Hope in Action

led by our Community Responsibility Endowment Fund (CREF) trustees

October 19, 2025

Today’s worship will celebrate this year’s Community Responsibility Endowment Fund awardees: Thrive Youth Advisory, Healthy Futures of Texas, Empower House, and Texas Unitarian Universalism Justice Ministry. Each organization will share a brief reflection on their work and how it makes hope tangible and real in San Antonio.

Sounding of the Bowl – Rev. Xolani Kacela, Ph.D.

Prelude – Prelude in G minor by J.S. Bach, performed by William Westney                       

Welcome and Greeting – Chris Lopez, CREF                                

Opening Words                    

Chalice Lighting                                                                        

Opening Hymn – #42 Morning, So Fair to See

Morning, so fair to see, night, veiled in mystery —
glorious the earth and resplendent skies!
Pilgrims, we march along, singing our joyous song,
as through an earthly paradise.

Tall are the verdant trees; deep are the flashing seas;
glorious each wonder the seasons bring.
Brighter is faith’s surmise, shining in pilgrim eyes,
from which our waking spirits spring.

Age after age we rise, ‘neath the eternal skies,
into the light from the shadowed past:
still shall our pilgrim song, buoyant and brave and strong,
resound while life and mountains last.

Covenant – Margaret Neiheisel, CREF                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Stone Ceremony – Alison Hom-Crosier, CREF                                                       

Reading the Community Book of Life                   

Pastoral Meditation             

Story Wisdom – “Say Something” by Peter H. Reynolds, read by Tim Versteeg

Children’s Recessional

Musical Meditation – Intermezzo Op. 118 #2 by Johannes Brahms 

Overview of Community Responsibility Endowment Fund (CREF) – Tim Barr, CREF 

Reflections on Hope in Action       

Texas Unitarian Universalist Justice Ministry: Bis Thornton

Healthy Futures of Texas: Rosa Evans        

Thrive Youth Center: Beto De Leon  

Empower House: Jenny Castro        

Invitation to Share the Plate benefiting CREF – Jason Younts, CREF                

Offertory Music – Prelude in C major  by J.S. Bach                                                                                    

Closing Hymn – #34 Though I May Speak with Bravest Fire   

Though I may speak with bravest fire, and have the gift to all inspire,
and have not love, my words are vain as sounding brass and hopeless gain.

Though I may give all I possess, and striving so my love profess,
but not be given by love within, the profit soon turns strangely thin.

Come, Spirit, come, our hearts control, our spirits long to be made whole.
Let inward love guide every deed; by this we worship, and are freed.                              

Extinguishing the Chalice/Benediction     .

Postlude