Orange County Churches Review & Guide

Orange Coast Unitarian Universalist Church

January 18th, 2005

http://www.ocuuc.org

Church Review
Scriptural View: 0/5
Beliefs: 0/5
Community: 2/5
Preaching: Topical
Worship: Hymns
Service times: 9:15 & 11:00 AM

Website Review
Site Usability: 4/5
Site Design: 2/5
Site Content: 4/5

Review: I attended a service in January of 2005. The service began with the singing of a number of songs out of a hymn book, led by a woman playing the piano. After the time of song there was a ceremony where a chalice was lit and everyone spoke out a phrase together which was printed in the bulletin. The chalice is intended to symbolize openess to all according to reason, justice, and compassion and the flame lit inside its bowl is intended to symbolize love. There was also a time of giving money. When the plates were passed around to put money in, everyone turned to each other and sang, “From you I receive, to you I give; Together we share, and from this we live.” After the offering there was a time of meditation. During this time, perhaps two or three minutes, most of the people closed their eyes and repeated the act of taking long breathes of air in and then exhaling.

The woman leader and minister of the church, Karen Stoyanoff. She was speaking about Martin Luther King Jr. Her sermon was titled “The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life.” The three dimensions were, one: love yourself, two: love your neighbor, three: love the cosmos or life itself. She used excerpts of King’s sermons to illustrate each point but when she came to the third she said that King believed in God, but those of here do not accept the notion of a traditional “God” so she said what we need to do is love the cosmos. She defined the cosmos as that which unites us all to gather in an interconnected web of life.

WARNING! I recommend that you avoid any Unitarian Universalist church. They are a cult. The reject the existence of God, the deity of Christ, the authority of the Bible and a host of other things. (To read more about Universalists see Christian Apolgetics Research Ministry )

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Orange Coast Unitarian Universalist Church

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