Welcome to 2024!

Dear Mountaineers,

As we bring 2023 to close and look forward to 2024, I want to wish well, peace and joy in these days of longer nights and shorter days.

This past year has been a wonderful year of transition, success and joy for The Mountain Top!

This year we were able to say goodbye and congratulate Rev Jen Simon as she transitioned away from the Mountain Top as our minister and moved to a new ministry at Jefferson Unitarian Church in Golden, Colorado where they are now serving as the Assistant Minister. I am very happy that Rev Jen has embarked on this new ministry with great success, and still able to be a part of The Mountain Top community albeit in a more informal role.

I am grateful and humbled that Rev Jen and the Steering committee invited me to serve all of you at The Mountain Top! It has been a real gift to me to be able to get to know so many of you in a more deep way.

As we all know transitions are never easy but with the team that Rev Jen has built in the Steering Circle and the community they have brought together, The Mountain Top is growing and becoming a stronger community than ever before.

It was wonderful to have Rev Joseph Santos Lyons join us this year along with Rev Gordon Clay Bailey and so many others at our 3 year anniversary and 1st multiplatform worship celebration service “Getting Free Together” in September. And now we are excited to offer a new third Sunday time together with SepulvedaUU and UUs for Racial Justice. We aren’t done!

We are looking forward to the coming year!

In 2024, we will continue to explore ways to expand the ways we can be a mountain of support for each other. In the coming months, we will be deepening our relationship with BridgesUU who with their Administrator now on board is now handling the operational functions of The Mountain Top and UUs for Racial justice so that we can even achieve more!

In addition to our three Sunday times together over the next year we will expand into the Youth world with a new Middle and High School Youth Ministry program led by Rev Jen and Denard Blackwood. Rev Jen and Denard will be calling our youth together to join together in community with worship, music and leadership opportunities.

We will also be planning more multi platform and in person activities throughout the year, deepening our relationship with DRUUMM and other BIPoC centered ministries and communities. If you are a member of a BIPoC community UU or not and would like to seek out ways to partner with us, please let me know.

Finally, Rev Gordon, Rev Jen, Rev Angela Henderson and I will be embarking on creating a BIPoC spiritual care and chaplains resource network and hotline to support our spiritual needs.

The Mountain Top is here to serve and we are looking forward to the coming year with the dream from the mountain of a world where all of our BIPoC siblings can find spiritual support, love, and celebration as whole beings in our UU world. Please join us in 2024.

I hope you experience peace and contentment, love, and health, and that your spiritual journey remains alive and well in 2024 and beyond.

Pastor AJ Blackwood, MDiv
Community Minister
The Mountain Top UU