Rev. Jeffrey gives special presentation
The Rev. Paul Jeffrey, United Methodist Missionary, will be at Langley United Methodist Church next week to give a presentation about his job documenting the work of the church around the world as senior correspondent for Response, the magazine of United Methodist Women.
Jeffrey also provides coverage of emergencies for Action by Churches Together (the ACT Alliance), a Geneva-based global alliance of churches responding to disasters.
He has filed stories from more than 65 countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia, writing about everything from hurricanes to healthcare, from massacres to indigenous rights, from refugees to ecumenism.
His photos have appeared in countless church and ecumenical publications, as well as in newspapers such as the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, and the Toronto Globe and Mail. Magazines such as Sierra, National Geographic Explorer and Time Asia have featured his images. Jeffrey’s photos have also been used by organizations ranging from the World Bank, World Health Organization and UNESCO to the UN Population Fund, World Meteorological Organization and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. A book with his photos from the Darfur region of Sudan — “Where Mercy Fails” — was published in 2009.
The evening will begin with a potluck in Fellowship Hall at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 12.
Unity connects with deeper truth
Doug Benecke will give the talk “Elementary! Peering Into The Grand Mystery With Holmes & Watson” at the Unity of Whidbey service on Sunday.
Puzzled residents of Victorian London turned to Sherlock Holmes and his trustworthy partner, Dr. Watson, to solve baffling mysteries. Benecke and violinist Talia Toni Marcus will give a playful look at harnessing our “inner detectives” in order to pierce the veil of our own lives. When life truly is a mystery, we need the skill, inspiration and focus Holmes and Watson exemplified, to connect with the deepest truth.
The platform assistant will be Donna Vanderheiden.
The service is at 10 a.m. and all are welcome.
Unity of Whidbey is located in its new chapel at 5671 Crawford Road in Langley.
Unity of Whidbey also maintains office hours at the church from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.
See the Unity Web site at www.unityofwhidbeyisland.org for more information.
Early church series continues at SWCC
Sunday morning at South Whidbey Community Church, Pastor Ron Wedeking will continue the series describing the early Christian church, with “The Church at Jerusalem – Part 3,” based on Acts 15.
Morning worship begins at 10 a.m. and is preceded by an adult learning forum at 9 a.m., with Stan Walker leading an inductive study into Paul’s Letter to the Church at Ephesus and Art Angst leading a study into the Gospel of Luke. These are open classes to which everyone is invited.
The church will hold its next men’s breakfast at 8:30 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 9 at the Deer Lagoon Grange, which will feature a DVD with Dr. Charles Stanley on the topic “Turning the Tide.” Darrell Coburn will be the featured chef, and all men are cordially invited. Visitors and guests are especially welcome.
South Whidbey Community Church provides a unique church experience in a historical setting, with traditional worship and hymns in a friendly, informal atmosphere. All SWCC sermons and special adult forum lectures are recorded, and copies on CD-R or e-mailed as Windows audio attachments may be obtained by calling the church at 221-1220.
SWCC is a local independent, non-denominational church that adheres to the National Association of Evangelical’s Statement of Faith. It is open to everyone, and gathers for worship each Sunday at the Deer Lagoon Grange, 5142 Bayview Road.
For further information about the church and services, call 221-1220.
Religious film to be shown at The Clyde
A free showing of “For the Bible Tells Me So” is scheduled for 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 10, at the Clyde Theatre in Langley. A group of Whidbey faith communities, organizations and businesses are sponsoring this award-winning documentary.
How does a family of faith deal with the realization of having a gay child? Tracing the experiences of five Christian American families, the film shows how these families handle that experience, each in its own way and with a variety of results.
Mixed among the family stories are a variety of clips presenting the more traditional view of homosexuality and those of contemporary faith leaders and Biblical scholars.
For more information on this film, go to www.fortheBibletellsmeso.org.
Forum continues on early Christianity
The next adult forum at St. Augustine’s in-the-Woods is “The Role of Pseudapigraphia.”
All the various early Christian groups understood themselves to be “right” and their Christian opponents to be “wrong.” Each group had sacred texts that supported its views, books allegedly written by apostles believed to represent normative understandings of the faith. However, the vast majority of these books were forgeries.
In this lecture, the forum will consider several such pseudapigraphical accounts including a gospel of Jesus death and resurrection allegedly written by St. Peter, and a third letter to the Corinthians allegedly written by St. Paul.
The forum starts at 9:15 a.m. Sunday; Ted Brookes will present.
Traits of spiritual leadership at UUCWI
Rev. Kit Ketcham will speak about effective religious leadership at the Sunday service for the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Whidbey Island.
How do effective religious leaders change the world? Which leaders, past and present, within Unitarian Universalism and in other religions, have been the most positive and influential?
The service is at 10 a.m. and will be followed by a potluck and discussion of the covenant process.
UUCWI is located at 20103 Highway 525, just north of Freeland. Check www.whidbey.com/uucwi for details.
