Posts from 2013 (Page 2)

Dear Friends, It’s that time of the year when churches send ministers and lay representatives to Annual Conference. What is Annual Conference? It is the annual summertime pilgrimage to the University of Redlands where we meet, vote, and worship. On the larger ‘conference’ level we receive reports, we approve budgets, and enact new legislation. We also hear about endings and new beginnings. This year we will have a new bishop presiding over our sessions. After twelve years of faithful service…

Dear Friends, While attending the Ken Callahan workshop two weeks ago, I learned that there is a search for an emerging individuality. Certainly this applies to individual persons, but also to groups and to churches. As we all go through life stages and passages, our identity changes within different age brackets, various job positions, and in marital and expanding families. In a similar way, churches undergo transformational stages. Over the decades our church identity has undergone some shifting. At one…

Dear Friends, After the first day of the workshop with Ken Callahan, he’s finished explaining one of the four important searches in which people are engaged.  The four searches are:  emerging individuality, community, meaning, and hope. Callahan is adept at cultural analysis and social archaeology.  He’s able to break down social indicators that characterize individuals as well as groups.  On day one he identified the differences between the first-born child and the second-born child.  One of his theories is that the first-borns tend to…

Dear Friends, What a glorious Easter Sunday we shared! One bright spot among many was the children and youth activities and ministries going on. The newly named children’s chorus, Hallelujah Kid’s Choir sang “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” under the direction of Heidi and accompanist Carolyn. They were followed by the Emma Circle Singers who presented the anthem “Echoes of Joy,” led by Cleta and accompanied by Rachelle. These musical offerings were given during the 9:15 service.…

Dear Friends, In thinking about the narrative of the resurrection in the gospels, did you know that Matthew, Mark, and Luke only devoted one chapter each to tell about Jesus’ rising and what happens after that? The writer of John is the only one who devotes two chapters. In total, Matthew wrote twenty-eight chapters, Mark wrote sixteen chapters, Luke twenty-four chapters, and John twenty-two. Perhaps the reason why there is much less proportionately in the resurrection narrative is that Jesus…

Dear Friends, During my trip back to Hawaii, Marlou and I joined with other members of the family and went to worship at Aldersgate UMC, just west of downtown Honolulu. It was the church I grew up in. I was pleasantly surprised to see how some things had changed, but yet how some things remained the same. The changes included a whole new audio-visual system – two projection screens mounted on the front wall of the chancel, like ours at…

Dear Friends, During Lent I’ve been reading the devotional Small Surrenders by Emilie Griffin. On one of the days Griffin quotes Carlo Carretto who says: If you cannot go into the desert, you must nonetheless “make some desert” in your life. Every now and then leaving… and looking for solitude to restore, in prolonged silence and prayer, the stuff of your soul. [Brewster, Mass: Paraclete Press, 2007, p.40] The common image of the desert is present throughout the Bible. The…