To us. Firsts at forty-six--or eighty-six. Firsts after loss. Firsts on a Thursday. The truth is that there is room for newness in a life that has already seen plenty. My nephew didn’t end up loving his little slide the way I loved mine. He went down once, got out of the water, and that was enough for him. But for me? I would’ve gone again in a heartbeat. I loved it. I loved the rush, the laughter, the way it pulled me out of my head and into sheer delight. This all got me thinking about how such things matter for church, too. We can act like a community that only knows how to do the things we’ve always done. We can stand at the top of the stairs and point to the sign that says “This is how we’ve always worshiped, programmed, organized.” Meanwhile, the Spirit keeps whispering, “Try it. Take one small slide. Practice delight. Practice courage in a manageable dose.” We don’t have to build a theme park. We can start with one ordinary step, and another, until joy becomes less of an accident and more of a habit. Christian faith at its best teaches this kind of practice. Baptism begins the story in water. Every time we step back in—into grief, into hope, into service, into rest—we remember what the water taught us: You are held. Yes, you get submerged sometimes, but you rise, and you can try again. No spiritual acrobatics required. So here’s my invitation this week, for our little church and for anyone reading this who is carrying a lot and pretending not to: Pick one small slide. One “first” that is safe enough to try and silly enough to free something in you. Eat on the porch. Sing loudly in the car. Text a friend you miss. Walk without your phone. Pray with your body by taking a deep breath in the doorway before you enter the next room. Put your feet on the steps. Make the sign of the cross if you must. But then…push off. I loved my first slide. And I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Who knows? Maybe you might love it too? Either way, we all can be people who practice joy without apology, who risk small new things, and who meet the water with open hearts—again and again. Sliding down this journey we call life with you, Pr. Melissa  For the past several Fridays I have been up helping my parents re-side their garden shed. None of us have ever really done anything with siding before, but we’re learning–with a little help from YouTube and a whole lot of trial and error.
This past Friday we began work on the doors of the shed. Though none of us said a word about it, I could tell we were all dreading this part of the process just a little. First there was lifting the plywood sheets–heavy enough on their own. Then there was the pressure to get the measurements “just right.” You know the old saying, “measure twice, cut once?” Yeah, well, we measured about fifteen times before cutting each behemoth door. Then there was moving it to the backyard, then there was trimming it out in the PVC board, then there were the J-channels, and the hinges, and then hanging the stinking thing. Oh, and did I mention that our cracker jack team was composed of my mom–just under 80 years old, my dad, firmly in his 70s, and me–and, as luck would have it, there wasn’t a good pair of knees among us? When the dust settled on our efforts this past Friday, we had one door mostly done–not exactly the progress I had hoped. What we completed wasn’t perfect in the least. It wasn’t bad–it just wasn’t great. It would be easy to focus on those imperfections–how the door isn’t hung quite right, how our work area is somewhat messy, how the J-channel doesn’t always look as nice in the corners despite how hard we tried. All valid concerns–really. But when I look at pictures like the one above, I don’t just see those mishaps. I can still see my dad laying on the ground with a block of wood and a crowbar lifting the door–despite the fact that he is currently using a cane due to a recent meniscus tear. I see mom–hair just done at the beauty shop that morning, her nails freshly painted–trying to mark where the hinges go so that I can pre-drill the holes. I see the board I threw to the ground in frustration when the door began to fall into the shed and I strained my elbow trying to catch it on my own. I hear the conversations we had as the wind blew through the trees, my dad’s instructions as he taught me to use a new tool in a different way, and I recall how my mom was always concerned that we were all staying hydrated and taking breaks as needed. I see that picture and I’m proud that my parents and I–despite our lack of experience–have been willing to try something new, to rely on each other, and to learn from one another along the way. It turns out, the doors of a garden shed can teach you a lot about grace. Not the Hobby Lobby kind of grace, wrapped in potpourri and Bible verses, but the kind that shows up in sunburned skin, imperfect cuts, mismatched screws, and shared laughter in the middle of the mess. This shed project has in no way shape, or form been “Pinterest-perfect.” It hasn’t been fast. It hasn’t been painless. But is has been absolutely FULL–full of small, sacred moments of trying…together. Our lives are so often like this–not clean or polished, but simply built out of what we have, with the people who show up, and a whole lot of making do. Sure, it would be easy to only see the flaws, to focus on what’s crooked or not quite level. But grace says: Look again. Grace says: There’s more to the story than precision. As it turns out, scripture says something like that too. In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul or his followers (we’re not sure that 2 Corinthians is actually Paul’s work) says something that has always stayed with me: “My grace is enough for you, because power is made perfect in weakness.” (CEB) I used to think that was about hiding the cracks with some made-up, painted-on brand of holiness. But now, I think it means the holy is found in the cracks—in the shaky hands holding up the door, in the misaligned corners, in the exhausted but stubborn commitment to keep going. That’s where grace lives. Grace is Dad on the ground with the crowbar. Grace is Mom balancing a door with beautifully done hair and painted nails. Grace is trying again the next Friday, and the one after that, because the work matters—but the being together matters even more. So no, the door and the shed aren’t perfect. But, then again, neither are we. And yet here we are: Building something with our own hands, piece by piece, day by day. Learning as we go. Trusting that it’s enough. And I wonder if that is somehow the most honest, beautiful, life we can hope to build? Not one hell-bent on perfection, but on participation. Not centered in mastery, but memory-making. Not about creating flawless doors, but open ones that allow whosoever to enter in. So this week, my friends, maybe our pursuit of perfection can take a back seat to making memories and beautiful, frustrating, serious-but-not-so-serious mistakes together. And maybe grace will meet us there once more. On the journey with you, Pr. Melissa |
Pastor Melissa enjoying time on her hammock.
Rev. Melissa Sternhagen
Rev. Melissa Sternhagen was called as the pastor of St. Paul Congregational UCC in June of 2020. Prior to her call to St. Paul, Pr. Melissa worked as a hospice chaplain in the Ames, IA area, following pastorates at rural churches in Central Iowa and Southern Illinois. Pr. Melissa is a second-career pastor with a background in agribusiness and production & supply operations. She received her M.Div. from Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis, MO, and holds a MA Ed. in Adult Education and Training, and a BA in Organizational Communications. Archives
January 2026
Categories |
RSS Feed