Perry Ledbetter Fentonas Chief of Police
The Story of The Little Beggar
Prospect Sierra School production of
1001 Nights - April 18, 2008
1001 Nights - April 18, 2008
Obama for America
“At its best, the Obama candidacy is about ending a war—not so much the war in Iraq, which now has a momentum that will propel the occupation into the next decade—but the war within America that has prevailed since Vietnam and that shows dangerous signs of intensifying, a nonviolent civil war that has crippled America at the very time the world needs it most. It is a war about war—and about culture and about religion and about race. And in that war, Obama—and Obama alone—offers the possibility of a truce…
“We may in fact have finally found that bridge to the 21st century that Bill Clinton told us about. Its name is Obama.”
Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic, December 2007
The Marketing Queen - Does the Church have something to learn
from a woman who knows how to market products?
If “Pomegranate Princess,” the title of a piece in the March 31 New Yorker magazine didn’t grab you, the picture of Lynda Resnick in her opulent Beverly Hills house (“It ain’t home, but it’s much,” she likes to say) surely would. At least, it caught my attention.
I always have been interested in marketing, and Lynda Resnick, as it turns out, knows how to do it. She and her husband have made themselves billionaires by purchasing companies and then improving the marketing end of the business. Stewart Resnick handles the business end; Lynda does the marketing.
For example, the couple bought the Fiji Water Company for 150 million dollars. Lynda changed the bottle’s label from a waterfall to a bright-pink tropical flower and the company slogan from “Taste of Paradise” to “Untouched by man. Until you drink it.” The result? Sales have increased 300%.
It seems to me the Church could pay a lot more attention than it does to marketing. How a product or service is presented can make a big difference.
Lynda Resnick says you have to listen to people. “You don’t have to be a genius. You have to read the pop culture. People magazine is my Bible.” That brought me up short. The only time I read People magazine is when I’m waiting to get a haircut and have forgotten to bring a book with me.
Along with listening and paying attention to pop culture, Lynda believes in brevity. “Keep it simple” is her motto. She dislikes long explanations filled with unnecessary details.
All of this has application for clergy and their congregations. Listening to the culture might mean everything from livelier music at worship to serving better coffee after the service. An emphasis on brevity and simplicity could apply to the sermon and to all written communication from the parish.
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Walnut Creek, a suburban congregation, recently called the Rev. M. Sylvia O. Vásquez as Rector. She appears to know a thing or two about marketing. Sylvia’s personal motto, which appears after her name in email correspondence, is “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” Sylvia has been listening to young adults, maybe even reading People magazine.
Mission Statements are popular. Every parish has one. The problem is they often read as if a committee wrote them. They can be wordy and pious sounding. St. Paul’s “vision statement” is Deep Roots, Growing Community, Living Faith. That communicates. Lest you think “Living Faith” is only words, I can report (from reading our diocesan paper) that Sylvia took a group of parishioners on a mission trip to help the poor in Honduras. She has been making these trips for years.
At each of my last two parishes we paid good money for a professionally designed logo expressive of the parish theme. All parish publications were coordinated in appearance and used the identifying logo. Congregations need baseball caps, T-shirts, and coffee mugs with the parish logo. This is good marketing practice. The mega church you drive by has all these things, and it’s for a purpose. We don’t have to adopt their lowest common denominator theology and approach to borrow some of their good marketing tools.
In 1975, I read Robert Schuler’s Your Church Has Real Possibilities. The founder of the “Hour of Power” TV program and the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove is a marketing genius. He advises churches to give priority to location, parking, and distinguished architecture. I think of that each time I try to find one of our well-hidden churches and discover a poorly maintained building with unkempt grounds and inadequate parking.
I particularly remember what Schuller wrote about preaching. A billboard beside the freeway has a big picture and just one line of text. So the preacher, he advised, should paint a picture with words and then add a short comment. I think Linda Resnick would agree.
Perry in 1001 Nights
Our talented, eleven-year-old granddaughter took to the stage again playing four parts in a school production of 1001 Nights. I wish you could have joined her parents and Billie and me for the evening performance on Friday, April 18. If the proud grandfather is permitted to say so, Perry was great.
She had many lines and delivered them flawlessly in a clear voice that carried to every corner of the theatre in Prospect Sierra School’s new Performing Arts Center. She also sang, danced, and at one point played drums with the band.
As her father said, Perry’s comedic timing is perfect. That is a gift. The rest can be attributed to her enthusiasm for acting and many hours memorizing lines and attending rehearsals.
Amy Sass and Keith Davis, the directors, are a talented team who know how to get the best out of the kids and to persuade their parents to help with the elaborate stage productions. Our David volunteers as a video photographer for these events. The sets, costumes, lighting, and music are all of professional quality. I have seen many Middle School plays in my day. This one was the best.
Billie and I drove to Berkeley in the afternoon, shopping at Crate and Barrel on Fourth Street and having dinner at Saul’s Deli on Shattuck before Perry’s performance. When the play was over, we stayed to give Perry a hug and congratulate her on another milestone in her acting career. Then we headed home to Concord.
Antiques and Collectables Show
The next day we drove 23 miles north to the Salono County Fairgrounds to attend the 42nd annual Antiques and Collectables Show sponsored by the Golden Gate Historical Bottle Society, which Billie and I joined when we moved back to California. We were greeted by Gary and Darla Antone, our club president and his wife, as we arrived with Brandy to visit the hanger-size showroom filled with antique bottle and collectibles displayed on row after row of tables.
It is not just houses and gasoline that are going up in price these days. Antique bottles that were about $35 just a few years ago are now going for 50-75 dollars. I saw some rare beauties selling for as much as $1800 each. Of course there were crates of bottles marked $2 each, something for every pocket.
I love to look at the displays of old postcards. They are a visual form of history. Vintage autos, hotels long gone, national park scenes before the arrival of RV’s, Victorian bathing beauties covered in long, black, bathing outfits, and wooden churches that must have burned or been replaced years ago. Some postcards have messages that sound surprisingly contemporary: “Sorry I haven’t written, Hilda. We’ve been so busy on this trip!”
This trip is a double-header for us, because the Solano County All Breed Dog Show is usually held at the Fairgrounds on the same day. After leaving the bottle show, we took Brandy to see more dogs in a couple of hours than she normally would see in a year. When she is out with us and sees a dog being walked on the street, she becomes very excited and barks. But the dog show was somehow intimidating. She passed by dogs in crates and dogs on leashes, and watched them being shown in the ring, without making a sound.
One thing we’ve noticed about people who have dogs, they are invariably some of the friendliest people you will meet anywhere. We enjoyed complimenting them on their beautifully groomed and well-behaved animals. We saw just about every breed you can think of, but no Tibetan Spaniels like Brandy. It is still a fairly rare breed, but the little dogs are making their way into peoples’ hearts.
The Bishop’s Visitation
Marc and Sheila Andrus, our new bishop and his wife, made their first visit to St. John’s, Clayton on April 20. Billie and I are members there. Parishioners had worked hard to make the grounds attractive, we had a visiting choir, our two Sunday services were combined in one, and there were baptisms and confirmations. We looked like a going concern.
In my experience, most bishops all but ignore the Bible lessons for the day and concentrate on sharing news of what is happening in the Diocese. They give the impression that everything important is happening somewhere else. Not Marc. He gave a fine sermon on the Gospel lesson, and he spoke straight to our hearts.
Both Marc and Sheila are sincere believers. Their faith comes shining through. The Bishop had tears in his eyes when he told us about a funeral he and a Roman bishop had conducted the day before. The funeral was for an Episcopal priest who died of cancer one year after being called as rector of a parish. The Roman bishop was there because the priest who died had once been a Roman priest and they had been friends.
Before the service began, the Roman bishop told Marc that he would not be able to receive Communion in an Episcopal church and would sit during that part of the Liturgy.
When the time came, Marc went to the station he had been assigned, but there was no priest there to administer the chalice. The Roman bishop stepped forward and the two bishops administered Communion together.
When it was time for the baptisms at St. John’s, Marc called the children of the parish forward so they could “see the action.” He invited them to reach into the font and feel the “Living Water” he had just blessed. Half of the children did so. The others demurred. One little girl backed into her mother to get away!
Off-key reception
The San Francisco Chronicle published this letter from me on Monday, April 21:
Editor – How ironic that the Pope,
“Vicar of Christ,” was greeted at the
airport last week by an armed forces
honor guard and at the White House
with the “Battle Hymn of the Repub-
lic,” sung by a military choir. He re-
sponded with a speech that might have
been given by almost any visiting head
of state. Would Christ remain silent
regarding a nation fighting an unpro-
voked war and authorizing the use of
torture against prisoners?
The REV. FRED FENTON
Concord
“At its best, the Obama candidacy is about ending a war—not so much the war in Iraq, which now has a momentum that will propel the occupation into the next decade—but the war within America that has prevailed since Vietnam and that shows dangerous signs of intensifying, a nonviolent civil war that has crippled America at the very time the world needs it most. It is a war about war—and about culture and about religion and about race. And in that war, Obama—and Obama alone—offers the possibility of a truce…
“We may in fact have finally found that bridge to the 21st century that Bill Clinton told us about. Its name is Obama.”
Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic, December 2007
The Marketing Queen - Does the Church have something to learn
from a woman who knows how to market products?
If “Pomegranate Princess,” the title of a piece in the March 31 New Yorker magazine didn’t grab you, the picture of Lynda Resnick in her opulent Beverly Hills house (“It ain’t home, but it’s much,” she likes to say) surely would. At least, it caught my attention.
I always have been interested in marketing, and Lynda Resnick, as it turns out, knows how to do it. She and her husband have made themselves billionaires by purchasing companies and then improving the marketing end of the business. Stewart Resnick handles the business end; Lynda does the marketing.
For example, the couple bought the Fiji Water Company for 150 million dollars. Lynda changed the bottle’s label from a waterfall to a bright-pink tropical flower and the company slogan from “Taste of Paradise” to “Untouched by man. Until you drink it.” The result? Sales have increased 300%.
It seems to me the Church could pay a lot more attention than it does to marketing. How a product or service is presented can make a big difference.
Lynda Resnick says you have to listen to people. “You don’t have to be a genius. You have to read the pop culture. People magazine is my Bible.” That brought me up short. The only time I read People magazine is when I’m waiting to get a haircut and have forgotten to bring a book with me.
Along with listening and paying attention to pop culture, Lynda believes in brevity. “Keep it simple” is her motto. She dislikes long explanations filled with unnecessary details.
All of this has application for clergy and their congregations. Listening to the culture might mean everything from livelier music at worship to serving better coffee after the service. An emphasis on brevity and simplicity could apply to the sermon and to all written communication from the parish.
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Walnut Creek, a suburban congregation, recently called the Rev. M. Sylvia O. Vásquez as Rector. She appears to know a thing or two about marketing. Sylvia’s personal motto, which appears after her name in email correspondence, is “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” Sylvia has been listening to young adults, maybe even reading People magazine.
Mission Statements are popular. Every parish has one. The problem is they often read as if a committee wrote them. They can be wordy and pious sounding. St. Paul’s “vision statement” is Deep Roots, Growing Community, Living Faith. That communicates. Lest you think “Living Faith” is only words, I can report (from reading our diocesan paper) that Sylvia took a group of parishioners on a mission trip to help the poor in Honduras. She has been making these trips for years.
At each of my last two parishes we paid good money for a professionally designed logo expressive of the parish theme. All parish publications were coordinated in appearance and used the identifying logo. Congregations need baseball caps, T-shirts, and coffee mugs with the parish logo. This is good marketing practice. The mega church you drive by has all these things, and it’s for a purpose. We don’t have to adopt their lowest common denominator theology and approach to borrow some of their good marketing tools.
In 1975, I read Robert Schuler’s Your Church Has Real Possibilities. The founder of the “Hour of Power” TV program and the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove is a marketing genius. He advises churches to give priority to location, parking, and distinguished architecture. I think of that each time I try to find one of our well-hidden churches and discover a poorly maintained building with unkempt grounds and inadequate parking.
I particularly remember what Schuller wrote about preaching. A billboard beside the freeway has a big picture and just one line of text. So the preacher, he advised, should paint a picture with words and then add a short comment. I think Linda Resnick would agree.
Perry in 1001 Nights
Our talented, eleven-year-old granddaughter took to the stage again playing four parts in a school production of 1001 Nights. I wish you could have joined her parents and Billie and me for the evening performance on Friday, April 18. If the proud grandfather is permitted to say so, Perry was great.
She had many lines and delivered them flawlessly in a clear voice that carried to every corner of the theatre in Prospect Sierra School’s new Performing Arts Center. She also sang, danced, and at one point played drums with the band.
As her father said, Perry’s comedic timing is perfect. That is a gift. The rest can be attributed to her enthusiasm for acting and many hours memorizing lines and attending rehearsals.
Amy Sass and Keith Davis, the directors, are a talented team who know how to get the best out of the kids and to persuade their parents to help with the elaborate stage productions. Our David volunteers as a video photographer for these events. The sets, costumes, lighting, and music are all of professional quality. I have seen many Middle School plays in my day. This one was the best.
Billie and I drove to Berkeley in the afternoon, shopping at Crate and Barrel on Fourth Street and having dinner at Saul’s Deli on Shattuck before Perry’s performance. When the play was over, we stayed to give Perry a hug and congratulate her on another milestone in her acting career. Then we headed home to Concord.
Antiques and Collectables Show
The next day we drove 23 miles north to the Salono County Fairgrounds to attend the 42nd annual Antiques and Collectables Show sponsored by the Golden Gate Historical Bottle Society, which Billie and I joined when we moved back to California. We were greeted by Gary and Darla Antone, our club president and his wife, as we arrived with Brandy to visit the hanger-size showroom filled with antique bottle and collectibles displayed on row after row of tables.
It is not just houses and gasoline that are going up in price these days. Antique bottles that were about $35 just a few years ago are now going for 50-75 dollars. I saw some rare beauties selling for as much as $1800 each. Of course there were crates of bottles marked $2 each, something for every pocket.
I love to look at the displays of old postcards. They are a visual form of history. Vintage autos, hotels long gone, national park scenes before the arrival of RV’s, Victorian bathing beauties covered in long, black, bathing outfits, and wooden churches that must have burned or been replaced years ago. Some postcards have messages that sound surprisingly contemporary: “Sorry I haven’t written, Hilda. We’ve been so busy on this trip!”
This trip is a double-header for us, because the Solano County All Breed Dog Show is usually held at the Fairgrounds on the same day. After leaving the bottle show, we took Brandy to see more dogs in a couple of hours than she normally would see in a year. When she is out with us and sees a dog being walked on the street, she becomes very excited and barks. But the dog show was somehow intimidating. She passed by dogs in crates and dogs on leashes, and watched them being shown in the ring, without making a sound.
One thing we’ve noticed about people who have dogs, they are invariably some of the friendliest people you will meet anywhere. We enjoyed complimenting them on their beautifully groomed and well-behaved animals. We saw just about every breed you can think of, but no Tibetan Spaniels like Brandy. It is still a fairly rare breed, but the little dogs are making their way into peoples’ hearts.
The Bishop’s Visitation
Marc and Sheila Andrus, our new bishop and his wife, made their first visit to St. John’s, Clayton on April 20. Billie and I are members there. Parishioners had worked hard to make the grounds attractive, we had a visiting choir, our two Sunday services were combined in one, and there were baptisms and confirmations. We looked like a going concern.
In my experience, most bishops all but ignore the Bible lessons for the day and concentrate on sharing news of what is happening in the Diocese. They give the impression that everything important is happening somewhere else. Not Marc. He gave a fine sermon on the Gospel lesson, and he spoke straight to our hearts.
Both Marc and Sheila are sincere believers. Their faith comes shining through. The Bishop had tears in his eyes when he told us about a funeral he and a Roman bishop had conducted the day before. The funeral was for an Episcopal priest who died of cancer one year after being called as rector of a parish. The Roman bishop was there because the priest who died had once been a Roman priest and they had been friends.
Before the service began, the Roman bishop told Marc that he would not be able to receive Communion in an Episcopal church and would sit during that part of the Liturgy.
When the time came, Marc went to the station he had been assigned, but there was no priest there to administer the chalice. The Roman bishop stepped forward and the two bishops administered Communion together.
When it was time for the baptisms at St. John’s, Marc called the children of the parish forward so they could “see the action.” He invited them to reach into the font and feel the “Living Water” he had just blessed. Half of the children did so. The others demurred. One little girl backed into her mother to get away!
Off-key reception
The San Francisco Chronicle published this letter from me on Monday, April 21:
Editor – How ironic that the Pope,
“Vicar of Christ,” was greeted at the
airport last week by an armed forces
honor guard and at the White House
with the “Battle Hymn of the Repub-
lic,” sung by a military choir. He re-
sponded with a speech that might have
been given by almost any visiting head
of state. Would Christ remain silent
regarding a nation fighting an unpro-
voked war and authorizing the use of
torture against prisoners?
The REV. FRED FENTON
Concord
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