Christmas Pagent

In celebration of the third Sunday in Advent, Myrtle Perkins' 94th birthday, and the restoration of Marcia Jones-Scott, we enjoyed another delightful play by Jan Good [with Jenny Spivey]. Each year Jan and her collaborators meet the challenge of writing and producing a play which engages the available cast at a level consistent with their abilities, which is timely with regard to current issues, and which retells the Christmas story. We will get a link to the script on this site. In the meantime, here are some pictures.

Christmas Pagent 09

John Gladney featured in Beacon article

Here is a link to an article about African-American medical doctors in St. Louis which features profiles of John Gladney, Jerome Williams, Sr., and Frank Richards.

http://www.stlbeacon.org/race_frankly_region/profiles_of_african_american_doctors

Chili Cook-off

Our first annual chili cook off was a dismal failure. Though many came to share in the feast, we still had leftovers. Pictures below.

Chili cook off

A Day in the Life of Velma Hunt

Here is the video that BJC produced about Velma Hunt

Hanging of the Greens

A dozen gathered to work on setting up decorations for the Advent and Christmas season. Here are some pictures.

Hanging of the Greens 2009

Joint Thanksgiving Service

We had a nearly full house with great music by the combined choirs and a band and edifying preaching by Rev. Dr John Riggs. I didn't get any pictures of the dinner but we filled the Fellowship Hall and our bellies. Much to be Thankful for!

Click on the picture below to link to the rest of the pictures.

Thanksgiving 2009

Charter for Compassion

During the reception following worship on November 15 some of us viewed a couple of videos about the Charter of Compassion which has developed out of the work of Karen Armstrong the the TED conferences. Links to the videos and more information about the Charter itself are available at CharterforCompassion.org.

Rev. Jeffery Whitman, Conference Minister

Rev. Whitman got a chance to see Pilgrim and learn more about who we are. He invited us to leave Moab and to have the faith to journey back to Bethlehem. We gave him a DVD on the Winneba Youth Choir and a Pilgrim T-shirt.

Whitman

Clickable link to some photos from the CROP Walk

Sorry, here is the link.

CROP 09

CROP Walk

I think there were about a dozen of us that walked for Church World Service this afternoon. There were more of us than in the pictures. It started to rain a bit before the end of the walk but our spirits weren't dampened.

http://picasaweb.google.com/PilgrimUCC.Stl/CROP09?feat=directlink

Welcome to the expanded list

I have just added another 50 email addresses to this distribution list. We now have a way to get the word out to many more of our members.

As a bonus, here is the link to the video that Jenny made of the Winneba Youth Choir yesterday singing "Lift Every Voice and Sing."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVEQbTT2m6w

Winneba Youth Choir of Ghana

What a delightful day! The energy and musicality of Paa John and the choir invigorated all who worshiped with us this morning... and it was a crowd. Here are some pictures of those parts of the day when we weren't moving really fast. I have a 35 minute video of the action that I will show next week. I will look for a way to post parts of it in the meantime. As usual, click on the picture to link to the rest of them.

Winneba Youth Choir

Rally Day 2009

It was a great day starting with a new Adult Ed class on Revelation and then worship where we enjoyed the return of the choir and music ministry of Fred O. After worship we had a picnic on the Kensington side of the church with lots of balloons, a clown, and an inflateable fun house.

Rally Day 2009

Welcome Fred O

We welcome today Fred Onovwerosuoke as our new Director of Music.

Knock your socks off fun!

New Role for Felicia

Felicia Scott has servied as student pastor for the past eight months. In a ceremony of saying good bye (she isn't leaving) we let go of her in that role to allow her to return to her place as member and daughter of the Church.

Shift in Felicia's role

New Retaining Wall

Earlier this summer we got a new retaining wall to replace some ancient crumbling railroad ties. These cement blocks should last a long time.

Retaining wall adjacent Pilgrim Park

Communion and Ralph Butler Band in IPP

The Union Churches gathered for worship under the grand canopy of God's great dome before the Ralph Butler Band played a rousing and exquisite concert at Ivory Perry Park.

IPP

Labyrinth

About a dozen Pilgrims walked the labyrinth at Zion UCC this morning. The labyrinth is an ancient and recently revived meditative tool.

Labyrinth

This week at Pilgrim

After worship today Monica Parks Simon shared about her own faith journey. During the week we had a crew of elves come in and spread some new wood chips [much needed] at Pilgrim Park.

7/12/09

Night at the Muny

We had over 80 people show up for a salad supper, back stage tour of the Muny and then the show "Meet Me In St. Louis." Members of the three churches and their guests were joined by a youth group from PA. Much of the backstage part was off limits to photographs but this will give you a sense of the scope of the theater.

Night at the Muny

Fathers' Day Celebration

We celebrated Fathers' Day with our traditional hot dog and ice cream feast. Larry shows off his patriotic concoction.

Father's Day 2009

Building our online presence

This afternoon I joined a Webinar sponsored by the New Church Leadership initiative of the UCC. Here are some thoughts in the wake of that event.

While we don’t want to abandon other efforts to get the message out about Pilgrim, it does seem prudent that we make a special push in the next few months to bolster our web presence. This is an initiative we have talked about a lot, and Cindy, Brien and I met about it and came to some agreement about how to proceed. In every case, what we discussed locally was supported by this national webinar.

* We need a web page which gives easily accessible information about who we are and what we are doing and how we can be found.
* We should be active in a social networking site and Facebook is growing as the most robust vehicle for that sort of community building.
* We should be producing original content which we post frequently which allows folks to feel like a part of the community even if they don’t physically come to the church. [We are doing this on the blog.]

Some other suggestions from the webinar which we did not discuss include:

* Producing video content that we would post on YouTube
* Contact through twitter is more personal and not something adaptable to evangelism

So I would like us to have a conversation among those of us who are online which addresses some questions about our online presence.

1. How much is our online presence for the purposes of communicating within Pilgrim and how much do we want to be creating content which is for non-Pilgrims?
2. To the degree that we are creating content for non-Pilgrims, who are the people we are trying to reach. Certainly we are making information available to those who are looking for Pilgrim or for a UCC church, but beyond that, do we reach out to a particular group of people?
3. Who will be responsible for creating this content? We want our professional staff to be supported in creating content, but if this is going to be an expression of who Pilgrim is, it will have to come from as many Pilgrims as possible. What do we need to do to enable Pilgrims to create content?

Your turn!

New Life in the City

The discussion of "Because of Winn-Dixie" was briefly interrupted by a clattering at the library window of a juvenile hawk (I'm guessing it is a Cooper's Hawk). Mama was watching from her perch on the cross at the top of the tower. Click on the image for more pictures.

Hawk

Annual Meeting

On this Sunday of our Annual Meeting and Dinner we took in new members and said goodbye to Rick Burk before engaging in a process for identifying what we treasure about Pilgrim.

Annual Meeting 09

First Pilgrim Palooza

Pilgrim's first Palooza was a joyous affair mixing the themes of Palm Sunday and a consideration of the musical styles which enrich our worship. We had a parade of the choir and children and dancers, and a time with the children in which they became angels, being messengers inviting all to worship with us next Sunday for Easter.

Cindy's sermon was about the chant Ho San Na, Ho San Na, which the people greeted Jesus with upon his entry into Jerusalem and considered what it means. The roots of the word hosanna go to a plea that we be saved.

After a meal at the table of our Lord, we had a fuller meal and hymn sing and a consideration of musical styles in worship. Click on the picture below to see more.

Palooza

Pilgrim Palooza coming April 5

Women's Week

On Sunday, March 1 we celebrated Women's Week by hearing three profound essay's read by members of the congregation. While each was well delivered, the content is so thoughtful that you may want to go back and consider them more fully by reading them. Here we offer links to:

Pastor Cindy's introduction to the series:

The Power to Do…Through the Lens of Neuroscience

By Karen Lebacqz

The Power to Do…Through Climate Change and Green Technology

By Terry Yasuko Ogawa

The Power to Do…Healing Miracles and Genetic Technologies

By Olivia Masih White, Ph.D.

Felicia Scott Preaches on Black History

Our Praise Dancers showed style and grace with dance with a beautiful basket. Felicia Scott led us through an historical review as she explored the case for continuing the tradition of February being Black History Month.

2-22-09

Rev. Henrietta Brown returns to preach

Rev. Brown returned to preach this morning at a service which included an animated Children's Time and leadership of the choir by Rick Burk, our Interim Music Director.

2809

ML King Service and Dinner

With combined choirs and guest speakers, Union Council gathered the three churches together for a celebration of the birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. An opening solo by Rose Marie Fischer-Vargas set the tone of expectation with "My Lord, What a Morning." In addition to the Bible readings, we heard Romaytha Abdullah read from the Qu'ran in both Arabic and English. Then Jenan Mohajir kept us spellbound by her weaving together her own story with that of the work of Dr. King and the promise of Barack Obama. Afterwords we enjoyed a sumptuous dinner. Pictures of the day are here

MLK Celebration 2009