Saturday, April 23, 2005

General Board of Church and Society (GBCS) Spring Meeting

Last weekend I went to the spring board meeting of GBCS - you can read some highlights here at the GBCS website. I particularly recommend reading General Secretary Jim Winkler's remarks - this time centered on the Luke 18 passage of the "persistent and consistent" widow. I always find Jim's remarks inspiring and encouraging - he speaks plainly about the task he envisions set before the Church, and I feel he always gives a prophetic message. Also excellent was the message of our president, Bishop Beverly Shamana, which unfortunately is not available on-line. She preached using the sections of the social principles interspersed with hymns. She also used a couple of quotes that I jotted down - one from Albert Einstein, "We are all here for the sake of others," and a quote from JFK Jr., "those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
We also enjoyed hearing brief comments from the General Secretary of the General Commission on Religion and Race, Rev. Chester Jones. He gave a great but short talk using The Velveteen Rabbit as the basis for his words. I wish I had a copy of that too, because I made no notes, just enjoyed hearing him.
Anyway, check out the highlights. While you're there, check out UMPower, which makes it super easy to send letters, complete with UM supporting statements from our Discipline and Resolutions, to Senators and the like. You can also sign up for MegaVote there, which enables you to get a weekly e-mail telling you how your representatives voted in Congress and what items of legislation are next on the agenda.

3 comments:

Jonathon said...

hey beth, thanks for the link to umvote. that's awesome.

jonathon

John said...

The UMPower link doesn't seem to be working. It looks like the domain has changed hands.

But it was working this morning.

Beth Quick said...

Thanks St. Phransus - I've found it very handy too.
John - thanks for the heads up - I tried the link again and it seemed to be working - not sure about the error - but I'll check it out.

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