“Blue Christmas” and “Longest Night” services are related phenomena that respect the worship needs of mourners, depressed or distressed people. Or more generally, those for whom the cheer of the season brings more pain than joy. But it’s not easy to find these services if you’re not looking for them, and some are well before… Continue reading Blue Christmas/Longest Night rollcall
Category: Pastoral care
A question for wedding officiants
Legislative and court successes have expanded same-sex couples access to legal marriage; my husband and I have benefited from it. It’s exciting to see the couples line up on the first “legal” day. Some of these will then get married on the courthouse steps, or some location nearby. It’s particularly encouraging to see Unitarian Universalist… Continue reading A question for wedding officiants
ObscuraCam to help build church web sites
ObscuraCam is a phone app for Android to help citizen-journalists obscure faces in crowd photographs and videos, say, in undemocratic societies. It might be helpful in building your church’s website. You can use it to hide the faces of minors and other vulnerable persons, should your church’s policies require or recommend it. Two examples: Your… Continue reading ObscuraCam to help build church web sites
Pastoral development: “Five Hours with Raja”
It makes a very difficult viewing — it took me three times to finish watching this over the air — but this documentary is worth watching and I recommend it especially for ministers and seminarians. “Five Hours with Raja” is the story of a child born with am incurable and fatal condition; the preparations made… Continue reading Pastoral development: “Five Hours with Raja”
Male headship and Linux (but not together)
Pastors: if you need some background about and against “complementarianism” — male headship and female submission — for providing pastoral care or want to learn more about using Linux, check out one of my favorite blogs, 42, written by Methodist minister Dave Warnock. He’s on a roll.
Uniting Church of Australia “patrol ministry”
I’m looking at some major Christian united-uniting churches to see how they define church membership and turned to the ever-interesting Uniting Church of Australia. More about that later; I found something even more interesting. As you may know, the Australian interior is multi-ethnic but very thinly populated, making for special social accommodations — like radio… Continue reading Uniting Church of Australia “patrol ministry”
My only Sen. Craig post
I won’t get into the partisan piece of the Larry Craig furor: enough has been said there for my contribution to be any use. I am a bit worried that this will be an important frame for discussing LGBT civil rights legislation in the near-term. I think an opportunity for modeling compassion, understanding, temperance or… Continue reading My only Sen. Craig post
Best links for June 29
Well, best for me, but I know some of you will like them too. Michelle Murrain, writing from her Zen and the art of Nonprofit Technology blog, points out how the United States Social Forum is running on free and open source software. Fabu. Drupal and Linux (Ubuntu and Debian) love all around. Several writers… Continue reading Best links for June 29