The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Corvallis
The City of Corvallis is soliciting community input about potential improvements and investments to downtown Corvallis. You can read about their initiative and fill out their survey here: https://www.corvallisoregon.gov/advisorygroups/page/creating-downtown-vitality-strategy.
Indivisible and a broad coalition of national partners are banding together for the nationwide weekend of action!
ICE Out For Good Weekend of Action
This Saturday (tomorrow), January 10, Noon – 2 PM.
At the Benton County Courthouse in Corvallis.
This is a non-violent and peaceful event for all ages!
The UUFC is hosting a Red Cross Blood Drive in the afternoon of Friday, February 13 from Noon to 5 PM in the Social Hall. Sign up to donate at https://www.redcrossblood.org/ – search by ZIP code 97330 and date of February 13. For questions or to volunteer as a welcomer, email Tricia B.
Love is the power that holds us together and the New Year urges us to begin again. Everyone is welcome to join the choir and band for LEGATO potluck on Wednesday, January 14 at 6:30 PM. Come early if you can help set up tables.
Bring a dish to share (please identify all ingredients), a serving utensil (if needed) AND YOUR OWN PLACE SETTING & WATER BOTTLE – this is a low impact meal.
This is a Connect Up Event with the purpose of building community within the UUFC congregation.
Free childcare can usually be arranged for any Fellowship event by using this link 1-2 weeks prior to the event.
The Partner Church Team is a forward-facing and forward-thinking group that promotes international understanding, social justice, global ethics, and liberal religion through partner church relationships.
Put your faith into action by joining this team. We continue to support the Unitarian congregation in Körispatak, Transylvania, Romania and the Muhira Community Center in Burundi, East Africa; we hope to build relationships with the UUF San Miguel de Allende in Mexico and the UU Church of the Philippines in Manila.
We meet the 2nd Sunday of each month in Room 3. Our next meeting is this coming Sunday, January 11! Contact Heather at this link for more information. See you there!
Free childcare can usually be arranged for any Fellowship event by using this link 1-2 weeks prior to the event.
Corvallis resident Jaclyn Moyer will read excerpts from her book On Gold Hill, a 2025 Oregon Book Award winner. Moyer’s story combines food and culture. In raising wheat and vegetables on a 10-acre California farm, she discovers her Punjabi ancestry and the origins of organic agriculture.
Sunday, January 18, 2026, 12 noon – 1 PM in the Sanctuary.
Free childcare can usually be arranged for any Fellowship event by using this link 1-2 weeks prior to the event.
Greetings, Families!
I hope your winter holidays were warm and cozy! A new year is unfolding before us, and we’re starting off with a little ease after the holiday hustle. Don’t miss these sweet opportunities for connection and reflection in January!
UPCOMING EVENTS:
1/8 Parent Connection Dinner @ 6:30 (register HERE one time, to get reminders)
1/11 Family Breakfast @ 8:45 (register HERE and bring a dish if you are able)
1/25 Heartland Humane service project for OMG!
More information about our events can be found below, and info for all events can be found at uucorvallis.org by clicking “News” in the menu bar and then selecting “RE Council” from the drop-down menu.
The OMG! youth group will serve at the Heartland Humane Society on January 25th. Specific times and registration details have been emailed directly to parents. This is always a favorite activity each year, so be sure to register by 1/18! Youth without a permission slip will not be permitted to serve.
While there, the youth will assist with routine care of the animals and facility, and wrap up with some animal socialization time. Please make sure your child wears work clothes that can get dirty. The attending youth advisors will be Steve Ferrell and Mark Aron. Please send questions to Skyla.
Thanks to a dedicated group of moms, the Parent Connection Dinner, formerly known as the Parent Peer Support Group, is no longer a potluck! We have enough soups prepped to get us through the end of the year! Parents are invited to show up with their dishes and enjoy soup, bread, and desserts along with meaningful facilitated discussion on topics relevant to parenting and mutual support. You are invited to register one time, and then you’ll receive the automated reminder texts and emails each month. You can help us decide how much to prepare by clicking RSVP button on the reminder to let us know you’re coming. As always, free childcare will be provided in a nearby room.
Thank you for showing up and supporting our 4th-6th graders at the Holiday Fair! They successfully sold out of magnets, post cards, and paintings and raised a nice chunk of money to spend toward the many projects they’re hoping to do together this year.
It was amazing to have eight of our bold and creative young people perform in a Sunday service this year! The gratitude and awe keeps rolling in from all corners of Fellowship life, as so many were moved by the story and song that was shared.
Your offering of time and courage meant more than you might imagine to those in our community who were feeling alone during the winter holidays, or who have limited interactions with younger people. I can’t tell you how many people have said something along the lines of, “Their singing! It was so beautiful and so moving! Exactly what my soul needed!”
So thank you, parents and kids, for giving of yourselves and your time so generously. It was such a gift to share worship with you in that way!
Our amazing OMG! member, Elizabeth, reached out and asked if she could offer her talent for face painting at our annual Holiday Fair. She spent five hours sitting at the kids’ table painting faces for free, and connecting with people of all ages. I love that she knows her gifts, identified a place where she could share them, and reached out to make it happen!
Several times, I watched children who were bored from shopping with their parents light up when they saw that there was something for them, and then their parents light up when they saw that it was free!
Thank you, Elizabeth, for being exactly who you are and for sharing that with us!
If you or your child has a gift just waiting to be shared, let me know how we can support you in sharing it!
Y’all, 2025 was a wild ride in RE!
We spent the first half of the year without any classrooms to meet in, and still managed to pull off a one-room school house style Sunday morning offering for children in the social hall, a youth group in the library, and the first round of OWL (Our Whole Lives, comprehensive sex and sexuality class) since the pandemic. This would not have been possible without the tireless work of a dozen dedicated RE leaders who were willing to keep showing up in the most challenging of circumstances. And they were so, so challenging!
In the back half of the year we hosted a children’s summer camp, hired two more youth staff, moved back into the classroom wing, said goodbye to Rev. McAllister and welcomed Rev. McGee, added a 4th classroom and lots of new RE leaders to keep our classrooms thriving, and closed out the year with our Winter Solstice pageant!
I can’t think of a better way to have spent a year in community! I am so grateful to get to spend my time working with you and your children, and I’m excited for us to make 2026 a joyful and hope-filled time to be at the Fellowship together!
Happy New Year, Beloveds!
The Justice Theatre Team is gearing up for its 8th annual production! This year’s show will take place on Friday and Saturday, March 27th and 28th, and the team will be staging 12 Angry Jurors, a play by Reginald Rose that will be directed by Sarika Rao. Proceeds from the production will go to the Campaign to Support Equal Justice in Oregon, a legal aid organization that provides free civil legal services to low-income and senior Oregonians.
Auditions will take place on Monday and Tuesday, January 26th and 27th at 7pm at the UUFC. NO experience is necessary to try out for these productions, and it’s a great way to make social connections while lending your talents to a great cause. Auditions will consist of reading excerpts of the script with other actors, and it will be low-key and lots of fun!
These auditions are for an unpaid, amateur performance opportunity. For maximum accessibility, this is a memorization-optional production—actors will have the option to carry some or all of their lines in a notebook or on a clipboard prop if they so choose.
If you have any questions about the team, the production, or the audition process, please reach out to justice.theater@uucorvallis.org.
A 19-year-old man has just stood trial for the fatal stabbing of his father. “He doesn’t stand a chance,” mutters the guard as the 12 jurors are taken into the bleak jury room. It looks like an open-and-shut case—until one of the jurors begins opening the others’ eyes to the facts. “This is a remarkable thing about democracy,” says the foreign-born juror, “that we are notified by mail to come down to this place—and decide on the guilt or innocence of a person; of a man or woman we have not known before. We have nothing to gain or lose by our verdict. We should not make it a personal thing.” But personal it is, with each juror revealing their own character as the various testimonies are re-examined, the murder is re-enacted and a new murder threat is born before their eyes! Tempers get short, arguments grow heated. The jurors’ final verdict and how they reach it t will electrify the audience and keep them on the edge of their seats.
Learn more about the supported organization, the Campaign to Support Equal Justice in Oregon, by CLICKING HERE: https://cej-oregon.org/
Justice Theatre @ the UUFC is a community theatre venture aimed at staging small-scale productions with pay-what-you-will performances supporting social justice causes. Past beneficiaries have included the ACLU, the Corvallis Cold Weather Mens Shelter, CARDV, and the Mid-Willamette Trans Support Network. Our mission is to create theatre that fosters discussion about the world around us, to make theatre that is completely open and accessible to audience members of any income level, and to use performance to generate donations for good causes. The company is part of the Fellowship’s larger commitment to justice work under the auspices of the Justice Council. Organized by the Justice Theatre Team, the Fellowship generally stages one production every year or so with amateur actors who donate their time (which helps to maximize profits for donations!), and these productions are intended to comment on something going wrong in the world while raising money to help right that wrong.
Free childcare can usually be arranged for any Fellowship event by using this link 1-2 weeks prior to the event.
Join Jaya Lakshmi and her band for an uplifting evening of mantra, kirtan and original sacred music.
Friday, January 16, 2026, 7:00 – 8:30 PM at the Fellowship.
Tickets $25 in advance, $30 at the door. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.
Buy tickets online using this link: https://jayalakshmimusic.com/event/6393721/748516126/jaya-lakshmi-kirtan-and-sacred-music-concert.
Free childcare can usually be arranged for any Fellowship event by using this link 1-2 weeks prior to the event.
There’s nothing to be afraid of and all it takes is that first step. Like a New Years resolution, change might be scary – but honest! We’re friendly.
The choir is a welcoming group of singers who enjoy learning music and sharing it with the Fellowship. There is no audition.
We meet every Wednesday at 7:00 PM in the Sanctuary. Contact Director Steven Evans-Renteria for more information at this link.