Hopegateway

Rev. Sara Ewing-Merrill, HopeGateWay’s lead pastor, in her sermon for Pentecost Sunday, asked, “May we seek to build a community and a world where all are valued and seen as worthy…May the Spirit flame in us and may we feel her fire enlivening for the work of today and the hope of tomorrow.”

The story of the encounter of Jesus and Zacchaeus is really one of reparation and transformation suggests Rev. Sara Ewing-Merrill, HopeGateWay’s lead pastor. “Transformation might not repair the whole world,” she adds, “but it’s a small step.”

“Can I be rooted and grounded in the divine?” asks Rev. Littlefield Grenfell as she continues “The God Who Riots” series. “Maybe while tending the messiness of a wild meadow…we will recognize ourselves in the others who do so as radical protestors who welcome diversity of life and hope and love.”

“The last and least are the first and the greatest in the radical, rioting religion of Jesus,” said Rev. Jane Field, Executive Director of the Maine Council of Churches, in her sermon for April 23, 2023, at HopeGateWay. “Did Jesus ask his followers to be doormats” she asked. “Absolutely not.” Jesus’ way “leads to liberation and freedom.” Rev. Field’s message is the first in “The God Who Riots” series.

“Christ is Risen! Indeed!” Rev. Sara Ewing-Merrill, HopeGateWay’s lead pastor, led the community with that joyou exclamation on Easter Sunday, April 9, 2023. Hearing together the Gospel story (John 20:1-18) of Jesus’ resurrection, all were invited to not hold onto the Jesus of the past, bur rather, let him be free to transform our lives, and the world, anew.

“Who do you need to tell that you’re here?” That’s a question that Rev. Sara Ewing-Merrill, HopeGateWay’s lead pastor, asks in her March 26, 2023 sermon in the “Good Enough” series. Connecting with Mary Magdalene, Rev. Ewing-Merrill invites the community to think about “What do you need to be fully present even if you don’t feel like you have what it takes to do that?”

Rev. Sara Ewing-Merrill has a conversation with Masey Kaplan of the Loose Ends project. Kaplan and Jennifer Simonic, both avid knitters, realized that they had a shared experience: Friends would often ask them to finish blankets, sweaters, or other projects left undone by deceased loved ones. In just six months there are now over 7,000 volunteers, in 38 countries, “who want to do something nice for a stranger,” Kaplan says. To learn more about Loose Ends visit https://www.looseendsproject.org/

Rev. Sara Ewing-Merrill, HopeGateWay's lead pastor introduces the journey of A Good Enough Lent and cites Dr. Kate Bowler's book, Good Enough as a guide for the lenten sermon series and study group.

Rev. Sara Ewing-Merrill, HopeGateWay’s lead pastor, introduces the new sermon series, “Counterfactual.” In her message she asks, “What does it mean to start over spiritually?” She adds, “I believe that living together in spiritual community is how we can be born of the Spirit. I believe that living as the body of Christ-connected to one another in meaningful, transformational ways, is the way we begin anew.”

Rev. Sara Ewing-Merrill, HopeGateWay’s lead pastor, introduces the new sermon series, “Audacity.”

Maine Needs is making a difference in the lives of people in the greater Portland area and throughout the 16 counties of the State. Located at 332 Forest Avenue, the organization, founded in 2019, strives “to help individuals and families…[to] meet their basic,mmateriao needs by providing donated clothing, hygiene products, household items, and other necessities.” Tara Balch, Maine Needs’s Communications Director, joins Dr. Art McClanahan to talk about how the focus is on “solidarity, not charity,” how the nearly 1000 volunteers have worked with “those starting life over from scratch” and how it “partner[s] with schools, caseworkers, nurses, and nonprofits.” To learn more about how to support its work, visit www.maineneeds.org. Suppoirting Maine Needs is HopegateWay’s 2022 Advent Conspiracy focus.

Remembering the life of Rev. Ruth Cail Williamson, January 13, 1930, to November 6, 2022. Rev. Virginia Fryer, Pastor of Bow Mills UMC, Bow NH, led the service that included readings and remembrances from family members and music from the choir of the New Brackett Church, Peaks Island ME. Highlights include: Poem of Love (begins at 15:26); Family Remembrances (begin at 16:31); Sermon (begins at 27:14); Anthem: "The Storm is Passing Over" (begins at 51:31). [Recording Length: 55:01)

In this episode of HopeGateWay Conversations, Ophelia Hu Kinney, HopeGateWay’s worship coordinator, talks with Dr. Art McClanahan about a new way of co-creating worship together. She says, “we’ll be bringing back an old HopeGateWay tradition by gathering around tables for worship” at 509 and doing something similar in the virtual space of the Zoom connection. “I hope that it’s a chance for people to reencounter community in a pretty deep way…where we really get to encounter some of the spark of community…and see how the Spirit is moving,” she added.

“It’s precisely because we live in consistently, unprecedented, tumultuous times that our choices start to reveal our values. Our decisions are points of self-definition,” Ophelia Hu Kinney, HopeGateWay’s worship coordinator, observes in her sermon for October 23, 2022. “It is in this blessed everyday that faith gives us the opportunity to follow our values.”

“Hope is rooted in the belief nthat our actions on behalfof justice and restoration have implications beyond those we can see,” notes Wanda Stahl, in her sermon for October 16, 2022. Sharing in the “What Good is Faith” sermon series, she adds, “practicing hope is as much about changing us as it is about changing the rest of the world. The two are intertwined.”

Rev. Sara Ewing-Merrill, HopeGateWay’s lead pastor, speaks about community in this message, part of sermon series, “What Good is Faith?”

Ophelia Hu Kinney, HopeGateWay’s Worship Coordinator, in her sermon for October 2, 2022, says, “faith is good because through it we get to encounter ritual” and ads, “ritual forces us to slow down and to observe carefully.”

Rev. Diane McClanahan HopeGateWay’s Community Care Coordinator notes, in ser sermon for September 25, 2022, that faith “opens us to mystery. It enables us to see our place in the Universe - it grounds us.”

Rev. Allen Ewing-Merrill suggests “Maybe it’s time to take our cues…from the earliest church, committing ourselves to awe and wonder, trusting that God is right there with us, present with us, present with us, gifting us with new vision.”

Rev. Sara Ewing-Merrill, HopeGateWay’s lead pastor, introduces the new sermon series, “What Good is Faith?” “When we invest in a faith community,” she says, we are choosing to listen to others and to let them influence us.” She shares some of the provocative questions that will be addressed during the conversations.