Community

The Piano As many of you know, St. Andrew’s is the new home of a beautiful, nine-foot, Steinway concert piano. The piano belongs to the Santa Barbara Music Club, which is an organization that hosts free concerts around town. The piano represents a new partnership between our church and the SB Music Club. They appreciate…

Sunday morning as I was getting on the 101 South heading to church, I had one of those “I’m in love with Santa Barbara” moments. The sun was out, the mountains were covered in low lying clouds, and everything was green. I appreciate this place everyday of the year, but some days the beauty is…

As anyone who was there knows, this past Sunday’s sermon was very personal for me. Telling the story of my years as a young mother of two kids who had medical issues totally absorbed my attention. It was only in hindsight that I realized that I also introduced something that might have taken some people…

One of the trends that characterize the last 40 years of religious life in the United States is the decline in mainline denominations. In order to understand why that is important one has to understand what a denomination is and what purpose they serve. Mainline Protestant denominations are autonomous branches of the Christian Communion such…

Clerk of Session I grew up in the Presbyterian Church. But, like most teenagers, I stopped attending in high school. In 1985, my parents started attending St. Andrew’s and not long after that, I started attending. Soon we were on committees – Dad was on Buildings & Grounds, Mom was moderator of the Deacons, and…