I'm not sure Jesus, the crucified one, would have agreed with that principle. Death leads to resurrection. That's why we should be always hopeful, in spite of present circumstances.

Back up your work in WC, folks, sooner rather than later :3

Are you suggesting the UCCan might pull the plug on WC.ca as a cost-cutting measure? That would be entirely possible. By now, there should be some accounting for the impact of running this site. Are there any available stats for people who entered a UCCan church because of this place?

Maybe if EVERYONE on WC joined the UCC and lobbied…

 

I had one person I know of who joined our congregation because he became acquainted with the United Church through Wonder Cafe while surfing the internet.  It would be a pretty tough number to figure out with any degree of accuracy. I suspect the numbers are fairly small, but I also suspect that there are a lot of lurkers who probably never make themselves known either here or in a congregation as people who found the UCC through WC.

 

I joined the UCC as a direct result of joining WC.

 

But I think the purpose of WC is not, or not only, to attract new members to the UCC, but to stimulate discussion, encourage religious tolerance, and expose and disseminate new ideas. I think WC is not a UCC propaganda tool but a genuine discussion forum.

 

 

 

 

everyone? ...i take it you're joking.

rich blessings.

Not really, Jae. The UCC was founded on diversity and ecumeism… the vision of a sharing people of faith rather than sectarian division.

 

this guy predicted the 2008 global economic catastrophe back in the 80's...

 

He's good! An acid-head, but good.

Signs of things to come...I had applied for a grant......

 

"While we all knew that declining givings to the M&S Fund would have an impact on our programming from 2014 onwards, it turns out that givings in the calendar year 2012 were almost a million dollars short of what we had anticipated. All of the Units at the General Council Office were asked last month to revise their programming for this year to take that into account, and one of the programs that has been terminated in response to this request has been these grants for continuing education programming."

 

We are changing.....

 

A local congreation had applied to M&S for support to help  pay for their full time Minister - which was turned down.....only "mission" churchs now qualify.

 

We are changing....

 

We are in the midst of change at the local level - possible change full or partime Ministry - was hinted at JNAC's are going by the wayside - will be dealing direclty with Conference - in order to cut down red tape - hmm...seems to side swipe Presbytery....whatever works I guess.....

 

We are changing.....

 

 

Welcome to 1985... this is the way it has been in Maritime, Bay of Quinte and Toronto Conferences for decades.

 

JNAC's will be replaced by a mission statement process which will be simpler... yup.

Thanks DKS - seems we were debating earlier in the thread of how we have changed....1985 - guess it takes a while for things to catch up...LOL.

I like simpler....I would love to see how "mission statement process" is defined when some congreations don't even know who they are....do you know how this process works....please share.  Thanks!

 

Dodgem Logic, his web page

 

Build your own place of worship (bye bye realtors)

 

 

the UCC is gonna have to look at DIY punk/hacker culture?

 

 

Hi Jobam... fitting liturgy for our time. Nicely put.

 

 

Mission statement process may serve well to defer change in practice, being liable to abstraction, with words displacing action as the operative norm. Words are spoken, collected, collated and re-framed as mission statements. These mission statements are then disseminated as information for the constituent community. On reception, the words of the mission statement are adopted, or not, as normative for the life and work of the constituent community's communities.

 

The mission statement process is undertaken as an approach to remedy, for that which troubles the constituent community. It has a predictable liturgical pattern. The question is broached. The issue is framed. Persons are delegated responsibility for addressing the issue and discovering recommendations. This team of persons begins drawing on the experience and insight of the particular members. These are scribed onto flip charts, which serve as the basis for collation, summarization ("word smithing") and distribution, generally as a study guide.

 

Sorry if some of the above is repetitive. This is the first time I am thinking these things. What I want to ask is directly related to the pattern above. Is it possibile that the means we employ, as we seek definition of our mission in light of the gospel, are compromising our hope; being a symptom of the malaise and therefore unable to be useful in its remedy. Einstien, somewhere, says this much better than I just have.

 

I mention these things as someone who has stepped out of the definitional patterns by which we are governed; by which we have been rendered anxious and defensive. In my heart I carry gratitude for the persons who discernmened my suitability for ministry with the UCC. They recognized me as a maverick and indicated that this might bring a gift to the Church. And there is the rub.

 

A maverick is a cow who does not walk with the herd. This leaves the Maverick vulnerable to misfortune, but also provides the Maverick with opportunities fo the discovery of alternative ways to achive desired outcomes. When the herd is stymied by some unexpected barrier along the way to the feeding trough, it is the Maverick who will find a way around the barrier. The herd is faced with a dilemma of some consequence. Follow the way indicated by the Maverick or stick to the habitual pattern?

 

The text is clear: "Without a vision, the people perish"; as we are perishing. This makes plain our obligation to devote all available resources to the discovery of our life sustaining vision. We need to know what we are to do as those who have covenanted to service in the way of the gospel.

 

This knowing will begin with personal inquiry and grow through mutual inquiry. At every level of our shared being in the world, each must either choose or shun responsibility for the generations to come. This is what a vision does. It calls us away from where we have been, leads us out into unfamiliar terrain, and towards the new reality which is the homeland we seek for our children's children.

 

Nice to be able to ramble in a room for of critical thinkers. Jesus begins by asking what others are saying. He turns to the decisive queston: "Who do you say that I am?" This is the question ministers of the gospel are called to raise in the mind of those gathered to the common table. Each must be invited, challenged, supported, encouraged, in a personal relationship with the text. This is a basic baptismal commitment, is it not?

 

I am one of multiplied thousands in the earth. Each of us, by the exercise of the distinctive and distinguishing gift that is in us, is making known that the present configuration of power is in a state of accelerating decay.

 

If you do not care for apocalyptic metaphors, I will point you to Carl Jung on mass nuerosis. The cumulative repressed anxiety of a continent deep in the thrall of debt bondage (Egypt as the correponding metaphor), is now breaking out in manifold forms of death dealing. The surface of civility is grown extremely thin and there are chaos flashpoints breaking out with increasing ferocity and frequency.

 

The Spirit of God is like the wind, which comes and goes as it pleases. Thirty two years following my baptism into that Spirit, I am peruaded that as it was in Egypt, Babylon, Persia and Rome, so it will be with us. It is a matter of listening to the past and understanding where we are in the cycle of rise and fall. Denial is the first stage of neurosis. Persistent denial is fatal. Arnold Toynbee is helpful in understanding the pattern.*

 

A small reminder. The things above are nothing more or less that what God has given me to think and say. This is the God who has given me daily bread in my years of destitution as in my years of sufficiency. I was first introduced to this God by my mother. I surrendered to this God alone in the Rocky Mountains, at the very end of my self confidence and the very end of my hope.

 

I am only here through Lent. I do appreciate the freedom to utter and the certainty of critical awareness on the other side.

 

Up for tea with my dear and her sister, who is in the last stages of a demanding cancer.

 

Even a squirrel knows enough to lay up food for the long winter.

 

*"Of the 21 civilizations Toynbee identified, sixteen were dead by 1940 and four of the remaining five were under severe pressure from the one named Western Christendom - or simply The West. He explained breakdowns of civilizations as a failure of creative power in the creative minority, which henceforth becomes a merely 'dominant' minority; that is followed by an answering withdrawal of allegiance and mimesis on the part of the majority; finally there is a consequent loss of social unity in the society as a whole."  Source Link

No idea how the process will work. I have been through it multiple times in the non-profit sector, so the church recipe will be interesting. I recall, many years ago, doing an oversight visit to a rural pastoral charge and asking "What is your mission?" Dead silence. I asked again. Dead silence. Then I rephrased the question to "What do you do well?" Silence and then one wise elder stood up and said, "What we do well is take newly ordained ministers and turn them into pastors."  And he sat down to agreeing nods. The pastoral charge never had a minister for more than three or four years, always going to settlement. But I know several of the folks they turned into pastors, and they did a damn fine job.

A couple of years ago we asked our congregation to answer the question "Why are you here?" We received about 75 responses. They were all keyboarded and the resulting text run th rough a program called Wordle, which assigns weight to the number of times words appear in common and presents them in graphic form. The result was "

  

To worship and praise God and to enjoy friends, fellowship and singing hymns every week. " I can live with that. So can the congregation. It informs us and our actions, nothing more.

  

"

People find it hard to identify and express spiritual "needs". Church has become for many a sequence of reassuringly predictable activities… 

Rev. SD said "Death leads to resurrection" - But not inevitably so. Only if the seed is planted will there be growth after the crop is cut down. Tearing down is never enough - if you choose to go that way, there must be at least a plan for how you will build up afterwards.

maybe the UCC could also look into making tithing mandatory?  i'm sure that'd be possible to figure out empirically what that would involve...

 

transfer payments from the 'Federal' UCC governing body to each congregation/state/church?

 

maybe each church should look into gift shops?  kickstarter?  renting space to rich LARPers?

That would be interesting.

 

We did that for decades. We ran out of money.

 

We have our own bookstore. We rent space. The bookstore costs us $2500/year. It's a ministry. Space rentals draw in about $5,000/year.

Greetings all.  I haven't been here for several years. It is good to see so many familiar names.

<blockquote>GeoFee wrote

 They recognized me as a maverick and indicated that this might bring a gift to the Church. And there is the rub.<blockquote>

A few people believe we have something to offer. Chair of my E&S comm said, 'You know what the church does to prophets.'

<blockquote>The text is clear: "Without a vision, the people perish"; as we are perishing. This makes plain our obligation to devote all available resources to the discovery of our life sustaining vision. We need to know what we are to do as those who have covenanted to service in the way of the gospel.<blockquote>

The Vital Church Planting conference continues to explore  what church might look like in coming decades. The teaching and training offered crosses denominational lines. The 2013 conference was on Discipleship. Fresh Expressions Canada  offers  a course "Re-imagining Church.'  It is a very useful tool to help the conversation along.

 

Wrong, spiritbear. Death always leads to resurrection. Inevitably. That doesn't mean a new church is going to grow up when an old one dies. It might just be that just one person is going to make some faith-based contribution to society (even in the secular world) as a result of the faith that has been nurtured through the church. However, death always leads to resurrection of some sort. And, no, it doesn't need a plan. In fact, most planning that I've seen leads to failure.

Death of a tree in the forest does not always lead to the growth of a new tree of that species. Maybe it decomposes and provides nourishment for a completely different species of tree. Even when no tree at all grows, there is life in the death. It feeds the earth reviving the forest. It shelters others, babies will be born, reviving the forest.

Plans can mean more growth, based on goal. Plans can also smother life and stunt growth.

Democracy is coming, to the U C C

 

To be sung to the tune of "Democracy is coming, to the U S A" by Leonard Cohen

40 Oak St. is a church redevelopment. The building is owned by the Toronto United Church Council, (www.tucc.ca) and leased to the Christian Resource Centre, a United Church outreach ministry. You can read more here:  http://www.tucc.ca/property/councilproperties.html

maybe those UCC should go to one of this guy's lectures and buy his book?

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MMBclvY_EMA#!

 

i have learned a new term: "antifragility"  :3

 

hail Eris