Newsletter
Dec. 22, 2011
BeBlessed!!!
Bob Ingle
Dr. Newt Wakeman is still faintly smiling after more than four hours of carrying out groceries at Crosslines today. I don't know what the final count will be but this has been a very busy day for our volunteers. I dropped by at noon, just as they had run out of bread and milk so I rushed out to the market and bought $100 worth of extra supplies to get us through the day.
Of the foods we give to the poor, bread, milk, eggs and protein sources such as meat, cheese, soups and peanut butter, I believe to be crucial and even though we are already generous in the amount of money we donate to Crosslines I don't ever want to see families coming on our days of service without being able to give them these crucial nutritional staples.
Not everyone can volunteer to help but you all support what we do through your contributions. This is an uncommon week in which the scheduling just happened to turn out that we are serving the poor and hungry every day: Monday and Tuesday at Crosslines, Wednesday at the Hope Conference for the homeless, and Thursday and Friday at Bill's Place.
I wish that we could do more to ease the economic crises of the poor in our community but what we do is very significant.
OUR CHURCH AND THE LARGER CAUSE OF PROGRESSIVE CHRISTIANITY
There are three web sites devoted to progressive Christianity that I pay attention to. All three also have Face Book pages which, if you sign up for them, will give you regular posts that are pretty interesting. Hands down, the best one and one with more that 30,000 subscribers is The Christian Left. I have just been made a guest administrator for their page allowing me to post our sermons and articles along with others that I find helpful or useful. You can see their page and click on their Face Book at this link: http://www.thechristianleft.org/ This site accounts for about 80% of the views we get on our YouTube channel. If they endorse a posting we go over 500 to 1200 views. If they don't we never rise above one or two hundred. Of course, during this time that I am a guest administrator, I'm guessing that my sermons will be endorsed if I have to do it myself!
The second one is the one for The Progressive Christian Alliance. I have placed my ordination credentials with this small but growing organization. Like the Christian Left, they are open to all who join so the average mix is a bit more traditional and sometimes more Evangelical than suits my tastes but a whole lot of our folks are there. I am a permanent administrator on this site and I am doing what I can to make them a better progressive resource. You can see this page at: http://www.progressivechristianalliance.org/Blog/
The third and the one from which we drew the 8 Points we use in our vision statement and with whom we are listed so that other progressives can find us is The Center for Progressive Christianity. We have also purchased their Sunday School literature to use if we can ever get an elementary class started! You can find them at: http://www.tcpc.org/template/index.cfm
Roger L. Ray, D.Min.
Pastor
www.spfccc.org
I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up. (Martin Luther King, Jr. - Nobel Speech)
