Montclair Presbyterian Church

Saturday, October 31 from 10-11:30am in the Thornhill Room.

Come and learn what our denomination is up to in Latin America! A Mission Co-Worker from Costa Rica, Elizabeth (Eli) Cook, will speak with us , in a presentation sponsored by the Peace & Justice Steering Committee.

Eli’s “day job” is as Bible Professor and Academic Dean at Latin American Biblical University (Universidad Bíblica Latinoamericana – UBL). The Instituto Biblico Pastoral program at UBL trains lay persons throughout Latin America, especially those with limited opportunities, such as the underprivileged, women, and indigenous peoples.

Eli says, “I am continually challenged … to be aware of the multiple forms of injustice, exclusion, discrimination and prejudice – forms of violence that are often justified legally and even Biblically in our communities and congregations.” She seeks to help UBL prepare leaders from partner churches to actively participate in the quest for reconciliation and justice.

This year’s retreat was again held at the picturesque Ralston-White Retreat Center located on the side of Mt Tam above Mill Valley. Julie Cline, our facilitator, guided us as we learned about the characteristics of our learned patterns of behavior & unconscious biases.

During the weekend, there was time for reflection, songs, hikes, ping-pong, reading, and a competitive game of Sequence.

Saturday afternoon included a brief Taize service, followed by the creation of a liturgical banner that will eventually be displayed at MPC. A worship service brought our retreat to a close on Sunday morning.

Sunday October 18, 1:30 p.m. Come to a talk in the Family Room by author Peter Mathews, professor of political science and sociology and a TV/radio analyst. His recent book is Dollar Democracy with Liberty and Justice for Some: How to Reclaim the American Dream for All. This event is sponsored by the Peace & Justice Steering Committee. Refreshments will be served. This event will kick off a postcard writing campaign to elected officials over the ensuing weeks.

On Sunday, November 1st at 4pm, author Kimberly Burge will be at MPC to discuss her new book The Born Frees: Writing with the Girls of Gugulethu, detailing her experiences with a South African girls creative writing group. We hope you can join us for what is sure to be a thought-provoking and inspiring event.

About the Book

When Kimberly Burge organized a writing group in the township of Gugulethu, South Africa, she discovered a group of extraordinary young women who belonged to the first generation born into a post-apartheid world. Though they were “born free,” the young women of the townships around Cape Town still face daunting challenges. Their families and communities have been ravaged by poverty, violence, sexual abuse, and AIDS. Yet, as Burge quickly learned, the spirit of these girls outshines the often extremely difficult circumstances they share with so many of their peers throughout the world.

The group is made up of girls with wide-ranging personalities and varying levels of education—girls such as the irrepressible Annasuena, whose late mother was one of South Africa’s most celebrated singers; bubbly Sharon, already career-bound; and shy Ntombi, determined to finish high school and pursue further studies—all of whom find reassurance and courage in writing. Together they also find temporary escape from the travails of their lives, anxieties beyond boyfriends and futures: for some of them, worries that include HIV medication regimens, conflicts with indifferent guardians, struggles with depression. Driven by a desire to claim their own voices and define themselves, their writing in the group Amazw’Entombi, “Voices of the Girls,” provides a lodestar for what freedom might mean. (source: KimberlyBurge.com )

About Kimberly Burge

Kimberly Burge is a narrative journalist, a longtime activist, and a Fulbright Scholar to South Africa. She earned a bachelor of science in journalism at Bowling Green State University, a master of fine arts in nonfiction writing from George Mason University, and was a fellow in global religion reporting for the International Reporting Project at Johns Hopkins University.

Kimberly has published feature stories, editorials, and reviews on issues of culture, politics, global poverty and development, faith and public policy in places such as The Atlantic, The Huffington Post, and Salon. A contributing writer for Sojourners magazine, she previously worked for twelve years at Bread for the World, a Washington-based advocacy organization combatting hunger and poverty in the United States and worldwide. In 2005, she accompanied 150 grassroots activists to the G-8 activities in Scotland, where an international mobilization organized by grassroots leaders, along with Bob Geldof and Bono, called on world leaders to increase efforts to fight poverty in Africa. (source: GoodReads.com)

Please contact the church main office with questions. Hope to see you there!

We are coming up to World Communion Sunday, which is my favorite minor church holiday of the year. Perhaps because it’s the most delicious, or perhaps because being so minor has saved the holiday from being co-opted or commercialized, I will always have a special place in my heart for the first Sunday in October. On this day we remember that we are one with the Church throughout the world and all ages, and we show this in our worship as tangibly as possible. This means Irish soda bread, Indian naan, Italian focaccia, New York bagels, Palestinian pita, Native American fry bread and much, much more. Debbie Fallehy’s bread-baking Family Life Small Group will contribute a loaf, and you are also invited to bring bread from your family’s culinary heritage.

I celebrated this holiday for the first 17 years of my life in a very diverse church. At Broadway Presbyterian Church in New York City, we were near Columbia and all its international students, adjacent to Harlem’s historic African-American neighborhoods, and just blocks away from the vacant lots where the legendary gangs of West Side Story battled out their ethnic rivalries in song and dance. World Communion Sunday brought so many people together, and as we stood around the table in saris and kente cloth, kimonos and suits, the vision of our multicolored clothes and faces taught me an image of heaven, where all shall be reconciled with God and one another.

Montclair may be a less diverse neighborhood than the Upper West Side… but we are well-traveled, and many of us have left bits of our hearts in one country or another. A piece of my heart is in Uganda. Some of our MPC members are in Bolivia right now. So I would invite you to bring a loaf, a tortilla, a rice bowl, or another alternative — either from your family’s heritage OR from a country you especially love.

You have advance notice so you can get excited and choose your best international outfits and recipes. This is happening on Sunday Oct 4th. If you can contribute bread please RSVP to me, and be there to deliver it early (9:45) before church.

Every Blessing,
Rev. Talitha

On Wednesday, Sept 30th at 7pm, New Yorker journalist Larissa MacFarquhar will be at MPC to discuss Strangers Drowning: Grappling with Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Help. We hope you can join us for what is sure to be a thought-provoking, inspiring and challenging evening.

About the Book

There are those of us who help and those who live to help. How far would you really go to “do unto others”? In Strangers Drowning: Grappling with Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Help, renowned New Yorker writer Larissa MacFarquhar digs deep into the psychological roots and existential dilemmas motivating those rare individuals practicing lives of extreme ethical commitment. MacFarquhar seeks out people who devote themselves fully to bettering the lives of strangers—even when it comes at great personal cost—and tells their deeply intimate stories: their stubborn integrity and their compromises; their bravery and their recklessness; their joys and defeats and wrenching dilemmas.

We honor such generosity and high ideals, but when we call people “do-gooders” there is skepticism in it, even hostility. Why do moral people make us uneasy? How could these do-gooders value strangers as much as their own loved ones? MacFarquhar combines these real-life stories of unimaginable selflessness along with deep meditations on the implications of these ethical acts. Throughout, she threads a lively history of the novels, philosophy, social science, and self-help that have contributed to a deep suspicion of do-gooders in Western culture.
(source: Penguin Press)

About the Author

Larissa MacFarquhar has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1998. Her subjects have included John Ashbery, Barack Obama, and Noam Chomsky, among many others. Previously she was a senior editor at Lingua Franca and an advisory editor at The Paris Review. She lives in New York.

Please contact the church main office with questions. Hope to see you there!

Author photo credit: Philip Gourevitch

Fall Kickoff, the ‘official’ start to a new year at MPC, is Sunday, Sept 13th after celebration. The theme is The Future, and we’ll be doing all kinds of forward-looking things, including collecting items for an MPC Time Capsule. We’ll also be enjoying each other’s company — and each other’s food, since Kickoff is a potluck. If your last name starts with A-M, please bring a main dish. If your last name starts with N-Z, please bring a salad, veggies or other side dish. And when you deliver them to the Family Room on Sunday morning, please label your dishes and utensils, so that you may see them again in The Future.

For now, consider: what item do you want to leave for future generations to ponder? And what potluck item will you bring that day to share? Let’s gather, enjoy each other’s company, and picture our future together.

Questions, please contact Steve McKiernan. See you there!

Just a reminderL we will resume our 10:00am Celebration services in September. Make sure to mark your calendars for 10:00 service starting Sunday, September 6th. This will be a great service — we will even have the Barrelhouse Jazz Band with us. Hope to see you there, nice and early.

Montclair Presbyterian Church invites you to join our joyful worship at 5 p.m. followed by a tasty BBQ, each Sunday in August. First, we’ll celebrate, contemplate, and sing (loudly!), then dig into delectable savories and sweets cooked by our church family. Children K-7 are invited upstairs to a “Godly Play” Montessori-style classroom, or they may stay in the service and enjoy our kids’ pew with books, coloring, and toys. Nursery care is available for little ones. We are a socially progressive, spiritually active, rainbow welcoming, non-proselytizing congregation that would love to have you and your family be our guests.

Produce Swap

Do you have an abundance of fruit or veggies from your home garden or trees? Getting sick of the zucchini that never stops coming? Lemonade-d out? BRING your squash, beans, lemons, cucumbers, and more to church any Sunday in August (at 5PM). During the BBQ in the courtyard we will have a table for people to give or take produce. Please help us get all the good food eaten. We are also collecting on Fridays August 8th, 15th, and 29th, to bring fresh produce to the Food Bank at Fruitvale Presbyterian.

Want to learn more about MPC?

• Listen to recent sermons, read blog posts by our pastor, and listen to music from celebration
• See what we’ve posted to Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr
• Check out the Information for Visitors page
• Learn more about our Children and Youth programs
• Visit us on Sunday at 10am. We’ll happily answer any questions you may have.

Come on over and enjoy our hospitality!

This spring, the Session of MPC decided to approve the hiring of a part-time Godly Play teacher to work with our team of talented volunteer teachers and with Associate Pastor, Talitha G. Phillips. The decision made in April was dependent on funding. Now that we have a budget approved for the 2015-2016 fiscal year, we are getting ready to interview candidates!

Some Background
We are blessed to have many children attend our Godly Play programs. They can be seen each Sunday, eagerly exiting Celebration after the Time with Children. However, with such blessings comes an increased obligation to our youngest members. We want to provide our children with a consistent and stable classroom experience. Our youngest members should experience the same feelings of community, reflection, and learning in Godly Play that our adult members feel in worship. By hiring someone to work on a regular basis we know we can provide a more positive classroom experience that would attract, keep, and nurture our children well. The volunteers who currently serve on the team, rotating through the classroom on a regular basis, also can expect a more positive and less stressful experience as we build on experiences from one week to another.

The Teacher will work three to four Sundays a month for a total of 40-50 weeks per year, approximately 5 hours per week when teaching on Sunday, and will be paid $100 per week worked. Hours are 9:30 am – 11:30 am on Sundays plus about three additional flexible hours during the week to prepare the Sunday story or activity and meet with staff. Godly Play training will be provided, up to 20 hours annually. The contract term is 12 months.

Necessary qualifications:
● Demonstrated interest in religious education and knowledge of Bible stories
● A solid foundation in your own spirituality and faith
● Teaching experience or other experience leading children/youth (camp, youth group)
● Demonstrated ability to manage a classroom or organized group of children
● Radical patience and deep kindness

Additional helpful background includes:
● Academic biblical studies at any level
● Montessori and/or Godly Play background
● ADHD and autism-spectrum awareness
● Musical ability

A complete description here: Job Description
To apply, please contact GPhiring@mpcfamily.org