There is no sermon upload this week because there wasn't a sermon preached yesterday at the Kwanzaa celebration.

Pastor Ama's sermon from this morning, Dreaming a New World, is online.

No, Pastor Ama isn't repeating Pastor Lynice's sermon from yesterday. I had misread an email last week and incorrectly gave yesterday's sermon (God Comes to Save) the title from the coming Sunday (Dreaming a New World).

Discernment Time

The schedule for the two weeks of our discernment (which started December 2) is online.

You can download a printable (Microsoft Word) version to post on your refrigerator or the inside of your door here

Pastor Ama's sermon, The God of Hope, is online.

Later today I will add the more detailed schedule of the coming week of discernment

Oops. I had forgotten to upload the November pastor's letter from Pastor Lynice and the December pastor's letter from Pastor Ama!

Whew! Despite some technical difficulties (those of you listening to the CD may notice the recording is a bit out of order), Angela Jernigan's amazing sermon is online.

I hope to see everyone tomorrow night at church as we continue our time of discernment

For the second time in three weeks, the sound board was taken apart and left in disarray by the people doing sound for an event the Saturday night before church. So most of the service yesterday wasn't recorded.

Clearly the event rental guidelines could use some re-examining.

Isaiah McCloud fortunately had brought his laptop and Diego was able to record Pastor Ama's sermon, Mystical Unity and Action.

I'm hoping to get the mp3 file from him to upload soon.

Something new on the homepage: a link to a new search engine
called Goodsearch.

First Congo will get cash (one cent per search) every time you use Goodsearch (which is powered by the Yahoo! search engine) to search the web.
I've embedded code that takes you directly to First Congo's donation search page.

Use it frequently!

The November News at First is up.

And Pastor Lynice's sermon is online. Older sermon pages may not have the working forward-to-a-friend feature or the podcast download.

Please email me if you catch one that isn't working properly.

Unfortunately Pastor Ama's sermon yesterday, Grace and Peace, was not recorded and so will not be on the website.
When the sound technician arrived yesterday morning the system was in major dissarray and the CD recorder was broken (probably the previous night--before, during or after the event in the sanctuary). Hopefully it will be repaired or replaced in time for next Sunday's service.

Whew! A number of changes recently. I uploaded Pastor Lynice's sermon from last week.

Also, I made the previous editions of the Parish Nurse newsletter easier to navigate.
And cleaned up some typos on the Rent Space section. I hope I caught them all, but if I didn't please email me.

Updated the links to the Community Center section. Also added some content on the pages for the community center, thoughtfully borrowed from their respective websites.

Over the weekend I updated the Calender of Events. You can view the calendar as a printable PDF file or as a Google Calendar to which you can subscribe. And I uploaded Peter Barbosa's sermon from yesterday, Healing From a Distance.

For a few days I haven't been able to login to this blog. Turns out it's an Internet Explorer problem not a Google problem. Yet another reason to use the Firefox browser instead of the IE that came with your (Windows) computer.

Reverend Shiloh McCloud's incredible sermon from Sunday, Your Faith Has Made You Whole, is online.

The Calendar yes, needs updating. If someone would like to help update I can give you the access codes. You won't be logging into the First Congo website, no worries, but will be logging on to the Google Calendar for First Congo.

Not quite live streaming, but at least same day uploading: Seminarian Ryan Dowell Baum's sermon from this morning, Something About Money

Pastor Lynice's sermon There Is a Balm in Gilead, is online. Coming soon: the Sports-Serve First Oakland newsletter, written and edited by parish nurse Rebecca Faith and Paul Vollmer. See the September 2007 parish nurse Newsletter for more information.

Small change, but Pastor Lynice has informed me yesterday that the title of her sermon this upcoming Sunday is now There Is a Balm in Gilead (formerly And We Are Not Yet Saved).

Taken from one of the lectionary reading, Jeremiah 8:22 (New International Version)

This morning I uploaded Kira Allen's sermon from Pride Sunday yesterday. The "Recommend to a friend" feature broke again (again, I'm not sure why--I'm not even sure how I fixed it when it broke last time!). What I recommend is copying the URL in the address bar (which should look like http://www.firstoakland.org/audio/2007_09_16_kira_allen_wade/ ) and pasting it into the body of your email to a friend.

The September News at First is now online . I've changed the archives pages a bit so the link to the latest issue is on top of the list

The Pastor's Letter, written this month by Pastor Lynice is online. Dawn sent me the Microsoft Publisher page of the letter that she used on the paper edition of the News at First and I am experimenting with a link to a printable version

Pastor Lynice's sermon from yesterday, Radical Lettings and Leavings, is online

Not entirely sure how, but I fixed the "Recommend This Streaming Audio to a Friend Via Email" function of the sermon pages, including the anti-spam thing. The one sermon I know that works is Craig Breismeister's from last Sunday.

Craig Breismeister's sermon from yesterday is online. And parish nurse Rebecca Faith, NP, has her own page

The "Recommend This Streaming Audio to Friend via E-mail" function of the sermon pages still isn't working. Something about changing the page address for each sermon breaks the anti-spam function. Specifically the anti-spam image doesn't appear.
I hadn't realized that the function had been sending people to either a blank error page or to Pastor Lynice's Easter sermon.

So for now, if you want to invite someone to hear a sermon, I suggest copying the URL in the address bar of your browser and pasting it into the mail message with a personal note.

Pastor Lynice's sermon from this morning, Missing the Point, is now online.

The Sermon Archive is back! (Whew!)

Amelie Hansen's sermon from this morning is online. I'm hoping to restore the Sermon Archive (an easier-to-navigate version) early this week.
I was able to figure out how to make the Recommend this Sermon to a Friend function to work.

Finally.

I tested it by sending myself a notification and it works fine now.

The Calendar of Events is live and working. Using of course, the Google Calendar embed. You can subscribe to the Calendar by clicking the subcribe link.

To quote the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Don't Panic.

Apparently the experimentation with the Calendar knocked the archived sermons somewhere.

Where exactly I don't know, but I'm working on it.

Made a few navigational changes, particularly in the Rent Space section. Fewer pages that went nowhere, hopefully. I'm rather obviously working on the Calendar problem. I did get the CMSimple calendar plugin to load. Up next is figuring out how to call the Events page something besides "somepage" without the entire page disappearing! After that it should be CMSimple to add event entries. Stay tuned and in the meantime check out the new News at First.

Oops. I had no idea that the "Email this sermon to a friend" function on the sermon pages wasn't working! They seem to be either pointing to a blank template or to Pastor Lynice's Easter sermon. The problem in template for the pages (each sermon has its own folder of pages to make it work.) Hopefully I'll fix this soon. In the mean time you can copy the URL in the Address Bar of your browser and paste that link in your email to your friends.

For example Webb's sermon is at:

http://www.firstoakland.org/audio/2007_07_29_webb_mealy_how/

Thanks to Webb for pointing this out to me.

Pastor Ama, who is on sabbatical and maternity leave, and her husband have created a family website with great photos of baby Sergio

Grant Kinney's sermon is up. I also tweaked the Sermons Online page a bit, adding a link to the most recent sermon is near the top of the page. Got an error trying to create a border around the sermon archive, so for now abandoned that idea.

Last June, second-year Pacific School of Religion seminarian Ryan Baum preached, but the CD recorder wasn't working . This morning I finally put his sermon, The Freedom of a Christian, online (Thanks, Diego, for transferring the audiocassette to digital format!).

I'm looking forward to getting a photo from him (and from Meghan Bean Smith) to add to the sermon page.

Uploaded Webb's sermon and changed the left-hand main menu.

Now Sermons Online has its own first-level tag (Heading 1 for you HTML geeks) .

Thanks be to God I finally figured out how to delete the broken Calendar section that was stuck on March 2007! CMSimple, the content management system we use, wasn't letting me edit the Calendar page in the WYSIWYG mode, some kind of javascript error or something.

Next project: redo the Calendar.

To find out What's Happening at the church check out the newsletter News at First.

It's getting easier uploading the sermons in a timely manner.

Latest up: Preacher Greta Rosenberger's from a week ago Sunday and Pastor Lynice's from yesterday.

Lots of new stuff this morning! The Pastor's letter is now a regular monthly feature. Check out the new letter by Pastor Lynice.

Updated Pastor Ama's staff page as an answer to the frequently asked question:
Where is Pastor Ama?

Pastor Lynice's sermon Unexpected Prophets is online.

Reverend Isaiah McCloud's sermon is up. I'm working on a Calendar fix still and still having the problem of not being able to save or delete the broken calendar. HTML savvy ones, you are encouraged to write me and let me know what's going on.

Fixed the photo on Meghan's sermon page (I'm still waiting for a headshot, Ms Bean Smith)

Uploaded Meghan Bean Smith's sermon. The speaker photo is broken for now. The lectionary readings are at the beginning of the sermon.

Unfortunately, the CD recorder wasn't working properly yesterday so I don't have an mp3 of Ryan Baum's sermon. Diego has audiocassette copies available (call the church office at (510) 444-8511 for a copy) and has promised a converted analog-to-digital file soon, hopefully no later than next Sunday.

Update on August 6, 2007: Fixed!

Pastor Lynice's sermon from yesterday is here.

And I updated the LIFE group page, a lengthier description of what goes on in LIFE groups taken from Pastor Lynice's essay in this month's News At First.

We do indeed have a women's ministry at First Congo! (Also added to the list of ministries on the Congregational Life page)

The Calendar is still broken! I'm still working on it. In the meantime get all the happenings at First Congo from the PDF of the June 2007 News at First, now online. You need Adobe® Reader® installed on your computer to view this large (3.4 Mb) file.

Recent PSR M.Div. graduate and First Congo member Andy Schwiebert's sermon is live.

Andy, I still need a photo.

Pastor Lynice's Pentecost sermon is online. I took the audio level just a bit higher. It sounds fine to me (on Firefox and on Internet Explorer using Windows XP machines) but I welcome feedback about how it sounds to you on your computer and how the podcast/downloading is working for you.

Added a couple of photos of the rental spaces. More to come, particularly images of the Angel Room, Smith Library and Pilgrim Fellowship rooms.

Uploaded Reverend Charley Lerrigo's sermon.
I used Mp3Gain to boost the volume of the mp3 file. Technically, I increased the mp3 gain from around 75 decibels to 95 decibels.

If you've already downloaded the earlier sermons to your computer or mp3 player you may want to re-download the louder versions. So far the only mp3 left to replace is Pastor Lynice's Easter sermon.

I am working on a solution to the lower than desired audio level of the sermons. Hopefully by tomorrow I'll have uploaded last Sunday's sermon at a louder level and go back to redo the others.

The Calendar problem is still not fixed but at least I have a list of broken code. Time to sit down with a cup of coffee and a printout in a nice cafe somewhere.

And I will fix Pastor Lynice's sermon page from last week. I wanted the mp3 to be available even though the page itself needs work. So for a short time you inadvertently see a little of what the sermons template looks like.

Yes, I know the Calendar section is off. In fact, there's an error that is keeping me from saving the changes. In fact, the error is: "Line 2 Char 847, Error: 'formElement.form' is null or not an object, Code 0". Whatever that means.

Find out what's happening at First Congo by viewing or printing out the current News at First. (Adobe® Reader® required to view)

OK, Pastor Ama's sermon from yesterday is now online. I'm still working on getting her photo to show up (and awaiting a more robust bio information). Hoping to upload both current sermons and archive past sermons, starting with the ten most popular.

Uploaded Pastor Ama's letter for May.

The May 2007 edition of News at First is online.

Sorry for the delay, but I finally uploaded the April 2007 edition of News at First (yes, I know it's the last day of April!) A reminder that these PDFs are big files and require Adobe® Reader® to read

The sermons are online! Starting with Pastor Lynice's Easter morning sermon The Resurrection Will Not Be Televised. Listen online or download it to your mp3 player.

Many thanks and bountiful blessings to Dennis Rivers for his many hours of labor and love to create this exciting new feature of the First Congo website.

Some sort of error is preventing me from updating the Calendar to include the announcement that Carmit Bat-Shalom's concert is this Friday, March 30th, in the Angel Room.

Easter Week is coming up very soon! Schedule of the Holy Week posted.

Fixed a couple of typos in the Pastor's Letter (just in case you were wondering what a "punitive diving structure" was).

Added Progressive Christian Beliefs (a free electronic book from Progressive Christians Uniting in blog format) to the Spiritual Resources (thanks, Sarah!)

Updated the Calendar for March.

Added the feature Pastor's Letter on the left sidebar. The idea came from the the delay due to administrative computer problems of the online of News at First issue for March. A delay for quite a while if I can't get an electronic version to post.