Our congregation is bound together not by a creed but by a covenant, a set of promises we make about how we will live and grow togheter.

This covenant represents the promises we make to ourselves about how we will nurture and support each other within this beloved community. These promises cultivate an environment of compassion, courage, and empathy.

Our commitment to one another ensures that our community will be a safe and inspirational place in which we, as individuals and groups, can live out our spiritual journeys.

To this end, we, the people of the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Desert, adopt the following Congregational Covenant.

Our church took root in the Coachella Valley in 1959 when two dozen people met in response to an advertisement placed by the American Unitarian Association to encourage the formation of new Fellowships across the country. The ad appeared in the Desert Sun on October 7th asking the provocative question: “Are you a Unitarian without knowing it?”  Sixty-two years later, we still invite visitors to join us at Sunday Service to pose the same question to themselves.

The congregation wandered the desert for 45 years, meeting in homes, schools, motels, senior citizen centers and other churches. At the dawn of the new millennium in anticipation of having our permanent home, we changed our designation from a Fellowship to a full-fledged Church. Our long-held dream was finally realized on Easter Sunday in 2005 when the congregation moved in to its new sanctuary in Rancho Mirage.

UUCOD celebrated its 50th Anniversary in 2009. At various times we have been led by lay leaders as well as retired, visiting, contract, developmental, interim and settled ministers. As members and friends of this church, we continue to strengthen and grow the beloved community that forms our core.