Ryan Dowell Baum preached his third sermon at First Congo yesterday: Contending with the Cross.

Adapted from an email I just received from Kai Lavatai, our new Administrative Assistant.

This coming Sunday, June 15, the Danville United Church of Christ has asked to join us in engaging in the United Church of Christ's Sacred Conversation on Race.

They will leave their church after their service ends, arriving at First Congo at about 11:30. Then they will join us for lunch and a special program facilitated by Ron Buford, who so ably facilitated our retreat, Pastor Lynice and their pastors. The program will include scripture, discussion, and finding "next steps" to encourage an on-going relationship between our two congregations.

Please come and invite your friends for this important meeting and chance to fellowship, grow and grapple with this most challenging issue: personal, interpersonal and institutional racism.

Well, this is interesting: the Sermon Archive is broken again. The sermons for 2007 are online, but the archive links are broken. You can still retrieve them from the links in this blog (for example, Ryan Dowell Baum's previous sermon, Something About Money, is here. And here. He will be preaching again this coming Sunday, June 15. mp3

I needed a little project, I suppose, so I'll use this time to rearrange the Archive and put the 2007 sermons on their own section.

Meanwhile, check out Pastor Lynice's latest sermon from last Sunday, Live Dog Religion.
mp3

It's been up for a few weeks, but Pastor Lynice's office hours information is on her staff page.

Reformatted the Pastoral Transition section a little, adding a printable version of the latest What's Happening.

The biggest news is I'm adding a lot to the Pastoral Transition section about the newly created search committee.

Sermons online that I missed in my regular updates:

Pastor Lynice's Chaos Theory, Megan Bean Smith's And God Saw That it Was Good, and Reverend Donna E. Allen's Signs of the Times

Oh, and it's a small thing, but I changed the favicon to match the UCC Stillspeaking comma.

Some exceeding important additions to the website tonight: a completely new section regarding the Pastoral Transition and our search for a new Senior Pastor. Please read all three documents (the Letter from the Board, Pastor Lynice's thoughts on the Search and the Charter of the Pastoral Search Committee).

Please plan to attend the special congregational meeting this Sunday, May 11, submitting your nominations (one or two) for the Pastoral Search Committee (to Pat Bruce-Lerrigo (pblerrigo (at) sbcglobal.net) beforehand.

The Board of Trustees have hired a new Church Administrator, Kirsten Swenson.
The new First Congo organization chart is here (PDF file, Adobe Acrobat Reader required to view)

And: Pastor Lynice's sermon, Holy Ghost Power to the People is online.