BLOGS ARE SO 2011

Welcome! I’m here to blog. You’re here to read. Seems like a good setup.

The last time I blogged with any regularity was during graduate school at Perkins, and it honestly was an amazing discipline. My first year in my master’s program I did not have a church job, and I took that time to visit more than 30 different worship experiences in Dallas over the course of about 10 months. I worshipped with as many different kinds of churches and communities as I could — First Baptist Dallas to the Dallas Quaker Meeting. Temple Emanu-El to Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church. It was incredible, exhausting, educational, and rife with blog material.
I talked about how they made me feel welcome (or not), the different styles of music and what those styles communicated about God, how the experience stretched or challenged or comforted me, and which baptismal fonts I was super jealous of (I have a thing for baptismal fonts).
I say all this mostly to tell you that I love learning, and thinking, and nerding out about liturgy and music, and writing. And I hope that this blog will be a space we can do some of all of those things together. I, and other members of our staff and community, will talk about nerdy liturgical things like what Communion means, and the differences between “prayers of the people” and “pastoral prayers” (just ask the staff: I’ve gotten on many a soapbox in staff meeting about that). We’ll talk about our favorite hymns. We’ll talk about what our community partners are doing and ways you can get involved. Mostly we’ll just talk about life at White Rock UMC, and how we’re living into being a creative, growing church in East Dallas.
Peace,
Rebecca Garrett Pace
Director of Worship and Professional Nerd