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2026 Annual Meeting | June 14 at 11 AM

Notice is hereby given that this summer’s Congregational Meeting of Plymouth Congregational Church of Minneapolis will be held on Sunday, June 14, 2026, at 11:15 AM in the Plymouth Sanctuary. To ensure that all who wish to attend can do so, the meeting will be streamed as well as held in person; however, because of technical limitations, voting is in-person only.

Agenda

Approve minutes from the January 11, 2026, Annual Budget Meeting.

Reports

Acting Lead/Intentional Interim Minister

Moderators

Leadership Council

Nominating Committee

Treasurer

Lead Minister Search

Roll Call

50-year members

Deceased members

Staff milestones

Action Items*

Election of Church Leaders

No other business can come before the meeting.

*While observers are welcome, only Plymouth Church members may vote on the Action Items, and voting is in-person only.

Materials for the 2026 Congregational Meeting are available at Plymouth.org. This year, materials will be available only electronically, and links to them are below.

CLICK HERE to view the 2026 Board Nominations

CLICK HERE to view the 2025/2026 Annual Report 

2026 Board of Worship Survey Report

 

Your voice matters — and this year, the Plymouth community showed up in a big way. The Board of Worship is proud to share the results of this collective effort.

CLICK HERE to download and read the 2026 BOW Survey Report.

Please join the Board of Worship on Sunday, May 10, at 10 AM for a presentation in Conn Gallery.

BOW board members will share the results of the 2026 Board of Worship Survey and walk through what we found, explore how we gathered and interpreted your feedback, and open the floor for a conversation about the insights and perspectives our community contributed this year. This is your chance to see your input reflected, ask questions, and help shape what comes next.

 

 

 

Reparative action at Plymouth – the “and” of Mission and Margin

I found JT’s Easter message to be transformative. The message deepened my belief that our personal and corporate treasures belong to God, and that we are entrusted to steward them, wisely and justly. I wonder, where is there justice when our treasure is linked, directly or indirectly, to a history of slave labor and land, either stolen or obtained at a fraction of its value?

Earlier this year, in JT’s status briefing during this interim period, he used the work of Plymouth’s Racial Justice Initiative (RJI) to illustrate how the church experiences the “and” between “mission” and “margin.” The Board of Finance and Administration (BoFA), recently charged the new Taskforce on Reparative Action (TORA) to take RJI’s work forward. BoFA has chartered TORA to recommend reparative action for Plymouth. TORA, this summer and fall, will draft answers to the questions of why, what, when, how and who – leading to transformation for the whole congregation.

Balanced with this mission work is BoFA’s margin imperative, to ensure our financial security while justly redistributing our resources. It’s in this context that TORA represents the “and,” making recommendations to BoFA and ultimately the church.

TORA will use a phased approach, first submitting its report to BoFA by the end of November. Phase two will be months of discussion and prayerful discernment. Our expectation is for the congregation to decide on a long-term reparative action plan during 2027, as Plymouth celebrates its 170th anniversary. That will lead to phase three – executing our plan.

TORA will follow RJI’s lead in studying the history of reparations and learning about the actions of other congregations and justice-seeking organizations.

We hope you will join us in this “and” work. Please be in touch with any of the TORA members including Karen Barstad, Jon Bauer, Peter Eichten, Brittany Schou, Jeff Smith (Coordinator), Nick Williams, and Gayle Fuguitt (BoFA liaison). Any of them would be happy to speak with Plymouth members about their thoughts as we move forward. We’ll keep you informed about our progress.

Sign up here to receive communications from TORA.

We look forward to having you join and walk alongside us as we initiate and develop this new task force and plan towards reparative actions at Plymouth.

Jeff Smith

TORA Member

How to Help

Support Our Neighbors, Neighborhood, and Community

Click here for a spreadsheet of ICE Out Events, peaceful protests, and volunteer opportunities in Minnesota.

100 Hands Backpack Packing Project

We’ll fill backpacks with basic personal care items to provide to deportees upon departure from MSP Airport. This project seeks to provide some essential items and a sense of humanity to people being deported. It’s sponsored by the Immigrant Justice Committee and Conversations with Friends. To volunteer for this one-time, one-hour activity, contact Barbara Read barbararead2@icoud.com.

Donate to the Plymouth Benevolence Fund

Donate to the Plymouth Benevolence Fund to help with housing and food insecurity, gas and transportation, and basic needs. Please select “Benevolence Fund” from the dropdown menu to ensure proper fund allocation.

Stevens Square Small Business Grants to help those impacted by ICE

Stevens Square Community Organization has launched a Business Support Fund to raise money to provide grants to small businesses impacted by ICE in Stevens Square-Loring Heights! Donate today to help our neighborhood organization provide much-needed relief to small businesses that have experienced a significant drop in sales and foot traffic.

Help us support our local small businesses! Donations can be made on our website at www.stevenssquare.org.

Stevens Square Neighbor-run Rent Relief GoFundMe

Individuals in the Stevens Square-Loring Heights community have started a GoFundMe to support neighbors impacted by ICE in need of rent assistance. For any questions about this fund, please email the organizers at sqlhrentrelieffund@proton.me.

To support, go to Click Here, and share widely!

Black Youth Irreducible Grace Foundation

The Black Youth Irreducible Grace Foundation Black Youth Healing Arts Center in St. Paul is creating calming kits for children affected by ICE that include art supplies, soft pillows, and breathing tools. Donate here, then select calming kits or the fund you wish to contribute to from the menu.

Support Local Organizations, Businesses, and Restaurants

Here is a vetted list from the City of Minneapolis of organizations that offer donation and safety tips.

Meet Minneapolis has started the MPLS for MPLS campaign. Small, everyday choices help keep Minneapolis neighborhoods strong, welcoming, and connected. Visit their website to find ways to support our neighborhoods.

Show up for Eat Street and donate to local businesses through the Whittier Alliance to help support Whittier neighborhood businesses that need help during this time.

Find a comprehensive list below of ways you can help address community needs, housing, food, supplies, and business closures due to ICE enforcement activities. Click here for ways you can help locally

Lend your voice to the ACLU’s various causes, campaigns, and opportunities. Click here for a comprehensive listing and links

Sign up for Newsletters from Local Organizations

Immigrant Defense Network

Individuals, groups, and organizations that believe in the Immigrant Defense Network’s values and are committed to protecting, defending, and upholding the rights and freedoms of immigrant communities are welcome to join the network. We ask for active participation and meaningful contribution in IDN’s general meetings and our collective work across the state. Please send your full name, location, and affiliation to info@immigrantdefensenetwork.org.

COPAL

COPAL, Comunidades Organizando el Poder y la Acción Latina, is a member-based organization established in 2018 to improve the quality of life of Latine families. Over the past eight years, COPAL has evolved to become a well-known, grassroots power-building, and visionary transnational organization.
Sign up to receive the COPAL newsletter 

Find a Mutual Aid Group in MN that Needs Help and Donations

Organizations across the state are seeking assistance to meet the sudden influx of people in need. While hundreds of thousands protest and strike, others are working behind the scenes to make sure their neighbors have food, shelter, and more. Click here for a list of organizations.

Write to National, State, and City politicians, representatives, and lawmakers.

To stop Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis, urgent communication to Congress is required, highlighting reports of excessive force, unlawful arrests, and fatal shootings by federal agents in the city. Targeted letters should demand that representatives investigate these actions, halt funding for such operations, and protect immigrant communities.

Key Action Steps:

Key Talking Points for Congress:

  • Cite reports of widespread racial profiling and unlawful detention of U.S. citizens.
  • Mention the use of excessive force, including incidents involving pepper spray on bystanders.
  • Highlight the killing of individuals by federal agents in the Eat Street neighborhood, which has prompted widespread protests and calls to end the operation.
  • Demand accountability for the reported ICE agents deployed, calling it an unnecessary expenditure and a safety risk.
  • Support Local Advocacy: Urge Congress to partner with organizations like the ACLU of Minnesota to end these operations.
  • You can use the National Immigration Law Center’s action page to send messages to your representatives

Write to Congress to End the Detention of Families

These families are then sent to the only family immigration detention facility in the country, the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, TX, where conditions are shocking. People with chronic health conditions or medical emergencies are being denied the care they need, infants are experiencing alarming weight loss, and families are denied access to adequate, clean drinking water, forced in many cases to drink tap water at the facility that is foul-smelling and known to cause upset stomachs.

Alarmingly, many families are held in these prison-like conditions without due process for weeks on end, and many families are separated from each other while they are detained. Most likely, they will spend the holidays in these conditions. Click here for guidelines and scripts from Amnesty International.

Free “Know Your Rights” Red Cards

All people in the United States, regardless of immigration status, have certain rights and protections under the U.S. Constitution. The ILRC’s red cards give examples of how people can exercise these rights. However, they do not provide individualized legal advice. Click here to order, download a printable file, or donate to the Red Card project from the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.

Little Free Pantry

Thank you! Thanks to your support, the Little Free Pantry is currently well stocked. This week (1/26), we’re pausing the LFP wishlist.

Groveland Food Shelf

Together We Search: Meet Lynn Moline, Chair of the Pastoral Search Committee

Dear Plymouth Community,

As JT shared during the Sunday Forum on February 8th, the Deacons have begun the meaningful work of searching for our next settled Lead Minister. We are grateful for your patience, prayers, and continued support as we move through this important process together.

We are excited to share our first milestone: the Deacons have unanimously nominated Lynn Moline to serve as Chair of our Pastoral Search Committee.

Lynn Moline

Plymouth has been Lynn’s spiritual home since the early 2000s, and she says that it—and all of you–have changed her life for the better in ways she couldn’t have imagined. She’s struggled and grown spiritually, made deep and enduring friendships, and been comforted during aching personal losses. She’s also been privileged to serve beside dozens of other members in her many lay leadership roles—Moderator, Deacon, Leadership Council chair, Growth Task Force chair, Interim Minister Search Committee member, Governance Task Force member, and others. Lynn hopes that these experiences, along with those gained during a career in corporate leadership and strategy and leadership consulting, have prepared her to serve in this way now. “I can’t tell you I’m not nervous,” she said, “but it’s heartening to know that I’ll serve with a group of wise and thoughtful people who will engage to find the individual who is called to walk with and guide our congregation into the future.

Lynn’s leadership in this role is a gift to our community, and we invite you to offer her encouragement, gratitude, and support as she steps into this significant responsibility on our behalf.

We have also initiated contact with the Minnesota Conference of the United Church of Christ, which will be partnering with us to guide and support our search and call process. We are grateful for their wisdom and experience and will follow their recommendations as we determine our next steps.

We are committed to keeping the congregation informed and engaged throughout this journey, and will share updates as we make progress.

With gratitude,

The Deacons of Plymouth Congregational Church

2026 Easter Offering

Click the play button above to watch the 2026 Easter Offering. You can also read the full text of the poem below. Donate to the 2025 Easter Offering here

This year, we wanted to create a love letter to the people of Plymouth and show what donations of time and money enable us to do for the communities we support and for our community within.

The song “Blessed Be” was composed by Melanie DeMore and inspired by a painting by Carolyn Brunelle. It was recorded last year by the VocalEssence Ensemble Singers on the CD: “Songs of Comfort and Solace”.

We hope you enjoy this year’s offering. We have a lot to be proud of and more work to do as a community.

TOGETHER WE RISE. TOGETHER WE RISE IN COMMUNITY.

In Gratitude,

The Plymouth Outreach Committee

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” — John 1:5

Through the darkness of this season, we locked arms with our neighbors, reached inside for courage, and moved our bodies in resistance and mutual aid. Even in the hardest moments, we felt the rising of a beloved community.

As we pray for the emergency in Minnesota to ebb and for light to stream back into our city streets and neighborhoods, we know there is much rebuilding to do. Tiredness gives way to a new resolve; occupation to recreating with love and dignity.

Together we rise.

This year, we invite you to donate to the Easter Offering to strengthen Plymouth’s long-standing food justice ministries and to support emerging efforts to repair and rebuild our neighborhood.

Please join in support of:

Groveland Food Shelf, Third Sunday Meal, and our partner Every Meal. All provide essential food security to our neighbors through the most difficult of times.

The offering will support emerging efforts to rebuild our community, many of which are still coming into view through our local neighborhood organizations, including rental relief and small-business grants.

Together, we join our neighbors in boldly imagining resurrection and what can be rebuilt, together.”

 In community we rise.

 

Donate to the 2025 Easter Offering here

Plymouth Church’s Generous and Unexpected Bequest

In September of 2025 Plymouth Church received an unexpected gift of $2.25 million from the estate of Christine Larsen.  Who was Christine Larsen?  Why did her estate leave such a sizable bequest to Plymouth Church?  Why were the assets from her trust distributed to both Plymouth Church and to Christ the King, a Catholic Church in south Minneapolis?

Sleuthing by David Langemo and the Archives Committee turned up some interesting information.  Christine’s father was Roy W. Larsen, one of the founders of Twin Cities Federal Bank; he was a trustee at Plymouth Church from 1951 to January 1954.  As President, CEO and Chair of the Board of Twin City Federal, he was wealthy.  He might have been a friend or acquaintance of Howard Conn, who then recruited him as a Trustee.  Roy and his wife, Eleanor, joined Plymouth in 1946, and Roy remained a member until his death in 1976.

Eleanor, however, was placed on “inactive” status by the Deacons in 1953.  In those years regular attendance was required for membership at Plymouth.  Eleanor’s mother had been Catholic and is buried at St Mary’s Catholic cemetery in south Minneapolis.  Eleanor was perhaps more Catholic than Congregational.

Christ the King reported that Roy and Eleanor’s daughter Christine used a wheelchair.  After both her parents passed away in 1976, she had a caregiver and needed assistance and companionship from aids, guardians, and conservators.  Although she did not register at Christ the King, she attended Mass there.  She died on December 8, 2024, at age 83, and her funeral occurred at Christ the King on December 31, with interment in Lakewood Cemetery.

Roy and Eleanor likely had established a trust to provide for Christine’s care upon their death.  It is probable that the terms of the Trust specified that upon Christine’s death, the remaining funds would be split and bequeathed to the churches of each parent—Roy’s church being Plymouth and Eleanor and Christine’s church being Christ the King.

We are thankful for Roy and Eleanor’s generosity.

Archives Committee, January 19, 2026

Our Statement And Call To End Operation Metro Surge

Plymouth Congregational Church, located in the heart of downtown Minneapolis for over 150 years and in the middle of a city and neighborhood that has long welcomed immigrants, seeks to embody the radical love and justice found in the life, teachings and spirit of Jesus. We object to what we see going on in our city and state with Operation Metro Surge.

As citizens, we demand that ICE and Border Patrol agents abide by Federal and State laws guarding basic rights to due process, privacy and equal protections under the law, and against unlawful or unreasonable seizures, and warrantless arrests. We demand, too, respect for – and protection of – the rights of people to freedom of speech and assembly, including the right to protest the cruelty we are witnessing daily.

We call on the Federal Department of Homeland Security to end Operation Metro Surge.

Our faith traditions demand more of us. Our ancient Hebrew tradition teaches that “[w]hen a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the stranger. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the stranger as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt….” (Leviticus, Chapter 19:33-34). Our Christian tradition charges us to love our neighbor as ourselves. As stated by Jesus of Nazareth, “I was hungry, and you gave me food, I was thirsty, and you gave me drink, I was a stranger, and you welcomed me.” (Matthew 25:35)

We encourage all of our members to assist our immigrant neighbors in all practical ways possible. And we are called to pray: for the immigrants who are suffering fear and assault; for the agents, reminding them – and us – that we are all children of God; and finally, for ourselves and each other, that we find our way through this chaos, that we overcome our fear with love, that we stand in the world as beacons for God’s faithful community.

The Deacons on behalf of Plymouth Congregational Church

Peg Birk, Deacon and Co-Moderator

Johanna Schussler, Deacon and Co-Moderator

Maureen Tanis, Clerk and Deacon

Mike McCallister, Treasurer and Deacon

Lani Bennett, Deacon

Dan Dressen, Deacon

John Cairns, Deacon

John Schenk, Deacon

José Pacas, Deacon

Contact: Suzy Martin, Marketing and Communications Manager, suzym@plymouth.org

Annual Budget Meeting Announcement

Notice is hereby given that the Annual Budget Meeting of Plymouth Congregational Church of Minneapolis will be held at 12 PM on Sunday, January 11, 2026, at the church. To ensure everyone who wishes to attend can do so*, the meeting will be available via livestream and in person.

Agenda

  • Approving the 2026 budget**

No other business may come before the meeting.

*While observers are welcome, only Plymouth Church members may vote on the Action Items. **Materials related to the 2026 budget will be available at Plymouth.org.

Download and review the 2026 proposed budget here.

Budget Info Meeting – January 8 @ 7 PM

In anticipation of the January 11 Congregational Meeting and vote on the 2026 budget, join us for the opportunity to hear about and ask questions about the 2026 budget.

Join via Zoom at 7 PM on Thursday, January 8.

Click here to read the 2026 budget summary and overview.