Universalist Register 1912: Cross and Crown!

Another advertisement from the 1912 Universalist Register was for the “Cross and Crown” system of pins and accessories, to award Sunday School participation. You still see these for sale in old-fashioned church supply stores, but while there used to be named versions for all major denominations, you hardly see any other than Baptists today; the… Continue reading Universalist Register 1912: Cross and Crown!

Resource to accompany Universalist prayer book

Regular readers know my affection for the series of prayerbooks first arranged by Charles H. Leonard, Universalist minister and seminary professor, and later extracts and abridgments. The first dates to 1867; the last, a local extract, was printed in 1957. I type out the collects and readings from the former each week. Careful readers will… Continue reading Resource to accompany Universalist prayer book

A thought about organizing online trainings

If you’ve worked in a office long enough, it’s even odds that you’ve found yourself in an online or video-conferenced training. I’ve taken them, participated in testing them and have secured the vendors for hosting them. The appeal is obvious: it saves money. The presenter doesn’t have to hire a meeting space, so registration fees… Continue reading A thought about organizing online trainings

Interesting worship tidbit from Chicago

This is a follow-up from that post about posts that I intended to get around to — so I’ll keep this brief and get it out the door. Last June, I noted that two more Universalist worship books appeared at Google Books. One, from 1891, is from the then long-defunct St. Paul’s Universalist Church in… Continue reading Interesting worship tidbit from Chicago

The church noob

One way to distinguish a well-functioning church from one less well functioning is how it treats its novices — the “noob” or “newbie” — and that includes those entering ministerial life. We were all novices once, and failing to guide and shape the new and inexperienced is no credit to one’s expertise. A bit of… Continue reading The church noob

Challenge: shopping with Secretary Clinton

Yesterday, among stories about technology deployment, I read one featuring State Department employees who noted, before Secretary Hillary Clinton, a desire have the Firefox browser. I can appreciate that — it’s a good browser — but when an undersecretary pushed back (correctly) that nothing is really, in deployment and maintenance, cost-free, the Secretary replied from… Continue reading Challenge: shopping with Secretary Clinton