Getting closer...

Well, the last bits and pieces of the Stage 1 portion of the church's website are coming together nicely. God-willing, we officially unveil it this coming Sunday. It seems appropriate given that it's World Communion Sunday to make our official "debut" on the world-wide web. My hope is that the website will be used regularly by those in our congregation who are so-inclined. It's a way to maintain regular contact with the church during the week, and can be a quick reference and insight into everything that's going on at the church. After all, Clarkson Road is an active congregation, there's no reason why the website can't be active either!

Keep an eye out, coming soon to a webspace near you!

Glitches and Such

Today there seemed to be a bit of a glitch with the blog. I think Blogger was actually doing some sort of service upgrade or some such thing, and as a result the comments posted to one of my blogs got smoked, and a picture that I had tried posting to the church announcements blog got nuked within a minute of me posting.

Ah well.

The upside is that we can now post pictures directly to the website as a matter of news. I know it's geeking out about stuff that is kind of trivial, but I do see this as a potentially effective means of communicating with the congregation as a whole. The site updates every day, people can literally check in with either my musings or my sermons and actually get a chance to reflect on them, and leave comments. I know that I run the risk of being a bit more vulnerable this way, but isn't that what ministry is supposed to be about?

Presbytery was tonight, our new moderator Kristine had a great sermon. It's nice to have something that's directed towards us as Presbyters, rather than a repeat of last Sunday's sermon. I've been guilty of the latter myself at times.

Added note: This accidentally posted to the wrong blog... so I'm fixing that now... Glitches seem to be the order of the day... -JC

Pinch Hitting...

Today was one of those productive days that I didn't seem to get all that much done.

My colleague Sean at Hopedale Presbyterian Church is on vacation. I covered a funeral for him today of a well-loved member of his congregation. I was glad to do it, although it did mean that my normal administrative duties for Monday have to wait until Tuesday. Looking ahead to Sunday, it's Presbyterians Sharing... which has the advantage of a suggested sermon complete with Powerpoint slides.

Admittedly I've never really done a sermon with powerpoint before. Mostly they've provided the backdrop for the Bible Studies that I have done. However, the presentation from national office is fairly minimalist, and I may be able to do something with it when I post it as a sermon this coming Sunday. I'm looking at this as a learning opportunity, I'll have to give the "script" from the national church a much closer read, and perhaps a bit of an edit. I've already had to do some alterations to the Powerpoint presentation.

We'll see...

The upside of using pre-prepared materials for worship is that I can actually devote a bit more time to getting the website fully operational for "Stage One" as well as looking ahead to "Reclaiming Revelation" and completing hymns out to November 26th.

Happy Birthday Dave

After what has been an extraordinarily busy day, I'm pausing for a moment to catch my breath before heading to bed. I left home this morning at about 8:30am, and didn't walk in the door until about 11:15pm. Part of that is due to a funeral that I will be conducting on Monday for a person at Hopedale Presbyterian Church who died yesterday. I'm covering for Sean while he is on vacation. I am glad that tomorrow is my day off, but I will have to cheat at least a little bit and phone Hopedale come morning to make arrangements for Monday.

Amidst all this busy-ness, it's often too easy to to lose sight of what's really critical. For me, most importantly, today is my brother's birthday. Dave is my only sibling, and by extension, my wife's only sibling-in-law and my daughter's only true uncle.

Happy Birthday Dave, and I hope you enjoy your trip to Hawaii. I hope you have a most excellent time!

Stylesheet Victory!

Okay, so sometimes small things amuse me...

We've been working on the website for the church for some time now. I decided that once we got the look of the website down, I would come back into the blogs that we're using to drive some of the content on the website to at least match in form and colour what is on the site.

You should now be able to see the results of those labours. I think I am getting the hang of stylesheets.

The trouble is, it's now 1am on Tuesday morning, so theological reflection on this is neither profound, nor present. Enjoy the look... give me some feedback if you like...

Does God want you to be rich? Yeesh...

Okay, so my posting has been a bit delinquent! I hadn't realize a whole week had gone by without me posting anything.

I tried to get as much done on the church website last week as we could, hoping to officially launch it today. However, on further reflection it was best to let it go for one more week to make sure that we got everything right. I am indebted to both Christine and Jordan for their work on this. I was certainly tempted to rush it out, and have people look at an incomplete site. However, there is something to be said for doing things right, even if it means waiting a week or two to tighten it up.

On a different note, a friend of mine sent me a link today with the comment "things just keep getting better..." The cover story from time magazine, with the title "Does God want you to be rich?" it's an article on Prosperity Theology, and how it continues to boom in the US in spite of the scandals of Swaggart and Bakker a number of years ago.

Honestly, this stuff makes my skin crawl. It is a gross distortion of the gospel message. Sure, it uses passages from Deuteronomy and John to justify making money, while conveniently ignoring the fact that Jesus himself was dirt poor. James railed against preferential treatment for the rich, and Jesus himself said "blessed are the poor." These are just a few quick jabs at a theology that has gained traction in the US, and yet it seems that the rest of us remain conveniently silent. I've often told people that it's difficult to offend me... but this is one of the things that does... It is not only offensive, to call a spade a spade, it's heresy.

I do believe that we are called to work for God's kingdom, and to see it here on earth... but to judge it in monetary or material terms? That's essentially religious subnission to capitalism... wrapping Jesus in a dollar bill.

Anyway, I am ranting... time for me to look for some better news...

Come Sin, O Church in Joy!!

Lesley came into my office on Thursday having just noticed herself a typo in the bulletin that had us both laughing. It's one of those bulletin bloopers that can seriously change the meaning in a text. She had left a "g" off of the word "sing" in the title of the hymn "Come Sing O Church in Joy!"

This was definitely an entry for the Blog. There's a considerable difference between Sing and Sin... Amazing what happens when a single letter is missing.

Yet there's also some theological meat here to ponder, probably worth a few dozen sermons...