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Book 3 of 2022 Origin
Earlier this year I happened about an article featuring this book (probably related to its release since it is very new). It sounded very interesting so I went shopping.This look at how and when...
View ArticleWhat Is Your Picture? (A Column for the Newspaper)
August 1994. I am a volunteer counsellor at Camp Maskepetoon. Two cabin groups gather on the front lawn by the main lodge for Devotions. The leader passes out paper and invites us to grab some markers...
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Book 4 of 2022 -- The Art of Gathering
Why do we gather? How can we make out gatherings more meaningful? What mistakes do we make that take away from our gatherings? These are important questions for the church to ask. Mind you I think we...
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Book 5 of 2022 -- My Best Mistake
I have enjoyed Terry O'Reilly for a long time. I remember listening first to his show The Age of Persuasion years ago (thought I would have sworn that was longer ago than 2006) and now I regularly...
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Book 6 of 2022 --Keys to the Kindom: Money and Property for Congregational...
Seemingly out of nowhere, this book arrived in the mail a couple months ago. The cover letter named that as we prepare for the 100th Anniversary of the United Church of Canada in 1925 a free copy was...
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Book 7 of 2022 Building God's Beloved Community: Discipleship in The United...
Over the last few years multiple voices within the United Church have named a need for a new resource to use in confirmation classes. This book is one approach to meeting that need.The 14 chapters (16...
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Book 8 of 2022 -- A Short History of Canada (Seventh Edition)
This was my light vacation reading this summer. Despite the fact that my daughter had trouble understanding how a book with over 1000 pages could be called short and many people would find any sort of...
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Book 9 of 2022 -- Shame and Grace
This book has been on a shelf in my parents' house for 25 years or so. Many times over the last 20 years I have looked at it sitting there and thought "I should read that". This year I finally...
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Book 10 of 2022 --Intercultural Visions: Called to Be the Church
Over a decade ago the United Church of Canada pledged to grow into a truly intercultural church (though I suspect many people in the church have no idea about that pledge much less have taken time to...
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Book 11 of 2022 On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World
I have been following Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg on Twitter for some time now. And when I heard of this book coming out I was intrigued enough that I pre-ordered it and started waiting.Rabbi Ruttenberg...
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Book 12 0f 2022 -- The Gospel According to Star Trek: The Original Crew
This was a gift to me during Clergy Appreciation Month in October. Apparently over 12 years the congregation has gotten to know a bit about my tastes....As a general rule I really enjoy these "Gospel...
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Book 13 of 2022 -- A New Kind of Church: Understanding Models of Ministry for...
For some time now I have been becoming more and more aware that the way we are doing/being church is not long term sustainable. But how is God calling us to be church differently? So I went shopping...
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Book 1 of 2023 -- Models of the Church
This is a title that came up in a clergy FB group when someone asked about good books on ecclesiology. So I went shopping....THe book was originally written 40 years ago, with some expansion (the...
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Book 2 of 2023 -- Following Jesus Today
News about this little piece popped up in my Facebook feed one day and I thought I would buy it to read in Lent. As it turns out I started it before Lent and finished it just days into the...
View ArticleThoughts on Life and Death and Life Again
Two weeks from today is Easter Sunday, the day when Christians around the world will celebrate the triumph of life, hope, and love over fear, despair and death. And so I have started to ponder what...
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Book 3 of 2023 -- God Doesn't Live Here Anymore
With a title like this how could I resist?Like many other leaders within the church I have spent much time over the years pondering the decline and struggles the church has been facing for several...
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Book 4 of 2023 -- Leadership On the Line
This was a book recommended in a course I took earlier this year so I started working my way through it. Leadership is sometimes a challenging task within the church, where one is called to lead but...
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Book 5 of 2023 -- Leisure Resurrected
What does leisure mean to you? How do you use your leisure time? Social Media? Reading? Watching TV? What is the role of leisure in our world today? I found out about this book while cruising through...
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Book 6 of 2023 -- Pure Colour
At the beginning of the summer I heard a radio interview with the author of this book. I was intrigued by the concept that the world as we know it is God's first draft and is being assessed to see...
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Book 7 of 2023 -- Value(s): Building a Better World for All
One day in late summer I was standing in a bookstore and started leafing through this one. I liked the premise so went home and ordered it. I was drawn to the idea that we need a discussion about how...
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Book 1 of 2024 -- The Undertaking of Billy Buffone
Love, death, secrets, scandal, a ghostly narrator. Makes for an interesting book. This one I bought simply because I knew the author. Besides a novel to read over the break of the year seemed a nice...
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Book 2 of 2024 --The Dead Sociologists Society
On Christmas Morning as I was emptying my stocking I found this little volume.IT is an interesting concept. A bunch of dead sociologists have a meeting, one might even call it a seminar, to present...
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Book 3 of 2024 -- When Church Stops Working
In a clergy discussion last month one of my colleagues mentioned that she had just read this book and recommended it as a good read. While the Zoom meeting was still going on I had purchased it.IT was...
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Book 4 of 2024 -- Disruptive Thinking
Late last summer I was standing in an actual bookstore holding real live books in my hands looking for ideas of what looked interesting. This was one of the ones the caught my attention (and then I...
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Book 5 of 2024 My Mother's Legacy
This short little volume was a Clergy Appreciation Month gift from the congregation. The subject of the book, Angie Mercredi-Crerar is well known here in Grande Prairie. She was one of the Metis...
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