Friends, I was planning to write a Contact piece dedicated, in some way, to the massacre in Las Vegas Sunday night. I thought, perhaps, that I might reflect on the American obsession with guns, or I might have gone deeper into the waters of social and political commentary by reflecting on how the American people are responding to a white perpetrator and…

Friends, I have just come back from spending ten days in Europe, most of them in Geneva, where I led a group of folks from MPC on a study tour that looked at Paganism, Calvinism, the World Council of Churches, and at the important work of dissent. But before I arrived in Geneva, I visited some relatives of mine who live in…

For this week’s contact, I’ve written an open letter to most American Christians, who won’t hear about DACA at Church. Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ, I am aware (and painfully so) that most of you won’t hear about the Trump administration’s recent scuttling of DACA in Church. Let’s be honest: most American churches don’t talk about potentially divisive issues and most…

Friends, Just before I started writing this note, I got an email from my friend Craig, who lives near Glasgow, Scotland.  Under the subject line “Off to Bed” (it was about 10PM in Glasgow) Craig wrote: “Hopefully your president won’t start a nuclear war before I get up tomorrow, daft [and here he used a vulgarity I won’t repeat].” There has been…

Friends, It has been some time since I’ve written in the “Pastor’s Pen” section of Contact, and as I was getting read to write this installment of the “Pen” I had a hard time deciding between four different subjects upon which to write. So instead of choosing between the subjects,  I’ll try to cover three of the subjects as separate bullet points,…

Friends, This week the Bible study I lead on Wednesdays at noon is finishing up its study of the Book of Acts. It has been a fascinating journey through a part of the New Testament I’d never really studied in depth before. The Acts of the Apostles is full of history and geography, with literary references to Plato, Virgil, and Homer, and…

Friends, Over the weekend Anne and I attended a concert at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley. It was a remarkable experience for a few reasons. First, the concert was entirely medieval and renaissance music composed by women. In many cases the women who composed and who first performed the music we heard had to take a lot of risks and break…

Friends, About a year after I moved to Montclair Presbyterian Church I introduced a prayer for peace in celebration, near the beginning of the service. It began slowly. Usually once a month or so, but then as folks got used to it, I started including the prayer for peace as a regular part of our worship experience. I did this because it…

Dear friends, While looking over some materials relative to the maintenance of our buildings I came across an interesting bit of information: the Presbytery of San Francisco started doing ministry along the banks of Temescal Creek on Thornhill Drive in April of 1927, which means we may have let the church’s 90th birthday slip by us. I say we “may have” missed…

Friends, This week I’m going to use my Contact space to catch up on a few odds and ends. First, let me tell you about stewardship. Sometime in the next week, members and friends of Montclair Presbyterian Church will be getting a stewardship letter from the church, and by “stewardship” we mean “fundraising.” Each year the church reaches out to its members…