09/22/2026
Each month we feature a story about how an individual member connects with Community Church. Read another inspiring story from the church.
✨Gift✨
When Monica first walked into Community Church of Sebastopol on Christmas Eve in 2023, she wasn’t looking for a new church home. She and her family had moved to Sebastopol only weeks earlier, and as Christmas approached, Monica began looking online for somewhere she and her mother could attend a Christmas Eve service together. Community Church was nearby, the website said it was open and affirming, and there would be handbells and a choir. It checked the boxes.
“I still remember coming in for the Christmas Eve service,” Monica shares. “There were handbells, and there was a choir, and the sermon from Ben was so resonant. It really just felt like coming home.”
For Monica, the experience carried echoes of the church community she had known as a child in Vermont. Raised by a single mother, Monica grew up in a progressive church where there were handbells, children’s choir, Sunday school, summer camp, and loving, open-hearted ministers. Most importantly, there was community. “It was such a big part of my childhood,” Monica says. “Especially having a single mom, having a space where we were so welcomed and supported and held was really, really important.”
As an adult, Monica remained connected to spirituality, but regular Sunday worship had not been part of her life for many years. She thought Community Church might simply be a lovely place to spend Christmas Eve. Her mother had other plans. After that first service, she asked, “Okay, what do we do next Sunday, Monica? Will you take me to church?” So Monica brought her back, and Sunday after Sunday, mother and daughter worshiped together. “It was really her request to attend church with her that established my own relationship to this community,” Monica says.
Over time, Monica rediscovered the rhythm of belonging to a faith community: showing up, knowing people, welcoming new people, and receiving something each Sunday that connected her more deeply to her own spirit and values. The church also became a place to put those values into action. Monica and her mother were part of the congregation when it voted to become a Sanctuary Congregation, and her mother attended her first Pride celebration through Community Church.
Those experiences became part of the life they shared during the last year and a half of her mother’s life. Then Monica’s mother died, and Monica came to understand another dimension of what this community had become. “I didn’t know how much I would need a church community for that really, really hard experience of losing my mom,” she says. She remembers the way Ben showed up, Joanne Matson’s support in creating the memorial service, and the larger community surrounding her family through their loss.
After her mother died, Monica needed some time away. Eventually, she returned to the sanctuary - to people who had known her mother and, importantly, had known them together. “That is so rare,” Monica says. “To be able to sit in the sanctuary where I sat with her Sunday after Sunday and really feel her with me there.”
Looking back, Monica understands that her mother’s request after that first Christmas Eve service gave her something far greater than either of them could have known at the time. “I’ve said to multiple people that Community Church was the last big gift she gave me in her life.”
Today, Monica describes Community Church as “medicine” in a time when life can feel profoundly isolating. She once told Ben that his sermons remind her of a medicinal soup or stew - something simmering all week, filled with whatever the community is grieving, celebrating, fearing, and hoping for, then served in little bowls on Sunday morning. “It’s just deep nourishment,” she says.
For Monica, that nourishment comes through relationship: showing up, being known, living her values alongside others, and returning to a sanctuary where the memory of her mother still lives beside her. What began as a search for somewhere to spend Christmas Eve became something Monica never knew she would need: a community to come home to.
Written by Reena Burton
To Read more stories visit: https://uccseb.org
