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Gleanings from 2018

July – “All persons are encouraged to participate in the life, leadership, ministry and mission of this church as we seek to grow together in a safe nurturing community of faith.” Click here for PDF

April – “Mark 16:3 asks the question “Who will foll away a the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb? This is an important question on that first Easter morning. The women are going to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus.” Click here for PDF

 

March – Town Meeting, like so many things in Greensboro, was a reminder of how fortunate I am to be able to serve as your pastor. Together, let us love as Jesus loved, caring for others and joyfully serving God, our community, and our world.Click here for PDF

February – “As we have begun this new year, each of the leadership teams — Deacons, Trustees, Missions, and Church Board — are making sure that they have at least one project on their agenda that helps achieve one of our strategic plan goals…” Click here for pdf

January – We have had a wonderful Advent and Christmas together. I am grateful for each of you who made special contributions of time, talent and resources to our celebration. As I ponder the many ways we observed the season, I can really only think about one thing. That one thing was snow Click here for PDF

Gleanings from 2018

Gleanings from 2017

December -“Already, we have celebrated the first Sunday of Advent. We are making our way to Bethlehem. In our lives, we are making room for the one for whom there was no room on that long-ago night. As the last few weeks have clearly demonstrated, we live busy and crowded lives. Making room is necessary work. We need to make room, space, time and silence. There is a child on the way. God is coming to us, Emmanuel.” Click here for PDF

November – “I am deeply grateful for the two years we have spent together and the hard work you have done on the “interim tasks.” The congregation’s leadership, in particular, has engaged fully with the work of exploring who you are now and God might be calling you to become.” Click here for PDF

October – “Life is filled with transitions and new beginnings, and our world is currently in the midst of many.” Click here for PDF

September – “Recently, the Deacons and I have been discussing worship: why we worship, how worship helps us to open ourselves to experience God’s presence how it moves us to greater compassion, how it sends us out to serve in the world. In our summer book study book, The Heart of Christianity, the author, New Testament scholar Marcus Borg, writes of “thin places,” a concept from Celtic Christianity:” Click here for PDF

August – “This past year, the Greensboro United Church of Christ began an outreach initiative to the Lakeview Union School, seeking to help the students and staff through volunteering and providing for some basic material needs.” Click here for PDF

July – “Visioning is an ongoing process of listening, and then responding, to the question, ‘What is God calling us to do?’ Visioning makes a statement that we believe we have a future and that we and our church have a pace in it. Our vision is based on our mission and on asking ourselves, ‘What are the core questions raised by our mission statement?'”Click here for PDF

June -“This congregation values providing a welcome for people who come from many different church and faith backgrounds and honoring where each of us is on our own spiritual journey. In other words, we don’t all have to agree about what we do and don’t believe. This openness is one of the characteristics of what has come to be known as Progressive Christianity.” Click here for PDF

May -“When four Protestant denominations came together in 1957, to form the United Church of Christ, the Congregational Church insisted upon retaining the autonomy of local congregations. Thus our polity is considered to be ‘covenantal.'” Click here for PDF

April -“In the bulb there is a flower; in the seed, an apple tree;
in cocoons a hidden promise; butterflies will soon be free!
In the cold and snow of winter there’s a spring that waits to be,
unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.
(Natalie Sleeth)” Click here for PDF

March – “Ash Wednesday is the beginning of our Lenten journey. Lent has traditionally been seen as an invitation to spend time with God, making ourselves ready to relive, once again, the story of Holy Week and Easter. The special service that marks Ash Wednesday originated in Western Europe, during the sixth century.” Click here for PDF

February – “February is the month when many of us express our ongoing affection for partners, family members, and friends with Valentine cards.” Click here for PDF

January – “So here’s a paradox. We need to look back to understand our lives, and we need to look ahead to plan for the future.” Click here for PDF

Gleanings from 2016

December – “Does Christmas scare you? Does the thought of God coming into the world in Christ leave you feeling anxious and afraid? Probably not. After all, for almost two thousand years this event has been hailed as very good news…” Click here for PDF

November – “After one of the most glorious and long-lasting foliage seasons in recent memory, wind and rain have brought down most of the leaves, and it is suddenly looking very much like November.” Click here for PDF

October – “Autumn, for me, has always been associated with going back to school.” Click here for PDF

September – “For many churches, “Missions” has always been a program led by a committee or board who oversees the sending and or supporting of missionaries out to a foreign culture.“Missions” has not been used as an adjective in describing the life of the local church. That is to say, congregations have generally not understood themselves as missionaries among their own local community, and so have not thought about their own congregational mission from that perspective.

August – “When my two sons were of elementary school age, they loved the zany unpredictability of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. One of the catch phrases from that show still sticks with me today: “And now for some- thing completely different.”” Click here for PDF

July – “In the May, 2016, issue of “Gleanings,” Moderator Jeff Pierpont and I wrote about church governance and the problems of trying to continue with an out- moded structure, in these times of declining church attendance and membership.” Click here for PDF

June – “Here in northern Vermont, we had a relatively mild and un-snowy winter, followed by a long and chilly spring. But now it seems that summer is finally upon us. The apple tree next to the parsonage is a vision in white, and the fragrance of its blossoms wafts across the parking lot toward the church, enhanced by the sweet smell of the lilac blooming nearby. We wait all winter for moments like these and enjoy them fully when they arrive.” Click here for PDF

May – “As church membership and attendance numbers have declined, many churches find themselves struggling to fill the many board and committee positions called for in their by-laws.” Click here for PDF

April – “I have been saying that I’m going to start doing some ecclesiology with you. During this time of transition, it’s important for us to take some time to think about the church. What is the church? What has it been tra- ditionally? What might God be calling the church to become today? Per- haps even more important, we need to look at what it means to be the Greensboro United Church of Christ. Who are you? Why are you? What is your mission and purpose? What do you do really well? What are your “growing edges”?” Click here for PDF

March – “This is the time of year when I begin to hear people say, “I’m sick of winter!” (I’ve been known to say it myself.)” Click here for PDF

February– “Lent, the forty days (excluding Sundays) before Easter, has historically been seen as a time of preparation for the Easter celebration, a time often marked by penitence and acts of self-denial.” Click here for PDF

January – “In the new year, I will be encouraging the congre- gation to begin digging into the special tasks of the interim time, including the formation of the search committee to find your next settled pastor.” Click here for PDF

Gleanings from 2015

December – “In our part of the world, Christmas comes at the darkest time of the year. The daylight hours are short and the nights are long.” Click here for PDF

Gleanings from 2014

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Gleanings from 2013

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Gleanings from 2012

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Gleanings from 2011

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Gleanings from 2010

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