I've been a part of the United Church of Christ since 2010. During that time, I've visited 14 UCC congregations. Each has impacted me in a unique way. Currently, I'm a Member in Discernment in the United Church of Christ and hope to be ordained later this year (see Midlife & MiD Life: A 9th Update for more about this process). In this reflection on my journey in my denomination of choice, I explore the contributions of these 14 congregations. For the sake of simplicity, I've organized Read More …
Texas
Giving Thanks – Mansfield Mission Center (#1938)
Over the last four years, I've had the joy of serving the Mansfield Mission Center (MMC). In short, MMC is the place people turn when unexpected challenges arise, and it is the center of opportunity for individuals, families, and the entire community. Introducing the Mansfield Mission Center Founded as the benevolence ministry of First Methodist Mansfield and originally known as the Wesley Mission Center, the organization became its own non-profit in 2013, and was renamed Read More …
Farewell to White Protestant Texas (#1824)
Demographic shifts are happening more rapidly than many realize. In a 2014 post titled "End of the White Majority," I shared that the National Center for Education Statistics projected that after years of decline white non-Hispanic students would no longer be the majority in the public schools in the United States.In a 2016 post titled "Farewell to White Protestant America" I shared some of the findings presented by Robert P. Jones in his then recently published book: The End of White Read More …
Search for a Church 2.0: Three Bonus Visits (#1751)
Our search for a new church continues. The original plan called for visits to 10 Mainline Protestant congregations relatively close to our new home. And, we did just that. I summarized those experiences in two earlier posts: First Five Visits and Five More Visits. 10 Became 13 Project planning in all areas of my personal and professional life is increasingly agile and benefits from rapid development thinking. This new search follows that sort of Read More …
New Year, New Home (#1718)
Happy New Year! To start 2018 my wife and I purchased a home in downtown Fort Worth and started the process of relocating. This is the ninth place we have called home during the first nineteen years of our life together, and the eighth we have owned. Our first four homes were in Texas, and appear below on the first row and the first image on the second row. Our next three homes were in Florida, and are depicted in the remaining images on the second row and the Read More …
Real Taxation Levels (#1037)
Earlier this year the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy released the 4th edition of "Who Pays: A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All Fifty States." This report finds that "virtually every state’s tax system is fundamentally unfair, taking a much greater share of income from middle- and low-income families than from wealthy families" (Executive Summary, p.1). The image at right illustrates the regressive reality of the national averages for the percentage of Read More …