Rev. Rick King: Senior Minister

Office Phone: 303-776-4940
Fax: 303-776-2738
Contact Rick by e-mail

Listen to Sermons

Rev. Rick King grew up in Ohio. He graduated from Western Reserve Academy in Hudson, Ohio; received his B. A. in English from Mount Union College in Alliance, Ohio; and his Master of Divinity from Yale Divinity School in New Haven, Connecticut. He has served churches in Palatine, Elmhurst, and Chicago, Illinois, and Winona, Minnesota. In addition to pasturing churches, Rick has worked in a homeless youth shelter in Chicago and was a professional massage therapist.

Rick has been married to Linda Kopecky since 1996. They have three boys: Eli, Samuel, and Gabriel.

In his spare time, Rick enjoys cycling, walking, yoga, reading, eating vegetarian cooking, and spending time with his family.

"Crossings"

Many of us at FCUCC have an ambivalent view of the cross, for at least two reasons: 1. It's been so sentimentalized in hymns and popular devotional literature that it's lost its power and become a cliché of the Christian Right; and 2. The suffering it symbolizes has been used to excuse and even bless violence.

So when Lent comes around with its traditional emphasis on the suffering of Christ, our spiritual lives can sometimes have a gap that only the Holy-Week-and-Easter part of the Jesus story can fill.  We are liable not to know what to say or do when the inevitable scripture passages of this season come around on Sundays.

And yet, the cross is a vital part of a Christian spirituality.

So this year, Sara and I have chosen to emphasize liberation as a way to see what God has accomplished through Christ on the cross. You'll hear me preaching in sermons on what we are liberated from, what we are freed for, and how liberation happens in human life, both in the Christian story of resurrection and the Exodus, the liberation story that we share with our Jewish sisters and brothers.

Sara Weatherman: Associate Minister for Christian Education and Youth

Office Phone: 303-776-4940
Fax: 303-776-2738
Contact Sara by e-mail

Before coming to First Congregational in Longmont, Sara served as Minister of Education at First Congregational in Colorado Springs from 1985 to 1998. She was responsible for Church School, youth and adult education, intergenerational learning events, summer activities, children's choir and women's ministry. Sara also served as Associate Conference Minister for Programming in the Rocky Mountain Conference of the United Church of Christ, from 1994 to 2001. Responsibilities included a full range of summer camp programming, youth ministry, support of local church education through curriculum events and teacher training. The Rocky Mountain Conference includes Colorado, Utah, and Southern Wyoming. Before joining the UCC in 1985, Sara served in Presbyterian and United Methodist Churches, and a Protestant Chapel in Stuttgart, Germany. She was educated at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. She grew up in New Mexico where her father was a Presbyterian minister.

Sara has two adult daughters, Amy of Longmont and Karen of Colorado Springs. Sara dabbles in Biblical archaeology, likes to read, sing and play the flute in her spare time.