Update on the Church Council s Process for Pilgrim

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1 Pilgrim s Progress pil-grim (pilgrim) n. a person who makes a journey to some sacred place Whoever you are wherever you are on life s journey You are welcome September 2018 Sunday School 10am Worship 11am CHURCH STAFF Moderator: Teresa Moran Pastor: Rev. Paul Eknes-Tucker Music Director: Tim Tipton Minister of Education: Rev. Bud Precise Administrative Assistant: Marilyn Ireland IDENTITY STATEMENT I AM PILGRIM CHURCH I AM an open and loving witness for liberal Christianity in the Birmingham area. I stand with those who seek justice and peace for all people. I AM accepting and inclusive. I embrace all people. I AM a home where people are encouraged: TO seek their own answers, TO explore their spiritual lives. I AM a follower of Jesus. Update on the Church Council s Process for Pilgrim After the Congregational Meeting in August and the two congregational forums that followed, the Church Council is pursuing several paths for moving Pilgrim forward into the future. As these paths show progress, they will be pursued by various leaders so that we have the best information for charting a way forward. Here is what is going on now: 1. We have communicated with the other UCC congregations in the area to ascertain possibilities of sharing space or other ways of working together. All of the UCC congregations are supportive and willing to assist Pilgrim in this transition. We are grateful for their support. The avenue that seems most promising right now is to have another congregation share our space here in Lakeview, multiplying our resources and working together. Pilgrim and Covenant UCC have created a six-member planning team to anticipate the questions and adjustments that would need to happen if we shared space. The Pilgrim members of this team are Teresa Moran, John Owen and John Williams. The pastors of both congregations will act as advisors to the team in their work. Covenant is in the process of choosing their members of this team. The current plan calls for sharing space and remaining distinct congregations. Along with Radical Hope, it would mean that three congregations share one building. This is an innovative idea that we could pioneer for other congregations going through similar transitions. (Continued on Page 2)

2 September 2018 PILGRIM S PROGRESS Page 2 (Continued from Page 1) 2. The Church Council also asked Treasurer John Williams to explore taking a limited mortgage on our current building. This money could be used to make needed repairs/replacement to the roof and the air conditioning units. This could also give us some extra money to extend some level of staffing for a longer time into the future. This will be reported back at the September meeting of the Council. 3. The Council continues to look for other properties in the Lakeview area that might be suitable for purchase or lease, if it becomes necessary to sell our current property. 4. Although there were many points of view expressed at the Congregational meetings and forums about moving forward and not all of us agree on which strategy is the clearest, the consensus of the Council is to pursue the above strategies simultaneously with the first priority being to find a way to stay in Lakeview. As you can see, this is an on-going process with many options available and many options being tested. The Council will keep you informed every step of the way as we attempt to ascertain God s guidance toward the future. Please hold the Council, the Strategy Team and the congregations of Pilgrim and Covenant in your hearts and prayers. God is not finished with us yet. I look forward to seeing what God s grace has ready for us next. Blessings! Pastor Paul

3 September 2018 PILGRIM S PROGRESS Page 3 September 2018 Calendar Sunday, September 2: 10 AM Sunday school 11 AM Worship with Communion *Please bring non-perishable dry and canned goods for the GBM pantry. Sunday, September 9: 10 AM Sunday school 11 AM Worship Friday, September 14: 6 PM - Cook supper at the Firehouse Shelter. If you can help cook or serve, contact John Williams at john0670@bellsouth.net Sunday, September 16: 10 AM Sunday school 11 AM Worship with Communion *Please bring individually wrapped snacks, drink pouches and wet wipes for the snack bags for the homeless and assemble snack bags after worship Sunday, September 23: 10 AM Sunday school 11 AM Worship Sunday, September 30: 10 AM Sunday school 11 AM Worship September Birthdays 1 st Nancy Richmond 4 th Brian Bennett 4 th Jane Philips 20 th Pamela Canzater 23 rd Elizabeth Cheney September Anniversaries Lections for September 2018 September 2: Song of Solomon 2:8-13 Psalms 45:1-2, 6-9 or Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9 Psalms 15 James 1:17-27 Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, September 9: Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9,22-23 Psalms 125 or Isaiah 35:4-7a Psalms 146 James 2:1-10, (11-13), Mark 7:24-37 September 16: Proverbs 1:20-33 Psalms 19 or Isaiah 50:4-91a Psalms 116:1-9 or Wisdom of Solomon 7:26-8:1 James 3:1-12 Mark 8:27-38 September 23: Proverbs 31:10-31 Psalms 1 or Wisdom of Solomon 1:16-2:1, or Jeremiah 11:18-20 Psalms 54 James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a Mark 9:30-37 September 30: Esther 7:1-6, 9-10, 9:20-22 Psalms 124 or Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, Psalms 19:7-14 James 5:13-20 Mark 9: th Jesse and Miranda Byrd 26 th CA Jones and Karen Eargle

4 September 2018 PILGRIM S PROGRESS Page 4 The Pilgrim Arts Ministry Cordially Invites You to Ninety Minutes of Vino & Finger Paint! Celebrating the 63rd Year of Rev. Pamela Annette Canzater and (Her trip to) Florence, Italy! When: Friday, September 21, 2018 Where: Pilgrim Church of the UCC 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM th Avenue South Birmingham, AL Enjoy FINGER PAINT (by ADULTS!), specialty wine for THIS OCCASION! Music by Sinatra, DEAN MARTIN, Tony Bennett, LADY GAGA, Mario Lanza, DORIS DAY and MORE!!!! Oh...food. To add to the pleasure of the Vino! Please call Pamela at If you can attend, so we don't run out of wine, food, or finger paint! ArtThursday Pilgrim Church Art Gallery Featuring Forrest Long Thursday, September 13, :30 PM Free to all! Wine and cheese will be provided as well as other snacks. Pilgrim Gallery, Pilgrim Church, th Avenue South (Lakeview)

5 September 2018 PILGRIM S PROGRESS Page 5 Desert Memories If you don't die of thirst, there are blessings in the desert. You can be pulled into limitlessness, which we all yearn for, or you can do the beauty of minutiae, the scrimshaw of tiny and precise. The sky is your ocean, and the crystal silence will uplift you like great gospel music, or Neil Young. Anne Lamott The first time I drove through the Southwest desert with my husband of six months, I was barely twenty and leaving the nest of North Carolina for the first time. The vastness, emptiness and frigidness (it was January) of the winter desert sent me into deep sorrow. We ran into a snow storm just outside Gallup, New Mexico, with snow so hard and fast it covered the flat terrain in what seemed like minutes. The road became invisible. I started crying then and didn't stop until we reached Sacramento three days later. I'm sure my new husband just wanted to open the car door and push me out somewhere near Needles, Arizona. The second time I visited the desert, I was closer to fifty, and I found it to be both foreign and beautiful. We were a crowd of 120 women gathered outside Oracle, Arizona for a week-long seminar on the Emerging Feminine Jungian Analysts and Native American teachers in an enormous circus tent on a YWCA campground in the middle of nowhere. When we convened in the big tent each morning and evening, the wind whipped the flaps and swirled around us like a living entity. The feeling of being surrounded by the ancestors was palpable. After that, I made regular trips to desert compounds to study with Carol Proudfoot, and learned that deserts are just as different from one another, as they are from the green mountains of my youth. Some are rocky, some have lots of vegetation, some have only sand and saguaro cactus, some are high mountain desert, some are oases with streams running through them. I was ignorant, and I came to love learning all the lessons the deserts had to teach. One of my favorite desert experiences was sunset. As Anne Lamott states, the sky is your ocean. The sky seems only feet above your head, and the colors are something out of this world. They afford the same sense of limitlessness that one experiences on the ocean when you cannot see shoreline in any direction. There are no lights, so the night sky is a panoramic milky-way. One can see why the early Christian Desert Fathers wrote about their otherworldly experiences. Deserts feel like liminal spaces where the worlds meet and otherworldly experiences are the norm. Here's a little bit of Desert Father wisdom to ponder today. It comes from Abba Anthony: I saw the snares that the enemy spreads out over the world and I said groaning, 'What can get through from such snares?' Then I heard a voice say to me, 'Humility.' Good advice from beyond the veil. If you visit the desert, any desert, be sure to pack a lot of water, and a couple of Neil Young CD's. They'll keep you company in the vastness of your own contemplation. In the Spirit, Jane

6 September 2018 PILGRIM S PROGRESS Page 6 Pilgrim s Progress September 2018 God is Still Speaking To view this newsletter in color online, go to Click the link Newsletter about ½ way down the page under the large picture. You should be able to either open the document or save it to your computer. It will be in Adobe Acrobat format (PDF).