A (Joy)Full Sunday

The day began with a beautiful drive up the 17 with the top down to Flagstaff. If the day started out well, it would only get better as the temps in Northern Arizona were as close to ideal as they come.

The choir did a stirring rendition of Halle-Halle...



and the altar was decorated with a banner that read with the title of my sermon for the morning. Now THAT'S hospitality.



After a magnificent morning with the good folk at First Flagstaff, I ambled back down the 17 to South Mountain in Phoenix, where I met with members of the Samoan Mission who would like to begin conversation and dialogue about affiliating with the United Church of Christ. Here are some of there members:

Boundary Training and Children's Defense

On Wednesday, I met with Marie and Lee to plan the training day that would follow.

On Thursday, the next day, Marie and Lee helped me train those who would facilitate our Boundary Training here in the Southwest Conference. So, pictured here are our teams: Lee Albertson and Sue Joiner for New Mexico; George Ault and Donna Cavedon for Northern Arizona; Len Silvester and Tina Campbell (not pictured here) for Phoenix; and Lee Milligan and Marie Bacchiocchi for Southern Arizona.


Last night I travelled to Albuquerque for the New Mexico Conference of Churches Annual Banquet. While there, Marian Wright-Edelman was both the keynoter for the evening, and the recipient of the Conference's Annual Turquoise Chalice Award. Marian is the founder of the Children's Defense Fund, and has been this nation's most outspoken and committed child advocate for the last 37 years.

A New Call...

I met with the Rev. Liana Rowe in my office today.

She has just taken a new, vital, and very interesting position. She has been hired by the Friends Committee on National Legislation. She's a lobbyist - er, excuse me, legislative educator. We might better know the Friends as the Quakers - proponents of peace and justice from a long way back. They are very committed to the passage of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty next spring, and Liana's job is to mobilize the faith commmunity to help our elected officials understand how important this is to us.

We are proud of Liana, and stand ready to help her as she undertakes this noble task.

May it please God to bless her every step of the way. And come next May, let us all plan on celebrating with her the our Senate's ratification of this very important Treaty.

Justice and Witness Committee

The Justice and Witness Committee is in the process of conducting listening visits in every church throughout the Southwest Conference.

They are completely rebuilding the ministry of Justice in the Southwest Conference. Through it all, one thing will not change: the fact that justice will be central to everything that we undertake in the Conference. What we hope to change will be the effectiveness of our undertaking.

And so we are listening. We want to hear what you are doing and feel called to do. And we want to build a structure that will enable us all to partner in this ministry in ways that effect meaningful change in our world and in our communities.

Many thanks to all who gathered today to help us process all of this, to those who continue to work behind the scenes to move this forward, and to those who wanted to be with us today but could not be.

New Mexico Clergy Lunceons

The following are pictures from two days in New Mexico.

The first picture is the clergy luncheon hosted by First Christian Church in Las Cruces for our Southern New Mexico clergy. Why First Christian church? Because they are in the process of fully affiliating with the UCC, and we are giving them opportunities to fully experience life in the United Church of Christ.

The next pictures are from my lunch with the clergy in Northern New Mexico, held today at Rio Rancho - overlooking Albuquerque. That's what the last picture is: a panoramic view of Albuquerque from the parking lot of St. Paul's UCC in Rio Rancho. The view is quite breathtaking.

What a Full and Joy-Filled Weekend!

This is the dove that hangs above the pulpit at Desert Palm in Tempe, where on Saturday I had the joy of helping them celebrate their 30th anniversary. That dove says it all, really: a powerful image of a church led by the Holy Spirit. Oh, and also led by this guy, John Herman - as good as they come.





Here is the Search Committee for Casas Adobes. I thoroughly enjoyed spending the morning preaching at their worship services, hearing the steel drums play Pachelbel and Bach, and munching my way through the food line at their church picnic.



The weekend came to a close with the Ecclesiastical Council for Kristen Barner. She is pictured here with Her husband David, and Dan Mullen - a fellow member of Shepherd of the Hills UCC and also member of Committee on Church and Ministry. By the way, the smile means she passed and has been affirmed for Ordination.

Board of Directors

As I write this, I am fully engaged with your Board of Directors. We are doing two days' work in about 6 hours.

Here are some of the members of your Board:

Here is Melissa Talley from Tucson:

Here is Janet Leung, from Flagstaff:

Here is Josh Whistler, In-Care Student and our rep to the Executive Committee:

Here is Pat Dunn from Rio Rancho:

Back to Work Tomorrow...

But not before taking a quick look at what I spent the last week doing.

Not a bad way to celebrate 25 years of marriage; and not a bad place in which to do it.

Here's to the next 25 years.

No More Posts for a While

Sorry, while in Hawaii I will be spending too much time on the golf course to post my travel logs on this blog. Be patient - more news coming in a week.