📝 From the Pastor’s Desk

Welcome Barbara Thomas!

Holy Covenant,

This Sunday, we welcome Barbara Thomas to the pulpit.

Barbara Thomas, is the Director of The Forum at Hope Haven, a new training center whose mission is to equip, train and support the staff who are working with the most vulnerable populations in our community.  She creates the curriculum, engages with community partners and is one of the primary trainers at The Forum. Barbara comes to this position with years of experience in non-profits as Director of Dove’s Nest, at Charlotte Rescue Mission, Director of Services at Urban Ministry Center (now Roof Above) and in private practice at the Counseling Center at Charotte. She is an ordained UCC pastor ( former Associate at HCUCC) and welcomes the opportunity to preach and lead worship at various faith communities in Charlotte. Barbara Lives in Charlotte with her mom who is 95 years old.

Rev. Christopher Czarnecki

Senior Pastor, Holy Covenant UCC

Let’s lift up Pastor Chris’s voice — and continue living our bold faith, everywhere. Subscribe to his Substack blog.🕊️

📝 From the Pastor’s Desk

What Our New Church Logo and Slogan Mean to Me

Holy Covenant,

Last Sunday during our worship service, we revealed our new church logo and slogan. Since then, some of you may have found yourselves wondering: What do our new logo and slogan stand for? I’d like to share with you how I see it, both the meaning and significance that I believe this design holds for our faith community.

At first glance, it’s immediately noticeable that our new logo has a more attractive and modern design. It’s a location pin drop, open at the top in three places, encircling an interwoven multicolored cross. Beside it is our church’s name, Holy Covenant United Church of Christ, with the words Be the Church, everywhere beneath it. Yet behind this design, I believe there is a rich theological symbolism that reflects who we are and what we are called to be as a community that seeks to follow Christ…

Rev. Christopher Czarnecki

Senior Pastor, Holy Covenant UCC

Let’s lift up Pastor Chris’s voice — and continue living our bold faith, everywhere. Subscribe to his Substack blog.🕊️

📝 From the Pastor’s Desk

Why We Must Keep Telling the Truth

Holy Covenant,

I started drafting my newsletter article for this week on Juneteenth, a day when we remember the delayed freedom of enslaved people in Texas, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Juneteenth reminds us that justice is rarely handed down freely; but more often it must be fought for and demanded, especially when systems of power resist giving it. It’s a holiday that calls us to celebrate freedom while also reckoning with the painful truths of our country’s history, truths that have often been censored or silenced.

This Sunday, June 22, Holy Covenant UCC will be hosting a screening of the PBS documentary American Coup: Wilmington 1898. If you haven’t heard of the Wilmington massacre, you’re not alone. It’s the only successful coup in U.S. history, where a violent overthrow of a democratically elected, multiracial government by white supremacists in North Carolina occurred. It’s a story of American history that’s been buried and rarely discussed for over a century. And it is a story that feels especially urgent today.

“We are living in a time when we’re seeing democracy undermined. Not by secret plots, but often in plain sight.”

Just last week…

Peace and Blessings,

Rev. Christopher Czarnecki

Senior Pastor, Holy Covenant UCC

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Let’s lift up Pastor Chris’s voice — and continue living our bold faith, everywhere. Subscribe to his Substack blog.🕊️

📝 From the Pastor’s Desk

Resisting Hate

Holy Covenant,

Late last week, Walter Brueggemann passed away. He was a towering figure in the Protestant Church and a prophetic voice in biblical interpretation, influencing generations of ministers across denominations and traditions. His book The Prophetic Imagination was assigned to me in seminary and remains one of the most formative texts shaping my theology. Brueggemann’s approach to naming structures of power (kingdoms), honoring the grief of those crying out for justice (the oppressed), and highlighting the prophet’s role in reimagining the world (prophetic imagination), continues to shape how I read scripture and preach each Sunday.

As one of our own retired pastors and in-house authors, Jon Heaslet, said to me last week,

“He was a voice in the wilderness who called Americans to an accounting of their bowing before the gods of consumerism, militarism, racism, and homophobia.”

Over the past week…

Peace and Blessings,

Rev. Christopher Czarnecki

Senior Pastor, Holy Covenant UCC

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Let’s lift up Pastor Chris’s voice — and continue living our bold faith, everywhere. Subscribe to his Substack blog.🕊️

📝 From the Pastor’s Desk

Resisting Hate

Holy Covenant,

Earlier this week, a violent and antisemitic attack took place in Boulder, Colorado. A man entered a peaceful event organized by members of a local Jewish community in support of hostages still being held in Gaza. And in the aftermath six people were injured, including a Holocaust survivor. This attack is the third in a recent string of violent acts against Jewish people in just the past two months.

Christianity has a long and painful history of antisemitism. From theological teachings that have wrongly blamed Jewish people for the death of Jesus, to attacks on Jewish communities during the Crusades, several historical persecutions and massacres, and ultimately the Holocaust, Christians have too often been complicit in, or silent about, the persecution of our Jewish siblings.

Yet ironically…

Peace and Blessings,

Rev. Christopher Czarnecki

Senior Pastor, Holy Covenant UCC

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Let’s lift up Pastor Chris’s voice — and continue living our bold faith, everywhere. 🕊️

A peaceful demonstration calls for justice and liberation for the people of Palestine.

📝 From the Pastor’s Desk

When the Walls Shake: Finding Faithful Resistance in a Time of Crisis

Dear Holy Covenant family,

When the world trembles — from political upheaval to personal grief — how do we hold fast to hope? How do we remain rooted in compassion when everything feels like it’s shifting beneath our feet?

In my latest blog post, When the Walls Shake: Faithful Resistance, I reflect on the story of Paul and Silas in prison — how even in chains, their faith stirred the very foundations. It’s a story of defiant praise, sacred disruption, and the kind of hope that sings even in the dark.

We, too, are called to be that kind of hope. Not the kind that denies struggle, but the kind that resists despair. The kind that claps with the beat of justice and shakes loose what keeps others bound.

I hope you’ll take a moment to read the full reflection — and share it if it resonates with you. Let’s be a people whose love shakes walls, not builds them.

Peace and Blessings,

Rev. Christopher Czarnecki

Senior Pastor, Holy Covenant UCC

Let’s lift up Pastor Chris’s voice — and continue living our bold faith, everywhere. 🕊️

“Be a Blessing – A call to live with compassion, courage, and purpose in community.

Holy Covenant,

This Sunday is Mother’s Day, a day that carries a wide range of emotions. For some, it’s a day of celebration and gratitude. For others, it can stir grief, longing, or even pain. Some of us were mothered with great love. Others were not. Some are mothers. Some are not. Some yearn to be. Some never wanted to be. And some of us have found that we can mother love in people and places beyond biology.

This week’s sermon is called “The Ministry of Mothering,” and it’s rooted in the story of Tabitha from Acts 9:36-43 (CEB), where a disciple is remembered not for their great preaching or the ways they led, but for sewing clothes for widows. Her love was active, tender, and fiercely committed. She showed up for her community with deep care and dignity, and in doing so we find, she revealed something sacred.

At our church, we believe that mothering is not limited to gender or titles. We believe it’s a spiritual calling, to show up for others, to clothe them in love, to nurture what is fragile, and to hold space for those who are hurting. This Sunday, we’ll explore what it means to mother the world with compassion and courage, not just as individuals, but as a community rooted in justice and love.

Wherever you find yourself this Mother’s Day, whether it’s with joy, with sorrow, or somewhere in between, please know you are welcome here. There is space for your story, your tenderness, and your truth, wherever you are.

Peace and Blessings,

Rev. Christopher Czarnecki
Holy Covenant UCC
Senior Pastor

“Lost Christianities” by Bart D. Ehrman — A compelling invitation to rediscover the many early paths of the Christian faith, long hidden from view.

Holy Covenant,

After last week’s newsletter article on The Gospel of Judas, several of you shared how meaningful and surprising it was to learn about this different view of Judas and the role he might have played in Jesus’ story. This conversation has reminded me of another powerful book: The Lost Christianities by Bart D. Ehrman.

In this book, Ehrman takes readers on a journey through the first few centuries of Christianity, a time when the movement was far from unified. There wasn’t yet a “New Testament” as we know it, nor was there a single, agreed upon doctrine of who Jesus was or what his life, death, and resurrection meant. Instead, there were many different groups of Jesus followers, each with their own beliefs, practices, and sacred writings.

He tells us some early Christians, like the Ebionites, believed Jesus was fully human, not divine at all, and that following Jewish law was still essential. Others, like Marcion, who lived in the 2nd century, saw Jesus as divine but rejected the Hebrew Scriptures entirely, seeing Luke’s Gospel and the letters of Paul as all that was needed. And others wrote texts we now call “apocryphal” or “gnostic,” like the Gospel of Thomas, which offers a very different kind of Jesus: one who teaches that the divine is found within and that spiritual insight comes through self-knowledge.

All of these groups, and many more, were part of a very diverse early Christianity. But over time, what Ehrman calls a “proto-orthodox” group ended up winning out and defined the boundaries of what were acceptable beliefs, which books belonged in the Bible, and the creeds and doctrines mainline denominational churches have inherited. Their vision of Christianity became the Christianity we have today, at least in the eyes of history.

To help frame the impact of this early period in Christianity Ehrman asks big “what if” questions, like

• What if Marcion’s Bible had become the Bible we have today?
• What if the Gospel of Thomas had been included as part of the four gospels?
• What if Christianity had evolved with Jesus as a teacher of mystical wisdom instead of a divine sacrifice?

I don’t think questions like these threaten our faith, but they deepen it. They remind us that early Christianity was full of possibilities, not certainties. And perhaps most importantly, they invite us to recognize that today’s diversity within the church is not a departure from tradition but more so a return to our roots.

It’s okay if we believe different things. And it’s okay to question, wonder, and explore how beliefs from others faith traditions might fit into our own sense of faith.

In a time when people are hungry for honesty and openness in their spiritual lives, remembering this lost history matters. It tells us that there has never been just one way to follow Jesus. There have always been many ways.

And that, I think, is good news worth sharing.

Peace and Blessings,

Rev. Christopher Czarnecki
Holy Covenant UCC
Senior Pastor

🌿 Call to Action: Protect Creation, Resist Senate Bill 261 🌿

The Earth is bleeding, beloved. Our prayers must move our hands. Our faith must find its voice. North Carolina Senate Bill 261 endangers critical environmental protections—making it easier for industries to pollute our air, water, and soil in the name of profit.

We must act. Here’s how you can offer your healing:

• Learn About the Bill: Read the text of Senate Bill 261 here
• Find Your North Carolina State Senator: Look up your State Senator here
• Contact Your Legislators: Call, email, or send a handwritten letter. Tell them you oppose SB 261 and support strong environmental protections. Urge them to vote NO.
• Join Advocacy Organizations:
  • North Carolina Conservation Network
  • Southern Environmental Law Center
• Spread the Word: Share Pastor Chris’s message and encourage others to act. Healing multiplies when it is shared!

🌱 Blessing

“The Earth has reached for us in trust.
Let our hands be healing, our voices be courage,
our lives be a song of restoration.
May we, like Christ, choose to love without counting the cost.”