A Big Day in Cleveland

My afternoon in Cleveland began with a meeting on the 9th floor of the Church House on Prospect. While there, a number of Conference Ministers test ran the video equipment that the National Offices are investing in with the hopes that the Conferences might also invest in them. What you see is a 'bridging camera' that is simultaneously linking four locations: two of them in Cleveland, one in Washington D.C., and one in Indianapolis. It is not hard to imagine how this could be used in the Southwest Conference both to improve our ability to connect across a huge geography and to reduce the costs of meeting expenses. Stay tuned for more on this....

Then, as the afternoon wore on into the evening, a party broke out at the Renaissance Hotel in Cleveland with about 500 of Rev. Dr. Geoffrey Black's closest friends. It just so happened that it was his birthday, but the occasion was actually part of the weekend of events surrounding his Installation (look for pictures from that later this weekend).

I had the privilege of attending the Ecclesiastical Council of a gentleman who is going to make an outstanding pastor: Craig Henderson. Lisa Sampson, who is a member of the Scottsdale Church where the Council was held, presided over the examination.

Craig is about to graduate next month from Lancaster Theological Seminary, and expressed a real passion for Worship and Education in ministry, and is looking forward to his first calling to serve a church in the United Church of Christ. His father was a teacher, and his mother a librarian - he loves to read!

We wish him well in his Search, and in his ministry, and will be proud to Ordain him when his call to a church is completed.

Arizona Ecumenical Council

I attended the annual banquet of the Arizona Ecumenical Council last night, and had as my guests my dear wife, Mimi, and the Rev. Jeffrey Dirrim and Kelley Kahlstrom from First Congregational UCC, Phoenix.

It was hosted by St. Patrick's in Scottsdale - a beautiful church, as you can see.


Here is the Rev. Jan Flaaten, the Executive Director of the Arizona Ecumenical Council, whose reflections both on how far we have come in ecumenism, and how far we have yet to go were important and insightful.