WHAT WE OFFER
Unity of Charlotte is a center of
personal and spiritual growth. All its services, workshops, and
classes are designed to support you in becoming all God created you to be,
and in having a better life. In each Sunday lesson and class you will
receive practical tools to help you find inner joy, peace and harmony, as
well as outer forms of abundance -- vibrant health, loving relationships,
and plenty in every material way.
Each
Sunday morning we provide positive, practical, motivational lessons,
moving music, and tranquil, nourishing meditations. We also provide
loving education and childcare for your children.
We believe that every problem we face has an
answer and that every true desire we have can be fulfilled. We
can learn to "tune in" to a Source of wisdom within us (God or the Holy
Spirit) which will guide and direct us into that happiness, love, peace
and outer abundance which is our rightful heritage as children of God.
It is truly exciting to
constantly see people transcend former limitations and to
discover new depths of love, power, understanding, and self-mastery. It is
exciting to see people healed in mind, heart, body and relationships, and
to see the power of faith-filled prayer demonstrated in many lives.
We teach
that each person is created "in the image and after the likeness of God"
(Gen. 1:27), and that every person is inherently good. The true self or
core of us is made of love, wisdom, life energy, and creative power.
We are all fundamentally the same, regardless of sex, age, race, ethnic
background, or sexual orientation.
Introducing Our
Church's Minister
The Reverend Nancy
Ennis
Nancy is a well-known
facilitator of classes and workshops on spiritual growth, personal
development, and holistic health. She is a licensed Unity minister
in Unity's field licensing program, which will lead to her ordination in
2007. Prior to her entry into this program, Nancy was a licensed
Unity teacher, having received her teaching certificate in 1989.
Nancy is also a registered nurse and diabetes education specialist.
What Is the Unity
Movement?
The Unity Movement is
comprised of two organizations -- The Unity Institute (formerly Unity
School of Practical Christianity), with headquarters at Unity Village,
Missouri, and the Association of Unity Churches International.
The Unity Institute
offers prayer support through Silent Unity, our worldwide prayer ministry.
It also offers spiritual education, renewal, and inspiration through its
educational programs and week-long retreats. In addition, it
conducts a residential school of ministry. Finally, the Unity
Institute publishes books and the magazines Daily Word and Unity.
The Association of
Unity Churches International includes some 1,000 churches and other
ministries in thirty-eight countries.
What Unity of
Charlotte Teaches
Listed below are
Unity's teachings about some of the terms with which most people from
Christian backgrounds are familiar. While it is not necessary to agree
with any one of the following viewpoints, they are held by most who attend
our services. However, our most important consideration is that our
services and classes help you, not that you agree with us on
every point.
Unity of Charlotte is
what is often called a "New Thought" church. This "new thought" (now well
over one-hundred years old as a movement in North America) is that all
people are inherently good and that God dwells within everyone. Other
examples of New Thought churches are Divine Science and Religious Science.
We strive to be one with seekers of all faiths. In fact, although we
call what we teach "practical Christianity," there are aspects of several
Eastern religions in what we teach and practice. We believe that
"there are many paths to the mountain," and that whether God is called
God, Spirit, Allah, Krishna, Divine Mind, or any other name, those
who seek with an open mind and an open heart will find themselves
advancing on their right spiritual path.
What We Teach About:
HEAVEN
We teach that heaven
is a state of mind rather than a place we may go when we die. Jesus
said, "The Kingdom of God comes not with observation, neither shall they
say, 'Lo, here! or, Lo, there!' for the Kingdom of God is within you.'
(Luke 17:20-22) This heaven, this state of mind is one of peace,
harmony, love, innocence, and joy, and is attained as we experience
oneness with God and other people.
HELL
Just as heaven is a
mental, emotional state of love, joy, and peace so is hell an internal
state of suffering, conflict, regret, and turmoil. Just as heaven is a
self-created state, so is hell. Hell is not a place we go after we die.
Jesus, when asked how many times to forgive, said "until seventy times
seven." If Jesus instructed us so, can we expect that a God of love would
do less and condemn someone to everlasting torment? God does not condemn
us, but rather at all times sees our perfect Self. Hell is a mental and
emotional state of our own creation, a perception of separateness that we
can begin to undo at any time we so choose.
GOD
We teach that God is a
very real Presence and Power, within and all around us, rather than a
Being in some distant location. Rather than a loving Being, we
believe that God is the actual quality of Infinite, Unconditional Love.
God is also Infinite Intelligence or Divine Mind, as well as Power, the
moving force of the universe, and Life, the animating principle. God is
everywhere, evenly present Spirit.
Within each of us, as
a state which is usually beyond our conscious mind, God is our Source of
ideas, life, love, power and strength. To each person individually,
God is "Father," to use Jesus' term. In today’s language, he might
have referred to God as "Parent," since God not a Being who is male or
female.
JESUS CHRIST
We teach that Jesus
was Divine, and that so is everyone else. We do not see Jesus as
inherently different from other people, but rather as one who totally
understood and demonstrated the Divinity which is innately a part of every
person. In our spiritual approach, we strive to be the religion of
Jesus, rather than being a religion about Jesus.
Instead of seeing him as the great exception, we see him as the great
example. We ask, "What was Jesus' religion? What was his relationship to
God? What was his method of prayer? How did he live his life?" Our
objective is to do likewise, to follow him.
We teach that the term
"Christ" is the name of the potential Divinity of each person, that the
name "Jesus" is the name of the historical man who is our way-shower and
master-teacher, and that the name "Jesus Christ" was his because he became
in actual fact the complete expression of what is possible for all. We
also believe that Jesus is our "savior," not because he died for us on the
cross, but because through the example of his entire life on earth, he
showed us the way to be saved from suffering, or a current-day hell, by
changing our lives. We believe that Jesus' entire message was one of
how to live in the Kingdom of Heaven by transforming our lives from
ego-based to God-filled.
THE DEVIL
Just as we teach that
God is not a being, so also do we teach that there is no being called the
devil. There is but one Presence and Power in the universe, God. The
devil, or Satan, is a biblical reference to a belief-state in human beings
which today we often call the ego. When people identify with this belief
state, they feel separated, or cut off, from God and are fearful. This
fear leads to such states as anger, hate, and greed. These in turn,
lead to errors, or mistakes, such as mentally attacking others, or even
stealing or killing. Being in this state, however, does not make us bad or
"evil" (except as Jesus used the word "evil," meaning incomplete or
immature). Instead, in that condition, we are ignorant or asleep to our
true or Divine nature of love, joy, and peace. There is no "force of
evil" in the universe, just as cold is not a force but the absence of
heat, and darkness is simply the absence of light.
ETERNAL LIFE
We teach that life is
eternal, neither beginning with birth nor ending with death. We teach that
each of us is a spiritual being who inhabits a body for a time in order to
grow and learn lessons, but that our ultimate destiny is far beyond what
can be equated with the body. We are not human beings having a spiritual
experience. Rather, we are spiritual beings having a human
experience. Most of us accept reincarnation (but not transmigration,
or the embodiment of souls in animals) as the most likely scenario of how
we grow and progress spiritually.
BAPTISM
To us, water baptism
is not necessary as a condition of a better afterlife. No child
enters the world "stained with sin," needing to be inwardly cleansed. To
us, salvation is a term denoting a present-day possibility, meaning to be
saved from a present-moment hell through a change in mind and attitude.
Water baptism is a symbol. It represents the cleansing from
our minds and hearts of the erroneous beliefs and suppressed pain which
cause the problems we face in life. John the Baptist said, "I have
baptized you with water, but there comes one after me who will baptize you
with the Holy Spirit and with fire."
The meaning of the
Greek word which we interpret as "baptize" is "to imbue something to the
point of saturation." Thus, when Jesus said, "Go ye therefore into all the
world, baptizing them in the name (which means nature) of the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Spirit," he was instructing us to "let our light Shine"
so that others could also find their relationship with God, their Source,
and be filled with "the Holy Spirit and with fire." Of course, this inner
experience is not dependent upon an external ritual.
COMMUNION
A question which is
sometimes asked by people who come from traditional Christian churches is,
"Why don't you serve communion?" To us, true communion is an inner
experience, one of knowing and feeling our union with God ("common
union"), as well as with the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.
Jesus spoke Aramaic,
the common language of his day and location. This language contained
many figures of speech. These colloquialisms were clearly understood
as such by those to whom he was speaking. When Jesus said, "Take,
eat," and "Take, drink," saying the bread and wine were his "body and
blood given to us for the remission of sins," he was using symbolism to
tell his disciples that whenever they gathered to "break bread" (and not
just at the time of Passover), to remember - and rededicate themselves to
- all for which his life stood.
"This is my body" was
a figure of speech which meant "these are my teachings." "This is my
blood" meant "this is my example, my life, who I am." At the "last
supper," Jesus was saying to his disciples, "Do not forget the purpose of
all we have been through together these past three years."
Those of us who claim
to be "followers of the way" (the original name for Jesus' students), can
also "do this in remembrance of me" by rededicating ourselves to the goal
of living and sharing his teachings and example.
THE BIBLE
We refer to the
Bible as our basic textbook. We see it as being Divinely
inspired, and we also teach that such inspiration did not stop with the
end of Biblical days. Divine Mind continues to speak through many people
today. That is why we use many books as texts. Lessons in Truth
is one of our basic texts, as are several other Unity-published books.
A Course In Miracles is another textbook.
We see the Bible
as the history of the Jewish people, the revelation of spiritual
principles (especially the teachings of Jesus), and symbolically
representing the growth and unfoldment of each person. Its importance
today lies in the principles it teaches. These principles are as valid
today as they were thousands of years ago. For example, when the Hebrew
people put God first in their lives, their nation prospered. When they did
not, they suffered. The same is true today.
Often, we refer to the
"metaphysical" meaning of some story, person, or place in the Bible. This
word comes from two words: "meta" (above or beyond) and "physical"
(literal or material). Thus, a metaphysical interpretation of a Bible
story is one beyond its literal meaning. For instance, the story of
David and Goliath also speaks to a time when the part of us which wants to
rely on God for the solution (David) meets a problem which seems ten feet
tall (Goliath). As David continues to rely on God he is victorious, as we
will be when we also rely on God.
To many of us, A
Course In Miracles is, as it claims to be, Jesus restating and
clarifying what he taught in his ministry on earth. It supports us
in transforming our lives and in fulfilling our main purpose in life,
which is forgiveness.
PRAYER
We teach that prayer
produces definite, tangible results. In fact, we teach that our
every thought is powerful. We are constantly co-creating (with God)
our reality through our most deeply held beliefs and emotions.
To us, prayer is not a
way to get God to change. Our prayers are designed to change us
so that we may accept more of God's good into our lives. Spirit is
always desirous of giving us more health, happiness, and abundance than we
know how to receive. With this in mind, our method of prayer is an
affirmative one. An example would be, "God's perfect plan of
good is now established in my life, and I see it." We continue to
affirm this until we feel it, realize it, and really know it.
Another method of
prayer we use is that of "asking," and our method of asking is one of
claiming rather than begging. One example of this would be to pray,
"God, I want your help and guidance with a decision I have to make.
Thank You for Your perfect answer." We then work on being
open and receptive to seeing the answer. Another method of prayer is
visualization, or seeing in our mind's eye the desired solution.
Far and away the most
powerful method of prayer, however, is our everyday actions. We are
constantly teaching ourselves what we believe to be the truth by the
actions we take every moment of every day. For example, our daily
actions are always teaching us that either one or the other of two
premises is true: Either God's thought system of abundance is true,
or our ego's thought system of lack is true. We can practice each
day aligning our minds with Divine Mind by doing the things which will
support us in knowing our oneness with God.
MEDITATION
One of the practices
we teach, practice, and encourage is that of meditation. Some think
of meditation as "the other half of two-way prayer." (We talk to God
in prayer. God talks to us in meditation.) It is interesting
to note that the Aramaic word for prayer meant "to wait patiently to catch
God's thoughts." Meditation can also be thought of as a calming,
relaxing exercise of focusing on a word, idea, sound, object, or phrase.
As our minds become more relaxed and quiet, we also become more receptive
to the guidance of the Holy Spirit within us.
Meditation is
practiced with excellent results by many of the world's great religions.
Many of us here practice a Buddhist form of meditation variously called
Mindfulness Meditation or Insight Meditation. This is a way to use
meditation to practice identifying with our "inner observer."
As you practice
meditation, in whichever form you are guided to do so, you, too, will find
its benefits are many. You will feel renewed, ideas will come to you
with greater frequency and clarity, and you will find yourself becoming
more aware of your spiritual self.
GOD'S WILL
We teach that it is
God's will, or desire, for everyone to have happiness, inner peace,
health, love, and an abundance of every good thing. Likewise, we
teach that it is not God's will that people get sick, suffer, and live in
poverty. As we learn more and more to claim our oneness with God and each
other, we move ever closer to the good which is our Divine heritage.
As you think of the
preceding ideas, remember that it is not necessary to agree with all of
them in order to join us for our services or classes, to receive
counseling, or to participate in one of our events. As stated earlier, we
are not here to convert you. We are here to support you in having
the life you want. Our prayer is that our beliefs are constantly growing,
expanding, and becoming more universal. Our goal is to constantly make
them more practical, as well. These viewpoints are presented so you
can make an informed choice in deciding whether to make Unity of Charlotte
your spiritual home. Many have said, "Finding a church like this is
like coming home." If this feels like your right place, welcome
home.
How Is This Church
Supported?
Unity of Charlotte is
an autonomous, self-governing corporation which is completely supported by
the contributions, tithes, and tuitions of those it serves. Those of
us who are leaders of this church practice tithing our money, our time,
and our talents, and we encourage you to receive the personal benefits of
doing the same. The church itself also tithes 10% of its income to
the organizations by whom we feel supported and nourished spiritually.
Tithing constantly reminds us that God in us is our unlimited Source of
abundance.
What Is a Love
Offering?
Many people have
wondered what the term "love offering" means. Here is a brief
explanation.
Financially speaking,
this ministry is a business. Its income must exceed its expenses in
order for it to be sustained and to grow. It receives income and has
salaries and expenses to pay. It offers "products" (spiritual
lessons, prayer, counseling, classes, etc.) and it has "customers" (those
who receive the products). The difference between a ministry and,
say, a hardware store, is that in a hardware store the prices are fixed by
the store. If a customer wants a hammer, he looks at the hammer's
price and decides if he wants the hammer enough to pay the asked price.
In a ministry, the
price of the "product" is mostly determined by the receiver. The
church desires to make its services available to all, regardless of
financial position. Some people automatically give a certain amount
"because they always have." What we ask you to do instead is to give
in accord with the value you are receiving from this church being here,
and from this particular service or class. In this way, we at Unity
of Charlotte can determine the effectiveness of our programs. We
know that the more we provide practical help, the more the ministry will
prosper and be able to move forward in growth.
Whenever the church
receives a "love offering," the amount you give is between you and God in
you. We do not support you in "giving from guilt." We do
support you in giving with love and gratitude, as a reflection of what you
are receiving. We encourage you to begin practicing the idea that
you can ask God in you for guidance as to how much to give and that you
can hear God speaking to you through your own thoughts.
Also, when you give
to the church, we ask you to be guided by the principle of making a
"contribution" rather than a "donation." The word "donation"
connotes something left over, something which doesn't feel like a part of
you, something you can "spare." A contribution does
feel like a part of you. It is something you include in your
financial planning and is a statement of the value you place on this part
of your life.
What Does Tithing
Mean?
We teach, practice,
and encourage tithing. Tithing is the plan suggested by the Bible
to ensure your own sense of security and abundance as well as to ensure
the success of people and organizations that you want to support. Tithing
means to designate a certain percentage of income, as it is received and
before expenses, to be given to God. Ten percent is the figure suggested
in the Bible (the word "tithe" means "tenth").
In such a program of
planned giving, we instruct people to go within and ask Spirit within them
where to give this gift. One guide is to ask yourself which people or
organizations you believe are adding something of real value to the world.
And, one way to determine this is to ask yourself where you
have received your help.
This person or
organization is someone or something in which you can believe, and in
which your gift is a wise investment in the future. A tithe is not to be
given as a bargain or with strings attached, but in gratitude to God. As
you give regularly, you will be nourishing your faith in God as your
unlimited Source. Tithing will prosper you as you build this faith by the
action of regular giving. It will also prosper those whom you believe are
creating a better world. If you have more questions about tithing, there
is a free booklet on tithing (How Tithing Prospers You) available
in the bookstore.
Our Volunteer Program
One of the most
exciting aspects of Unity of Charlotte is its volunteer program. It
is an educational program and is devoted to ensuring that you receive more
from it than you give to it. In this program, you will discover that
you
are always more important than the job you do. If you would
like to know more about this program and the volunteer opportunities
available to you, please see one of the ministers or one of the
co-directors of our volunteer program.
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