A weblog by Rev. Beth Buckingham-Brown, interim pastor for MPC.
While I love serving churches as a pastor or musician, there are times when it is a real drag to work on Sundays. Especially when there is a great free music festival like Hardly Strictly Bluegrass happening in Golden Gate Park. (don’t worry, I am going to sneak over to hear some good bands in and around my work schedule!) So I…
One of the things I love best about church life is the opportunity to spend time with both the very young and the very old. For many folks who are middle-aged like me, this is still a pretty rare thing, because so many community events and organizations are not diverse across generational divides. It’s also true, especially amongst more affluent folks, that…
If you have read any of the posts on my personal blog, you will at once notice that I have written a number of posts on practice. Spiritual practice, musical practice, ethical practice, best practice: practice, practice, practice! It certainly seems obvious that a longtime musician is committed to practice, but there is a deeper historical and theological component to my fascination…
Dear Montclarions (and web-based friends) – This is a shortened version of my statement on ministry that I gave to the personnel committee and Session. You’ll also notice that I borrowed some of this for my first sermon with you. Enjoy! The future of the Church is jazz. I first wrote that sentence in 1996 as I was just starting out in…
Anything scares me, anything scares anyone but really after all considering how dangerous everything is nothing is really very frightening. – Gertrude Stein in Everybody’s Autobiography (1932) My first two weeks of commuting to Montclair from our home in San Francisco have been way more interesting than we might have expected! The first week, the Bay Bridge was closed and…
When I interviewed with the Session of Montclair Church about the possibility of becoming your Temporary Supply Pastor, they asked me a great question: “what do you need from us?” I told them the usual things about “setting priorities” and “giving good feedback” and then I told them that my biggest personal concern about becoming your pastor is that I would find…
Well, given the events of the past week and the defeat of the Defense Of Marriage Act, there was no question about going to PRIDE this year as it was an historic event. I guess the other 1.499 million people had the same idea! As I walking down Market Street in San Francisco on my way to the parade after church yesterday,…
Several years ago our normally quiet Suburban street was transformed into a street that was cordoned off, guarded by police vehicles at each end, and made into the staging area for a SWAT team. Imagine our surprise when our house guest at the time told us what was happening in the early morning hours! Initially we thought she must be in an…
People keep asking me how it feels to be fifty! Aside from receiving my first piece of mail from AARP which terrified me, it feels great. One cannot help but pause when turning 50 to take stock of mind, body and spirit. Mind? Seems to be churning along just fine and I can actually still retain information, dates and names. Not bad! …
After waking up this morning in Chicago, flying across the country, and then having lunch in the San Francisco Bay Area, my wife and I were marveling at modern technology. If one so desired, one could actually eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, in 3 different parts of the country all in one day! Within 30 minutes of being back home, we began…