Adult Education Hour Update and Pastor Christian's Talk

So, with the May 18th is already booked for the Adult Education hour, as Mary said, we can still have our RIC potluck/guest speakers after the late service.

We have a couple of events then to take quick action on.

Are there items the team plans to bring for Wednesdays potluck? Just want to insure there is something to eat on Wednesday.

Do we want to take the Adult Education hour for next week? I would need to get the collaborative blog space ready and we would need to plan the talk / video and make sure all the equipment will work. I believe Gretchen is up to working at least part of the plan for the talk.

We will be meeting Thursday but we will probably want to confirm and get something in the bulletin if we want to move forward with the Adult Education.

Mary's Email with May 18th Adult Forum Recommendation and "Story Time" after second service

Hi All,

MAY 18th IS SET as the date for "story time" with Doug, his mom and his partner Tawk. They have already made a committment to us for this date. I have also contacted another couple who are considering coming and telling their stories of welcoming/hospitality in church.

I suggest using the adult forum time between services on May 18th as the time to present the "Year of Discernment Plan" to the congregation. Thatway we can package all the May RIC events in to one Sunday...May can be avery busy month for some families with Mothers Day, congregationalmeeting, graduations, etc.

I think it might be smart to condense our RIC agenda into one Sunday.

Action Plan for May 18th

1. Confirm guests
2. Bulletin board announcement in narthex
3. Announce in church services each preceeding Sunday
4. May newsletter: Congregational invitation to potluck/story time
5. Potluck sign up (In Narthex)
6. Set up volunteers (Narthex, with potluck sign up)
7. Clean-up volunteers (Narthex, with potluck sign up)

Mary

Everyone should get email when posting to this Blog

We will now get the latest blog entries emailed to us. Let me know if you do not want this to happen and I will take you off the list.

After Council and Core Team Meeting Update

Hello,

Please join me in welcoming Diane Mattox to the team!

Well, there is momentum before May to report. The presentation of our "Year of RIC Discernment Plan" to the council went well. Pastor Christian's talk is now confirmed for April 30th. We can take a May Adult Forum. Pastor Dayle suggested May 4th, which is the day of the congregational meeting but would be after second service. Could we pull this date off? Otherwise there is Mother's Day on May 11th, potentially stories from others after service on May 18th (see question below) and I doubt we will want to do it on Memorial Day weekend.

Mary Steinberg suggested May 18th for her friend and others to get together after second service to have her friend Doug, his mother and others to tell their stories. Will that schedule work for us? Would we want to have an RIC Sunday that bundles the Adult Forum Affirmation kick off on the same day as the after service event? Mary was also going to check that date out with others. Also there are LCNA Portland Chapter members we can invite. Once the date is firm we can talk about how many stories should be presented and the way the event will flow.

As far as our hospitality suggestion for a theme of this year's Bible Studies, there is no one currently taking responsibility for the Summer Bible Studies and there is a distinct possibility they will not be rolled out as they have in the past.
There will be more on that later.

The Portland RIC Core Team met on Monday. I gave a brief update about how the discernment process was going here and they both approved and were impressed by the work we have done so far. Many for the team plan to attend Pastor Christian's talk. By the way, the RIC Core Team is still looking for members from those who went to the LCNA Training in March.

Please send me your favorite Affirmations of Welcome to use to seed the Creator's collaborative space for our draft affirmation.

Grethen posted a link to a recent NPR Fresh Air interview with Gene Robinson, the first gay man elected to be an Episcopal Bishop on our blog that I encourage you to check out:

Interesting interview with Gene Robinson

I wanted to give you all this link http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89659417 where you can hear a recent NPR Fresh Air interview with Gene Robinson, the first gay man elected to be an Episcopal Bishop. It's a good interview and helpful to hear his perspective even though much of the content is specific to GLBT people as Bishops specific to the Episcopal/Anglican church.

There is a link on the same page to listen to an earlier interview with Bishop Robinson from 2004, which is also very interesting.

May Creator RIC Team Meeting - May 1st

Janice asked: Do we have a date set for the May meeting? If so, could you post it? Thanks!

Gary replied: It will be the first Thursday of the month, May 1st at 7:00 PM.

April 3rd, 2008 - RIC Meeting Notes

We started the meeting with updates on the March action items. Some were complete and others were no longer needed (creating Congregational list by Zip Code).

This is what was proposed:

Invite Christian to come as soon as possible to talk (late April, early May). We felt he could navigate the talk to focus on welcome and not make ordination central. If discussion moves to this we do not need to discourage it either.

Host RIC invitational event(s) where food and stories around GLBT, friends and family welcome are shared. Toni and Mary will contact people who could share their stories about Creator welcome either directly at the event or through us (the story would be told without the details that would link it to the individual). Targeting this for May. There are some great resources at LCNA on this as well who have experience telling their stories at these kind of events.

Kick off a collaborative effort to create our Affirmation of Welcome during an Adult Education hour (ask Pastor Dayle when would be a good Sunday for this). Target for event would be late April / May (after presentation to Creator council).

Invite congregation to participate in creating our Affirmation of Welcome. The invitation would be advertised in the narthex, put in the newsletter and bulletin and sent out by email. The idea is that everyone can know they are encouraged to contribute. Their contributions can be verbal, written, over the web, or brainstormed in meetings set up for that purpose.

Family "movie night" where we would show Babette's Feast. This would be in late June/early July just before kickoff of the summer BBQ/Bible study series.

Suggest the theme of this year’s Bible Study be Hospitality and that the format be in keeping with our themed Summer Bible Studies of the past few years. Focus individual events to the last part of Creator’s initial Charter / Mission statement about Tolerance, Inclusiveness and Unity. Ideally, hospitality to others who need to be explicitly welcomed would play a part in the discussion – immigrants, divorced – single, those in different social statuses, etc… Team suggests that this not be tied to RIC directly.

We went over our Year of Discernment plan. Besides what is outlined above the highlights for presentation to the council would be:

Completion of a draft Affirmation of Welcome in August.
Send out a survey, encouraging as much feedback as possible, on how Creator embraces the draft Affirmation. This gives us a preliminary indication of how the vote would go in January. If changes become necessary they will occur in October, November and December.