Guest Speaking - Small Group Ministry, UU Evangelism and more

Friends,

Happy new church year! A quick update related to my UU guest speaking. I am now booking Fall and Spring Guest Speaking and workshop dates. As always, I'd love to speak with your congregation and/or lead a program for your district. Questions give me a call in my office at 401-213-3291.

Most popular topics include:

• Small group ministry
• Becoming a Contagious UU
• The UU Butterfly Effect
• Findthing the "perfect" minister

Newest FALL 08 topics:

• Quantum Physics & The Spirituality of Interconnection
• Do What You Love (at church)

Offsetting carbon is cheaper than I thought

Monday I'm starting a new project in Boston related to my tv work. Since this will require a good deal of commuting over the next 15 weeks I decided to look into the price of offsetting my emissions.

I went to http://www.carbonfund.org and entered my projected mileage - 9,000 miles over that period of time. I was scared to hit calculate... How much is it going to be? What if it is more than I imagined. I clicked the button bracing for the damage.

$14.95

Sweet Jesus! That's it? Did you know it cost so little to offset??? I had no idea.

Do us all a favor. Go to and see how much it will cost to offset your driving. Heck, why not see what it will cost to offset the mileage on your car to date.

I just calculated the cost of offsetting 100,000 miles on a 99 Toyota Corolla. The cost for offsetting the estimated emitted 29.97 TONS of carbon this vehicle has emitted is $162.22.

UU's embracing "Low cost, high-tech media"

Paul Worhach Hudson from the UU Church of Berkeley just wrote to share what his congregation is doing with "low cost, high tech" media. I've been talking about UU TV and related media, but I haven't discussed the power of distributing audio content via new media. Far more people have audio players (iPod, etc...) than video players like iphones and ipod video. Also, a number of people, myself included, are listening to audio podcasts on our desktop computers. I've taken to listen to a number of congregations sermons while cleaning my office.


If you haven't, start thinking about how your congregation can distribute audio content via new cheap high tech media channels.

Paul writes:


In addition to our podcasts and YouTube videos, UUCB has just put up an album of children's stories on iTunes (via CDBaby, who distributes and sends the album to a plethora of music buying sites) from our MRE Chris Holton Jablonksi. There are at least two other UU churches that have released albums on iTunes, including the Orange County UU Choir (their original song "I am a Unitarian Universalist" is really cute.) This might be something that other UU churches might want to tap into.


Here's our iTunes link:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playListId=279931334


And here's our CDBaby link:
http://cdbaby.com/cd/revchjablonski

Submit your UU videos to uuplanet.tv

Friends,

If you or your congregation make a great video related to our faith, what you are doing to make a difference in the world, or other UU related content I invite you to share it with me so I can add it to uuplanet.tv

UU Planet TV is a new online video channel for Unitarian Universalists. It features the best videos for, by and about UU's online.

While I continually search for new videos and have google alerts keeping a watchful eye for videos with UU related tags, you are welcome to send me links to your videos as you upload them. Just email me the URL, the full address as it appears in the browser address bar. Http://whateveryourvideosaddressis....

A SPECIAL INVITATION to all UU Youth and Young Adults. Guys, you get the power of new media. Many of you also have the technology, creativity and time to make videos. Help me share our faith with the world, make our association more transparent, shape our vision of the future and drag our movement into the 21st century. MAKE UU TV. Make short, informative, fun, weird, educational and UU related videos.

In faith,
Peter Bowden
UU PLANET Ministry & Media
www.uuplanet.tv - UU TV & Videos
www.uuplanet.com - What I do

UU Video site in beta -- uuplanet.tv

uuplanet.tv now beta testing. Check it out, send feedback. Thanks...

UPDATE: uuplanet.tv out of beta and going strong. - peter