Dear Members and Friends of First Congo,

There will be a congregational meeting on this Sunday, December 7, 2008, from 1:15 - 3:15. The meeting room will be announced. The purpose of the meeting is for the congregation to:

Elect Board members.

The Nominating Committee's slate is as follows:

For election to an initial two-year term: Victor Lewis and Webb Mealy.
For re-election to a second two-year term: Charley Lerrigo and Karen Moore.

Receive updates on our infrastructure.

1. Pastoral Relations Committee membership.

2. Former CAP (i.e., capacity building) Team.

3. Infrastructure for ministry programs.

Provide input to the Board on allocation of the congregation's mission money.

Each year the church tithes 10% of its annual income from congregational giving and makes donations to other organizations whose missions are aligned with ours. The decision-making policy adopted by the congregation is for the Board to make recommendations, and the congregation to give further input to the Board for its final decision.

Approve in principle the proposed 2009 budget.

Final budget approval will be made at the Annual Meeting in February-March of 2009, after the 2008 financial books have closed.

Determining our leaders and the use of our financial resources are vitally important decisions in the life of our community. Please participate in learning and conversing about these topics. Everyone is welcome, and all members may vote.

I am profoundly thankful for your presence in this Body of Christ,

Pat Bruce-Lerrigo
Moderator
First Congregational Church of Oakland, United Church of Christ.

Took longer than I'd hoped to get Tony Lewis' sermon, Every Blessing in Abundance, online because I missed church last Sunday.

Here it is!

And I see the feed is up and ready

I haven't been updating as much in What's New largely because the updates were mostly announcements that the sermon is online. I've created the blog Sermons at First Congo to keep track of those changes and to provide a vehicle for the podcast feed

I did recently add the general church email address info@firstoakland.org to the front page after someone emailed me to let me know they search all over the website and couldn't find a general email. Which was true. Thank God for feedback!

Later today I will edit the audio file tags (The ID3 tag) of yesterday's sermon from Pastor Lynice so it will display better on your mp3 player. I'm assuming that Feedburner will grab the revised file later.

Our resident theologian and newly published author Dr. J. Webb Mealy, preached Render Unto Caesar--Or Not last Sunday. I just uploaded the feed so it probably won't show up on iTunes until tomorrow.

Oops: I incorrectly configured the Sermons at First Congo blog and Rev. Stringfellow's sermon Gay Black Man didn't apparently make it to Feedburner correctly. I'm hoping that now that I've fixed the link it will automatically update and make a feed available via iTunes.
Tomorrow?

Subscribers please let me know if it worked.

An eagle-eyed reader pointed out recently that I hadn't updated Pastor Lynice's bio to reflect her formally call as Senior Pastor.

The podcasts seem to be working, so I've mostly been leaving the updates when I upload sermons to the stripped-down sister blog Sermons at First Congo, which I set up to supply the feeds to the podcasts.

And I updated the News at First section, as Kai Lavatai has assumed the newsletter duties. For now the newletter is by email only (announcements will be inserted into the weekly paper bulletin). Subscribe to the New at First here

Learning more and more about this podcasting business.
Still not sure if it is working correctly.

This morning's sermon from Pastor Lynice, I See Dead People, is here.