Together, Love Overflows - The Stories That Bring Us Here
by Mike Troy, Stewardship Committee
11/16/25
As is likely true for many of you, viewed in retrospect it seems a near impossibility that Cynthia and I would find each other and find our way to St. Paul’s United Church of Christ. I grew up on the East Coast and Midwest amongst parishes, schools, relatives, and holidays that were Catholic as far as the eye could see. It was a loving, if ineffable, God at the center of it all. Cynthia grew up in Southern California, and her father, Doug, was a UCC minister, (as was his father). Cynthia witnessed the graceful way in which her father manifested the presence of a loving God in his everyday actions and interactions with his family and his congregation.
Graduate school brought us to Minnesota and through some magical mix of proximity, youth, and mutual attraction, we became a couple. We were married just across the hall in our chapel here 40 years ago. Although we were not members of this church, we found a welcoming sacred space where Cynthia’s father and a priest who was a dear family friend could perform our wedding ceremony. To be clear, St. Paul’s UCC did not benefit in any way in 1985 when it allowed us to be married here. But we benefitted greatly. And the spiritual openness and generosity we experienced here helped me to join and for us to raise our children in a UCC church across the river.
Now that our kids are grown, and we have retired, Cynthia and I find ourselves at a new stage in our lives. One in which we continue to care deeply about families and the world within which they must make their way. And while we are young enough and healthy enough to look forward to the coming years, we are also old enough to recognize that that future is not indefinite. We want to be part of something larger, a community that defines faith broadly, that welcomes God’s presence in sacred moments and everyday acts of kindness, that cares for one another, and will care for us when we need that most. These are among the many reasons we offer our pledge with glad hearts as part of the Stewardship Campaign.
As important as our story is to us, it is unique only in that it is our story. The unique story of how you came to be in this place, at this time, is yours and yours alone. The love, the happy accidents, unexpected detours, the disappointments, the joys, the heartbreaks, and surprising twists of fate all define the stories we carry with us. And these stories - all of them representing all of us - are precious things. They are treasures. And by choosing to be a member of this congregation we have entrusted this faith community to hold these treasures, to honor them, to nurture them, to respect their legacy, and ensure their future. I believe that this is the ultimate mission of the Stewardship campaign – to make this spiritual home, this living, evolving space, a vault for the safekeeping of our stories. In so doing, we raise up the best of who we have been, we support one another as we seek God’s presence, and as we continue growing into the best of who we can be.
On behalf of the Stewardship Committee, as we reach the end of the current phase of the Stewardship Campaign, I wish to express our deep gratitude to all of you who have committed (and all of you who yet will) to support St. Paul’s United Church of Christ in 2026.
As we have seen in the stories shared with us in recent weeks, your contributions make the aspirational a reality by supporting the ministry, personnel, and mission of our church. Just as we cannot know all of one another’s life journey bringing us here together, we cannot know all one another’s current life circumstances and capacity to give. But as is true for so much of our lives these days, one thing we can be sure of is that no one is coming to rescue us from the challenges we face. We must be the ones to take care of ourselves and each other. We must each do what we can to protect and sustain the precious resource that St. Paul’s UCC is in our lives. Thank you.
Click here to submit your 2026 Pledge
Click here to learn more about our 2026 Stewardship Campaign