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It's been forever since I've blogged - in the meantime I've moved from Franklin Lakes, NJ to Fayetteville, NY, to serve a church in East Syracuse, NY. I will hopefully write about my transition soon! But meanwhile, here's another great...
Finally getting back to Festival of Homiletics notes. Another standout was Craig Barnes , Presbyterian pastor and faculty at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. I heard Barnes lecture and preach, and he was funny, pastoral (and grounded in pastoring, rather...
It's that time of year again, where my Metho-nerdiness shines through: the 2008 Annual Conference Reports are up at umc.org. (Well, many of them are up anyway.) I've skimmed through all the posted reports and noticed some common themes, and as...
I just read a very 'on' article in Christian Century, written by Martin B. Copenhaver, called "Handshake Ritual." Reflections on the practice of greeting the congregation at the door after worship. Excerpt: "Worship is over and...
I've been thinking about worship services. OK, I'm usually thinking about worship services in some corner of my mind, but I've been specifically thinking about time/day/style of worship services. Questions: How many worship services does your...
We've spent time around the methoblogosphere in the last couple of weeks talking about General Conference . I think many of us agree that even though we don't agree on issues around human sexuality, that we'll be sorry to see a once-in-four...
Question: Every Lent, I lead a small study/communion service with my congregation. We meet in a small group, celebrate communion with a short study-service lesson, and then enjoy a meal of soup and bread together. This will be my first round teaching...
Okay, here’s the second part of my reflections on the Bishop’s Convocation. Our second keynote was Leonard Sweet . Sweet is a professor of Evangelism at Drew (among, of course, other things), and so I had him for class in seminary, and had his books as...
So, I haven’t been in a blogging mood lately – something about the post-vacation difficulty of getting back into the routine, I guess. I have a few things that I want to write about eventually: Transparency, ‘religious views’ on facebook , reviews of...
For the past several years, I've been leading Blue Christmas services in my congregation, and this year, it's a first for Franklin Lakes UMC . A Blue Christmas or Longest Night service is a service to give a space for those who are grieving or...
I recently finished reading Reinventing Sunday: Breakthrough Ideas for Transforming Worship , a short book by Brad Berglund. I picked it up while I was still in Oneida, particularly with our then-running second evening service, looking for different ideas...
Advent is here. In Northern New Jersey, Advent came in with some cold and yucky weather. I was impressed that we had a good number of people in worship despite the weather. I suspected attendance to be a bit more sparse! We had an eventful day - the boiler...
*Today, as in many churches, we celebrated All Saints Sunday at Franklin Lakes. I appreciated Michelle's post at 33 Names of Grace about celebrating All Saints for the first time in a new appointment. Michelle talks about how you are thinking about...
This past Sunday, like in many UMCs, we celebrated Laity Sunday . We had a great service here, and I was really proud of how everyone contributed to the service. Our lay leader coordinated the service, and gave part of the message about what Franklin...
Yesterday I attended an adjourned session of the North Central New York (NCNY) annual conference. The agenda? Vote on a recommendation to Jurisdictional Conference to merge four annual conferences in New York: NCNY, Western NY, Troy, and Wyoming. Through...
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