As many of you know, my follow up project for the 2008 Summer Collegium was to develop a blog, so that initially we could all just keep in touch, upload photos, share thoughts, etc.
In addition, I want to provide a place where we can share worship ideas and traditions that have been successful in enhancing the seasons of the church year for our congregations. Hopefully this will include not only things we have done in past years but also ways we have incorporated what we learned at the Collegium - like choral readings and drama skits we have used, things we have tried with music, etc.
This will only be successful if all of you get into the blogging spirit and participate by initiating both posts and comments.
So - for starters....how have you shared (or will you continue to share) the Collegium experience with your congregations?
Saturday, July 26, 2008
LET'S GET BLOGGING!
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6 comments:
Nice to see you all again. You all look so well. Thank you Nancy for hosting this.
Peter Yeung
I'm doing a variety of things. First, with the congregation, an evening (with desserts!) on the value of small congregations.
Then, the end of Sept, with Marilyn, VT Lutheran clergy and our Bishop, a session on alternate means of providing pastoral leadership for small congregations.
For me, I've established a blog for my case study group - and keeping in touch by e-mails and phone calls
Sharon
We no longer have Sunday morning "Sunday School". Our parents told us about 7 years ago that they didn't want to come to church that early and didn't want to stay that long so we discontinued Children's Sunday School. We do have a midweek program where we do the bulk of our educational program for children and youth. We also have had "Children's Church' during the sermon time and used the Whole People of God materials for that. We are going to re-evaluate everything on Aug. 4 so we may make some changes. I would be very interested to hear what everyone else is doing. It might help to give us some new ideas.
Also on the first Sunday after Labor Day Weekend we return to regular worship hours and have a "Weldome Back" fellowship dinner following worship. We do take a free will offering for it so it becomes a small fund raiser. We do this because the majority of our congregation usually goes out for lunch after church and they ask why they couldn't just give the money to the church that they would have spent on lunch elsewhere.
I am going to do a workshop Aug. 23 at a large Regional (Synod, Presbytary, Conference) Training event for our denomination. I am also starting to do some intentional things with our worship committee to begin an evaluation of our worship service with the idea that Marilyn will do a workshop with the group when she comes. I am also starting to talk one on one with key people in the congregation about moving to a year round worship team planning approach for our services. Are any of you using worship team planning? If so, how are you doing it and how often to you meet and how far ahead are you working?
Well, this is just terrific! Thank you, Nancy, for hosting this. Let's keep it going!
I had my first visit Sunday with Barbara Seras' congregation in Baltimore, only about a 45 minute drive from me. Last year I did an e-newsletter with the travelogue of visits, and I'll continue with that this year, since I can include a photo of the participant. So watch for those - I'll wait until I've done 3 or 4 visits to send the first one.
In the meantime, I'll tell you that we've changed our emphasis for next year from pastoral care to clergy wholeness (care for pastors), including workshops on spiritual, financial, physical and vocational health. Our plan is to have the workshop presenters stay around for at least 24 hours after their workshop so they can have individual consults with people who want them.
International Rural Church Association(IRCA) will be holding a conference at Academy Altenkirchen, Germany, on August 2-9, 2010. The theme is "Hunger" addressed from physical, spiritual and theological dimensions. Cost is $513 US. Accomodations are 46 Euro for double and 49 Euro for single(about $71.5 and $76).Check website.
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