Auckland Unitarians

Speaker:- Laurie Ross
& Worship Leader:- Shirin Caldwell

Laurie Ross © 18 February 2024

A Call to the people of New Zealand, as a Nuclear Free Peacemaker nation, to withdraw from Militarisation and Warfare. It is time for Humanity to end the barbaric practice of war to work for Peace and Justice.

‘Love’ is the foundation of Unitarian fellowship and the quest for ‘Truth’ leads to liberating our minds from warfare doctrines threatening destruction of Life on Earth.

Humanity must end War before War ends Humanity.

For more information see:-

https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/peacemakers-unite-for-a-world-beyond-war/

Speaker & Worship Leader:- Rachel Mackintosh

Why do we repeat this ritual every year? It isn’t just to brag about our travels. When we share our water in the common bowl, it reminds us that while we are separate people, we are also part of an interdependent community.

You probably know about the water cycle....

https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/water-communion-2024/

Speaker & Worship Leader:- John DiLeo

Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 4th February 2024

At the end of October, I travelled to Washington, DC, to present training at and attend the OWASP Global AppSec Conference. On the Sunday before the conference, I had the opportunity to attend the first ThreatModCon, a one-day mini-conference focused on threat modelling.

At that event, I was privileged to hear a presentation by Avi Douglen. Avi is a leader of the OWASP Israel Chapter, and a member of OWASP’s Global Board. He’s a security consultant and threat modelling practitioner, and is one of the signatories of the Threat Modeling Manifesto, created and published in 2020.

Avi’s presentation is titled “The Threats to Our Community,” and I’m going to share with you much of the content from that talk.

As I listened that day, it became clear to me that the threats he spelled out – and the countermeasures he recommended – would apply to any community that relies on mutual trust and respect to function. Communities like ours. So, I asked for a copy of his slide deck, to use in a future talk at my church – he was surprised by the request, but agreed immediately.

In October, Avi spoke for an hour – I’m going to try to do his ideas justice in less than 20 minutes. We’ll see how that goes.

Before I begin, I need to provide a general content warning. While I won’t be going into details of any, I will be naming many abusive behaviours. If this could be triggering for you, I welcome you to remove yourself from this space to protect your well-being.

With Rachel Mackintosh

Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said. “One can’t believe impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

We know, because of science, the enlightenment, telescopes, that compared with us, the universe is big. We may have seen that meme that shows two photos of the Milky Way, one taken before, and one taken after we have made a mistake: clue, it’s the same photo.

My musing today has as its starting point, not Alice, actually, but the quote: “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

My sermon topic “Bending the arc of the universe” has taken liberties with the quote already, and may seem arrogant – how could we bend the arc of the universe? – but I am aiming rather for audacious. As Paul said when I sent him my title, “May as well aim big.”

Meditation / Discussion Questions:-

With Alix Geard

Speaker:- Jonathan Mason

Speaker:- Paul Tonson
Worship Leader:- Alix Geard

Recorded 10 December 2023 @ Auckland Unitarian Church

From my earliest years I’ve known about Jesus of Nazareth and in my youth I was especially drawn to him as a charismatic individual. Later I loved the idea of him as a sign of contradiction, a life-long challenge to my easy preconceptions and natural prejudices. Last week a number of you recalled elements of Jesus’ surprising behaviour and message, e.g. towards women, towards authorities, and confronting his parents and disciples.

BUT

All this time in the church I’ve been told that he is uniquely GOD and MAN, the messiah and my saviour, Jesus Christ our Lord. In hindsight, I have never needed that bit! Now I have the tools to show from the NT many strong threads to understand Jesus as an exemplar of a life we can all enter into.

Jesus as an exemplary figure lives out a path of purpose and empowerment that others can emulate. This understanding of him offers a gospel that is egalitarian and universalist. This is the direction of my three addresses.

For more, see:-

https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/jesus-the-messiah/

Speaker & Worship Leader:- Betsy Marshall

Recorded @ Auckland Unitarian Church 3rd December 2023

Today we gather to celebrate the opening of this building on 4 December 1901 – exactly 122 years ago tomorrow.

As Clay Nelson said in his service for new members in 2015, the anniversary of the building is a time to be reminded that “we didn’t get here out of nothing, we are connected to those who came before, and others in the future will be connected to us, a reminder of our oneness”.

The focus of today is not just on the past but also on our aspirations for the future – hopefully a future in which Auckland Unitarians continue as a vibrant faith community as well as a force for social and political good.

For the 'Where to from here?' part of the service the congregation broke into structured small group discussions using a format known as 'Table Talk', facilitated by Marlon Drake of Te Ohu Whakawhanaunga.

For more information see:- https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/our-rich-history-and-where-to-from-here/

Speaker:- Paul Tonson
Worship Leader:- Ted Zorn

Recorded @ Auckland Unitarian Church 26 November 2023

The path ahead of us

JESUS WITHOUT CHRIST is a possible title for a book that has been germinating in my mind recently. In preparing for today with Ted, I was delighted to find that numbers of this congregation may share the questions that give rise to such a title. This discovery has confirmed our intention over three sessions to look candidly at the ways we may usefully speak of and even emulate Jesus of Nazareth.

For more see:-

https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/rabbi-jesus-the-teacher/

Speaker:- Rachel Mackintosh
Worship Leaders:- Ted Zorn, Kate Lewis

Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 5th November 2023

Our recently retired minister, Clay Nelson, died on Thursday (2 November 2023). Those of us who have known Clay are grieving.

So, we’ve changed this service to reflect on coming together in grief and the wonder of life.

Rachel MacIntosh, Clay’s wife, will present a talk that Clay wrote and presented to us a couple years back called “Welcome to Limbo. Please leave your certainties at the door.” Appropriately, it’s about how we respond to chaos, uncertainty, and the unexpected.

For more information see:-

https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/welcome-to-limbo-please-leave-your-certainties-at-the-door/