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Join us on Sunday mornings for liturgy at 10:30 ish

Liturgy includes music, prayer, meditation, communion, and a conversational time related to this week’s Lectionary texts. Our gatherings are casual and family-friendly and center around practices of compassion, kindness, and justice. We welcome families to be together during service. There’s indoor space for kids to color, read, and play, an outdoor playground, and a cozy library if parents need a private space to take a little one during the service.

Weekly

Sunday at 10:30 am- Liturgy

Monday at 10:30 am - Coffeehouse Hours

Wednesday at 7:00 pm - Zoom Community Group

Mission Hills is committed to creating radically inclusive spaces of belonging, healing, and wholeness. In this, we hope to make sure there is no question in what we mean by all are welcome at the table.

Women in ministry

Mission Hills is egalitarian and fully supports the leadership and ordination of women and gender non-conforming folks in accordance with our understanding of the “priesthood of all believers.

LGBTQIA+ in ministry

Mission Hills practices the full affirmation and inclusion of LGBTQ+ folks in membership, leadership, ordination, and marriage. We celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit to continue carrying out the work of Love in our world. We seek to be a space where all can experience rest and peace, knowing that all persons, regardless of identity, can experience true belonging here.

Commitment to anti-racism

Mission Hills is committed to being a pro-reconciling/anti-racist church. Christ calls us to dismantle white supremacy and systemic racism and advocate for justice in our community and world. As a community, we are committed to pursuing anti-racism not as an option but as an essential. We are committed to supporting anti-racism work in our own community, families, and as part of the greater Los Angeles area. We commit to acting justly within our structure, policies, and activism involvement. We recognize that stepping into brave space means that sometimes we will misstep, but we continue to push forward in creating spaces for true belonging.

As part of our commitment to anti-racism, we strive to:

- Pursue and protect the right to peaceful protest.

- Continue understanding our own role in our current system.

- Speak out against injustice and racial profiling.

- Speak for reform of unjust healthcare, housing, and economic policies, and the criminal justice and legal systems that have oppressed and exploited people of color while protecting and privileging white people.

- Reflect the fullness of the Divine by pursuing trauma-informed space.

As a community, we are called to co-create brave space and continue to be in conversation with one another about this work.

Books that have guided our conversations:

The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James Cone
Anxious to Talk About It by Carolyn B. Helsel
How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Values

We value inclusive and affirming faith, not confining and judgmental.

We value belonging, community, and simplicity, not church consumption, attendance, and efficiency.

We value the radical life and social teachings of Jesus, not simply his death and resurrection.

We value contemplation, wisdom, and curiosity, not belief, doctrine, and rightness.

We value doubts and questions as essential to faith, not in opposition to faith.

We value compassion, leading us to liberation, justice, and healing.

We value finding beauty in creativity, nature, and mystery.

We value serving people and the planet because, through love, we experience Christ in everything.

We value a radical embrace of the Christian wisdom tradition and the pursuit of authentic faith for an interspiritual and pluralistic future for all.

STAFF

kelly

Kelly Ravenscraft (she/they) is the Worship and Arts Director at Mission Hills. Kelly is a graduate of Loyola University Chicago with a B.A. in International Studies and Sociology and Chicago Theological Seminary with a Master of Divinity. She is under the care of the Pacific Southwest Region of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) as she pursues ordination. She is a dog mom to Kuzco, who you may find playing in the sanctuary after service.

Ryan

Ryan Pryor (he/him) is the lead pastor at Mission Hills since 2016. Ryan graduated from Fuller Theological Seminary with a Master of Arts in Theology with an emphasis in art & culture in 2015. Ryan graduated from Baylor University with a Bachelor of Arts in Religion and a minor in International Studies. Ryan’s areas of writing and exploration include radical theology, contemplative practices, interspirituality, and politics. He has served in ministries in Texas, Virginia, and Hawaii and is an ordained minister with standing in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Ryan is currently training with The Spiritual Guidance Training Institute in Contemplative Interfaith Spiritual Direction.

Get in touch

TEAM

Laura Selwyn

Barbara Reguengo

Kelly Ravenscraft

Wayne Karatsu

Joshua Trujillo

Ryan Pryor

Partners

Disciples

Disciples Alliance Q

Green Chalice

One Percent For The Planet

A few readings that often guide our gatherings.

Welcome

May we create brave space for each other because we recognize that this will be a vulnerable and imperfect gathering.

We are invited

to be honest,

to not take ourselves too seriously,

to listen to our bodies,

to trust ourselves,

to be challenged,

and to experience love,

so that we may be transformed by an encounter with grace to go into our weeks and live well.

Communion

In the Eucharist, we remember the suffering of Christ.
The bread, his broken body, and the wine, his blood poured out.
In the mystery of communion, we practice uniting ourselves with Christ, who suffered at the hands of Empire.
Grain and grapes are crushed and broken and become something new together.
We who take the bread and wine become one with the suffering of Christ as he becomes one with ours.
Together, we become the living body of Christ.
So, we pray as we take the elements that we would become the body of Christ, broken and poured out in love for our world.

God is with us!
Yes, she is.

In this place, we pray for change, to become new vessels full of courage, wisdom, hope, and love.
May we become a new people— changed, healed, grown strong and hopeful by God and one another’s love.
And we remember how, in the company of friends, enemies, and strangers alike, Jesus took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and shared it with everyone, saying, “Take, eat, this is my body extended to all.”
Likewise, he took a cup, blessed it, and shared it, saying, “Drink this – all of you - a new agreement for a divine way of life. As often as you gather, do this, remember this covenant, and remember me."
So, whether we eat or don’t eat, drink or don’t drink, we are welcome to come out to new life.