News from SBCRC

While I have no intention of throwing music videos into sermons regularly, I am grateful for the freedom to be able to trying something like this.  Thank you to all of you who expressed your appreciation for it.  I’m sure not of you felt this way.  Thank you to you for being gracious.
The video used [...]

I’m glad that people appreciated the intercessory prayer yesterday. There is something about placing headlines and images like that within the context of prayer that moves us to see it as something more than just news and information. It generates those “sighs too deep for words” that Paul talks about. It [...]

Each semester I have been here something about our Sunday evening programing has been different from the semester before. We’ve changed the name, changed the order, changed the times. We’ve probably implemented more changes to Sunday evenings in this time span than this church did in its first forty years of existence.

The first week or so of June this past summer about fifteen or so people gathered and brainstormed for a (then) forthcoming series on Ephesians. Lots of great ideas came out of that.
We’d like to gather again and think about what we might do for the season of Advent. We are presently planning [...]

Our time of confession during our Lenten services have been less directed than usual.  We’ve simply asked that you meditate on a short passage from a Song of Ascents and allow the Spirit and the words to, first, bring to mind that which prompts you to offer thanks and praise.   After that, we’ve been [...]

This is Billy Collins’ poem “The Art of Drowning.”

I wonder how it all got started, this business
about seeing your life flash before your eyes
while you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence,
could startle time into such compression, crushing
decades in the vice of your desperate, final seconds.

After falling off a steamship or being swept [...]

The poem Alex read is by Thomas Lynch.  It comes from his book Still Life in Milford.
Russ
Hot air balloons–
fat flaming birds
adrift in evening air–
put me in mind
of Russ, my giant
crazy neighbor,
daft and absolute,
prone to grand gestures,
dead now a year
who always said I should
scatter his ashes
down on his townspeople
from overhead
some August, he told me,
when they least [...]

These Songs of Ascents will inform our worship during our pilgrimage in Lent.

During the offering, rather than an offertory, we will have readings of poems– either your own or others’– which relate to themes of Lent.  In other words, we are looking for poems about repentance and renewal, about humility and mortality, about wilderness and service, about devotion, discipline and self-denial.
If you’re interested, email a copy of [...]