Welcome Back Sunday, Sept 9, 10 am service: Featuring the jazz stylings of our church’s own Katharine Hedlund, this service is a good way to greet old friends and make new ones as we get back into the groove! Show up and Sing Sunday, Sept 16: Come and sing with the choir on this Sunday! All you need to do is show up at 9:15 am in the Morehouse Room and learn a simple piece. With the aid of choir members, you will raise your voice in this wonderful form of prayer.
EBONY AND IVORY
Is anyone else struck by the memorials of two generational figures within days of each other? John McCain from Arizona was about as white as white gets. And Aretha Franklin from Detroit was about as black as black gets. But swirl together the juxtaposition of their passing, and you get one of those yin and yang circles of Taoism, with a white dot on the black side, and a black dot on the white side.
IN PRAISE OF FRIENDSHIP
Our church has taught me more about friendship than any of the six churches I’ve served. I am in distress over family, you bid me to go and take care of things. I take on a big challenge as your pastor, and you come up firmly underneath me. I am aware that without you, without your trust, without your caring, I am nothing.
WHY ATTEND CHURCH? WHY NOT?
Over the relatively few years I’ve been your pastor, the numbers in America who claim “no religion” have increased from 12% to 21%. That is a tectonic shift over a mere 6.5 years. If religion were a stock your broker would be calling you to sell. But not so fast. Even in these hard times, as the church has hemorrhaged, some churches—not so many–have managed a modicum of growth. We are one of those churches. Lesson one: let’s not take that for granted. Frankly, after a rocky summer, I can see in your faces and you can see in mine that we are not taking anything for granted around FCC
THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE
With apologies to physicist Werner Heisenberg, who posited the “Uncertainty Principle” in 1927 about particle velocity and position, I have a spiritual corollary. It goes like this: all healthy relationships are bound together by faith, whether we love our mother or board a bus.
QUICK TO LISTEN…SLOW TO JUDGE
How can we find peace in this life despite the slings of conflict and arrows of hurt randomly piercing us? How can we become agents of harmony rather than pain?