Values, Beliefs, and Mission
We believe that transformation is possible, that we have within us the potential to move from brokenness to wholeness, from oppression to power, from unjust to just, from separateness to relationship, from isolation to beloved community.
We believe there is a power in community that emerges from belonging to one another, that sustains and nurtures our growth. We have experienced the power of spiritual community to transform lives – our own and others. We believe that our community is created anew each time we gather.
We believe in the power of story to understand ourselves in the cosmos, in the continual process of creation. We design intentional spaces for people to tell their stories, with the expectation that those stories will change us.
We believe that generously sharing our gifts and receiving the gifts of others grows our compassion. We find our gifts flow from discerning the intersection of our heart’s deepest yearning and the world’s deepest hunger. We know ourselves to be most alive when we honor the earth and all humanity upon it.
We engage the stories of religious peoples to understand how others have wrestled with their own lives and contexts and how stories inform our lives; to understand that each person’s experience is valid, true, and limited.
We encourage one another in an ongoing process of spiritual growth; of learning and unlearning; of opening ourselves to all of life with wonder, awe, and imagination. We ground ourselves in spiritual practices that nurture our connection to our spiritual source.
We nurture and empower our children and youth to explore and discover their power, compassion, and hope in the unfolding of their lives.
We embody openness, a courageous vulnerability that invites people to be known, to befriend, to belong, to become fully and vibrantly alive. Our openness is necessarily rooted in trust, in a willingness to participate in mutually accountable relationships.
We experience and express our awakening to love through arts and music; through compassion and caring; through justice and witness; and through knowledge and learning.
The mission of Mill Creek is to be a community that invites you to awaken to Love.
Church History
The Unitarian Universalist Society of Mill Creek traces its roots to the First Unitarian Society of Wilmington. As membership swelled after World War II, fellowships were spun off in Newark, Delaware, and West Chester, Pennsylvania. In 1988 a proposal of a third congregation to serve the Hockessin/Pike Creek area marked the birth of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Mill Creek.
When UUSMC was chartered in February 1989, Sunday services were led by guest ministers and lay members. The Sunday Services Committee developed then still functions actively to coordinate the various aspects of services and to plan special lay-led and holiday services.
UUSMC met in a series of rented spaces from the music room at Tatnall School to the Chinese American Community Center before building a permanent home on Polly Drummond Hill Road.