January 15, 2023
The Racial Justice Action Committee (RJAC) and I lead the annual MLK service.
January 16, 2022
Our annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Sunday service, thinking about voting rights then and now.
January 17, 2021
Our annual MLK Sunday service. If you watch on YouTube, click “show more” to see the order of service.
January 19, 2020
On January 19, 2020 we celebrated Martin Luther King Sunday. In this video, you will see Kris Ersland present the “Social Justice Moment”, sharing a video featuring civil rights leader John Lewis (and thanking FCU member Caroline Marvin along with FCU). There is also an unveiling of a portrait of a young John Lewis from the Civil Rights Movement, which now hangs in our Vestry. Finally, I share my short sermon, “Good Trouble”, with a titled inspired by the words of Lewis.
April 7, 2019
I preached a short sermon on the forgotten Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – the MLK who isn’t often discussed at civic events.
January 14, 2018
It will be 50 years ago come this April, but the memory is vivid as ever. I was a 22 year old seminarian in Rochester, New York and was doing my field education at a large, liberally oriented American Baptist church in a Rochester suburb. Just as I was going into a meeting there on the evening of April 4, 1968 someone said they’d heard on the news that Martin Luther King had been shot.