Author: Rev

The numbers are in: today’s church needs to be bold in its advocacy and education and start new churches! Read more in my latest piece for the UCC Vital Signs & Statistics blog.

“Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God…” (Step 11)
Prayer and meditation sound like huge tasks. For some they present a big burden, a tough requirement, or a boring chore. Many addicts struggle to figure “this God thing” out. Using the Enneagram to unearth your most basic spiritual needs can help make your spiritual life less intimidating.

I wrote another piece for the United Church of Christ’s Center for Analytics, Research & Development, and Data (CARDD). This time it’s a little bit about my church journey and some takeaways for leaders: How to Embrace Church Shoppers

This booklet helps hospice patients and their caregivers / family members make the best use of the spiritual care that is offered to them. It can help hospice agencies improve their CAHPS score and increase retention. Hospices are usually very fond of their chaplains. This booklet helps them and their marketers to express with greater specificity the benefits that your spiritual care program has to offer.

This booklet is a must read for patients, families, hospice chaplains and staff because it provides the perfect spiritual care prescriptions for five vital horizons in which persons experience hospice care. A proper application of these prescriptions, will lead to a proper end of life care.

Dr. Saul Ebema, President of Hospice Chaplaincy

גמר חתימה טובה

Scapegoating has a bad rep in our day and age because it usually involves falsely blaming someone else for one’s own shortcomings. Also it is done in hiding or maybe even unconsciously. Today, the Jewish tradition celebrates Yom Kippur. This holiday is based on Leviticus 16 and formalizes that process and places it in the community in the form of a public event. Letting go of guilt together is a good and healthy thing. Here is what happens to the literal and original scapegoat:

When he has finished atoning for the holy place and the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall present the live goat. Then Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and sending it away into the wilderness by means of someone designated for the task. The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a barren region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness.