News
Scott’s Column: The Stories & Relationships
Since announcing my pastoral transition, I've used these weekly newsletter columns to survey the highlights of our fifteen years of ministry together and to offer my...
Scott’s Column: Flourishing in Crisis
This post is the third in a series discussing the highlights of my ministry at First Central the last 15 years. The final period of my pastorate begins with the onset...
Scott’s Column: So, Everything?
My fifteen years of ministry at First Central can be easily broken down into three time periods. The first begins with my arrival in summer 2010 and extends to around...
Scott’s Column: State of the Church 2025
Here is the text of my annual State of the Church Address, delivered to the Annual Meeting of the Congregation on Sunday, February 9. We live in difficult and...
Scott’s Column: A Big & Beautiful Life
Do we have the resources and skills we need for this age of crisis? Last week I wrote about the discussion of leadership development at Conversations, the annual...
2025 Spring Wednesday Evening Programming
Scott’s Column: A Cold Night in Zurich
A cold night in Zurich. As historian William Estep describes it, "the chill of the winter wind [was] blowing off the lake" as a dozen men "slowly trudged through the...
Scott’s Column: Wicked
This last weekend was Wicked. I'm only playing with the slang use of the word from my youth. I really mean the opening of the new film version of the popular Broadway...
Scott’s Column: A Pastoral Word for Young LGBTQ+ People After the Election
For young people, particularly young LGBTQ+ people. I know that the election results have left you confused, sad, afraid, heartbroken, and angry. These are proper...
Scott’s Column: The AI Metaverse
Last week a handful of Nobel prizes went to people working in the fields of artificial intelligence. I just so happened to be reading a book on what's possible in an...
Scott’s Column: Sacred Sounds
I've spent this lovely day with my office door open to the courtyard where I can hear the fountain running. I've been working on the vespers service for Friday night...
Scott’s Column: The Life of Hope–Remembering Jürgen Moltmann
This week the greatest living theologian died. Jürgen Moltmann was 98 years old. He did not grow up religious, but found God and religion when he was in a prisoner of...
Scott’s Column: Summer Theology Book Club
One Sunday before worship, Lou Lamberty said, "I read God's Monsters. I really need to talk about it." I had read the book not long before that and mentioned in...
Scott’s Column: Curious about Psychedelics & Spirituality
Sometime back in 2020, stuck at home, binging lots of Netflix, I watched the documentary Fantastic Fungi that I'd seen friends talking about on social media. What an...
Scott’s Column: Knowing Each Other
How well do we humans understand one another? Apparently, not very well. In his excellent book How to Know A Person David Brooks cites the research of William Ickes...
An Interview With . . . Marian Fey
How long have you been a member at First Central? Since 1998 (I think), although I attended as a child with my mom and Pipi & Pete. What is your occupation? I'm the...
Scott’s Column: Spiritual Experiences
What are your most profound or memorable spiritual experiences? Currently in our Wednesday Night Family Night's we are exploring and discussing spiritual experiences,...
An Interview With . . . La Dell Diaz
Bringing back an old feature of our newsletter, which will explore the myriad ways our congregants are working in the community to change lives and change the world....
Scott’s Column: Impacts on Churches
This is the fifth in a series of personal reflections on the State of the Church in 2024. 5. What are the impacts, then, on churches? There are the trends we are well...
Scott’s Column: In a Context of Crises
This is part three in a series of personal reflections on the State of the Church in 2024 3. Beyond the demographic trends, what else shapes the context in which we are...
Scott’s Column: The State of the ‘Big C’ Church
Normally in late December I begin working on my Annual Report and my State of the Church presentation for the Annual Meeting. Over the past year or so I've been trying...
Scott’s Column: The Power to Transform Humanity
The great 20th century Russian Orthodox theologian Sergius Bulgakov wrote that "All human beings will be resurrected without exception." Why? Because, as he draws...
Scott’s Column: Happy Allhallowtide!
Happy Allhallowtide! That's one of the formal names for this season in which the church remembers and honors the dead, made up traditionally of the three days of All...
Scott’s Column: How Faith Formation Happens
Faith Formation: How Does It Happen? Note: this is part three in a series on the principles undergirding Christian Education. You can read the first installment here...
Scott’s Column: A Way of Seeing
Forming our Faith: A Way of Seeing Back in the spring I taught a three-part First Forum series on what principles shape Christian Education, after that question had...
Scott’s Column: Hip-Hop’s 50th Anniversary
Last week was the fiftieth anniversary of Hip-Hop. In his book Blue Note Preaching the Rev. Dr. Otis Moss, III, Senior Minister of Trinity UCC in Chicago, wrote: Now...
Scott’s Column: Resources for Living–Grief
“For as one reweaves the fabric of one’s life after a loss, and as the thoughts around which one has defined one’s aims and aspirations change tense, one becomes to...
Scott’s Column: Resources for Living-Sex
The best book I've read on sex from a (liberal) Christian perspective is Good Christian Sex by UCC pastor Bromleigh McCleneghan. I met and befriended Bromleigh earlier...
Scott’s Column: Pride Books for Kids
Joyce Wilson, who died in April, loved penguins. And her favorite children’s book was And Tango Makes Three which tells the real-life story of two male penguins at the...
Scott’s Column: Resources for Living–Changing (Dis)Abilities
In the first column for this series, I asked if there were any topics you all thought I should write about, and I’ve received one request so far stating, “I think that...
Scott’s Column: Resources for Living–Awe in Nature
“We create wonderful places by giving them our attention, not by finding ‘pristine’ places that will bring wonder to us.” So advises biologist David George Haskell in...
Pandemic Spirituality
This spring Senior Minister Scott Jones wrote a series of five essays connecting our pandemic and quarantine experiences with the spiritual wisdom of the church. Here...
Scott’s Column: Opportunities & Challenges
What opportunities and challenges do I see for First Central in the years ahead? A few of you have asked me that question over the last month, so I thought I'd put my...
Scott’s Column: The Fruits of Our Labor
This post is the second installment of a series exploring the highlights of the last fifteen years. Those first six years were full of to-do lists and goals, and you...
Vacation Bible School 2025 Registration
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Scott’s Column: The Cruelty
The first really concrete thing I noticed occurred when I arrived for pick-up of my son from the after-school program two weeks ago. Next to the sign-out sheet were...
Youth Group Calendar Spring 2025
Scott’s Column: How Are You Developing Your Leadership Skills?
How are you developing your leadership skills for our current times? That was one of the key questions of this year's Conversations gathering of United Church of Christ...
Scott’s Column: Two Titans
Last week two titans of the liberal Mainline Protestant churches died--theologian John Cobb and hymn lyricist Ruth Duck. About a dozen of Ruth Duck's hymns appear in...
Scott’s Column: More on Awe
Often I get asked after a sermon, "What's that book you mentioned?" For our autumn series on Awe, the main text I've used is Dacher Keltner's Awe: A New Science of...
Scott’s Column: Gustavo Gutierrez
Earlier this year, Jurgen Moltmann died. He was the great living theologian, at least the greatest Protestant theologian in the post-Second-World-War-Era. And then...
Scott’s Column: Restoring the Light
During our fall worship season, we are exploring Awe. The psychologist Dacher Keltner writes about how our experiences of awe and wonder get turned into ritual, art,...
Scott’s Column: God’s Presence
Sunday I preached about God's presence. Though it didn't make it into the sermon, that week I read a beautiful description of the presence of the Spirit in our lives...
Scott’s Column: Happy 300th Immanuel Kant
Back on April 22nd, I messaged Fred Nielsen, "Happy 300th Birthday to Immanuel Kant." To which Fred replied, "Will you be celebrating in a particularly philosophical...
An Interview with . . . Allison Hardy
How long have you been a member at First Central? I've been a member of First Central since 2018. What is your occupation? I'm a corporate attorney at Kiewit. What do...
An Interview with . . . Sophie Feng
How long have you been a member at First Central? 15 years with the church What is your occupation? Professor What do you find meaningful about your work? Helping...
Books on Grieving
Books on Grieving By Daryl Malena The task of eventually moving out of the house my family has lived in since 1977 turns out to be every bit as difficult as I expected....
Scott’s Column: The God Revolution
The last three weeks in First Forum I've taught a series on recent theological insights into God. A number of folks asked that I put together a bibliography of all the...
An Interview with Yvette Polinsky
What is your name, and how long have you been a member at First Central? Yvette Polinsky. I grew up in the church but was not an official member. My family moved...
Scott’s Column: Open & Nimble
This is the sixth and final in a series of personal reflections on the State of the Church in 2024. 6. Given all of that I want to return to the theme I’ve been trying...
Scott’s Column: Cultural Trends
This is the fourth in a series of personal reflections on the State of the Church in 2024. 4. As if all of that weren’t enough, there are other cultural trends and...
Scott’s Column: Changing Religious Demographics in America
This is part two of a series of reflections on the State of the Church in 2024. 2. Even thirty years ago Mainline Protestantism was grappling with decades of decline. ...
Scott’s Column: Christology Against White Supremacy
So, like I did in the First Forum class last summer, I'll draw this exploration of some contemporary Christology to a close by focusing in on one particular thinker, J....
Scott’s Column: Riffing on Christ
"The inability to articulate just how God was present in Christ and how that reality shapes the character of our life together destroys the very integrity of the...
Scott’s Column: Why We Care for Children
Faith Formation: Why We Do It In our struggle with time—how to tell it, how to keep it, what to do with it, how fast or slow it goes—what we truly long for is a feeling...
Scott’s Column: Habit-Making Practices
Forming Our Faith—Habit-Making Practices Note: this is part two in a series on the principles undergirding Christian Education. You can read the first installment...
Scott’s Column: Happy (Belated) Labor Day
Happy (Belated) Labor Day! Last week a Washington Post article declared the eight-hour work day to be dying. It stated “only about half of office visits now last for...
Scott’s Column: Passport to Exploration
On the final day of our recent family summer vacation, Sebastian and I visited Pipestone National Monument in southwest Minnesota. There's a short, easy trail that...
Scott’s Column: Resources for Living–Forgiveness
I was listening to Leonard Cohen’s final album You Want It Darker and the moving second track “Treaty.” The lyrics of the refrain are: I wish there was a treaty we...
Scott’s Column: Happy Pride! The Struggle Continues
For most of my pastorate I've been a regular contributor to the From the Pulpit feature in the Omaha World-Herald. When I was first invited to submit, we were asked to...
Scott’s Column: Resources for Living–Mental Wellness
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and the United Church of Christ recognized Sunday, May 21 as Mental Health Sunday. In our worship, we used the liturgies they...
Scott’s Column: Resources for Living–Anger
How to deal with anger is a question I’ve often been asked by congregants seeking pastoral care. So that’s a great topic for my second installment in this series of...
Tug, My “AA” Buddy
Thank you Kathy Hoyt sharing this story of her faithful Tug at this year's Pet Blessing! Unlike the rest of us, Tug is getting older. He’s not the same one or...