From the River's Edge

by Rev. Dr. Dale Azevedo, Sr. Minister That’s the answer. I wish I knew. The question is, “What’s this up-and-coming year going to be like?” As your church staff and lay leaders have been hard at work over the past month preparing for the start of a new program year at BCCUCC, we’ve all been wondering this. No one (that I know of, at least) expected the pandemic to carry on “from a few weeks to...

by Rev. Dr. Linda Hartley, Assoc. Minister It’s hard to believe, but this will be my last blog for the Barrington Congregational Church. I had never written blogs before. And in fact, when asked during interviews with churches if I would be blogging, my usual response was “No, I don’t think I’ll be doing that.” However, as the saying goes – “Never say ‘never.’” During the pandemic this past...

by Rev. Dr. Dale Azevedo, Sr. Minister Last week I was sitting in a meeting with various leaders in Barrington discussing this year's upcoming Barrington Day of Caring. (It's going to be held on October 11th, by the way.) Like everyone else these days, we were discussing how to manage the Day of Caring during the pandemic, especially taking into account the rise of the Delta variant. The first...

by Rev. Dr. Linda Hartley, Assoc. Minister It’s so wonderful to be back together once again in our beautiful sanctuary on Sunday mornings as we gather to worship. We’ve been so grateful for the technology that has allowed us to remain connected and worshipping together over these past many months, but it is a delight to see and talk with one another again in person. Of course, things are not...

by Rev. Dr. Dale Azevedo, Sr. Minister I remember sitting in the back of the bus on the way to elementary school. Of course, I didn't get to do this in my earliest years because only the cool kids sat in the back of the bus. And I was not one of them. But by the time I was in fifth or sixth grade, I had graduated to being able to sit in the back. In fact, in sixth grade I sat in the very last...

by Rev. Dr. Linda Hartley, Assoc. Minister I was reminded this past week of the Buddhist saying that the only constant is change. How true that has been this past year and a half. So much changed. And we have talked about that a lot, perhaps to the point that we just don’t want to think about it anymore. But now we come to a new phase as we begin to emerge from all those changes, and we find...