Branch Church News

Last November, the Christian Science Board of Directors traveled South Africa coast to coast, meeting with individuals, groups, and branch church congregations from the townships of Nyanga and Atteridgeville, as well as urban centers including Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, East London, Kloof, and Johannesburg. Johanna Frontczak, The Mother Church's manager of international communications for the Clerk's Office, traveled with Directors Tom Black, Walter Jones, Margaret Rogers, Nate Talbot, and Mary Trammell, and filed this report.

ONE OF THE SPLENDORS OF NEW YORK at Christmastime is the annual Christmas tree at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the creche at the base of the tree. I headed uptown one afternoon some years ago to take in this wondrous sight.

THERE I WAS, sitting on a stage in a movie theatre filled with over 600 Christian Scientists. It was two years ago, in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and I had come there as part of a Mother Church delegation visiting churches and college organizations.

I ARRIVED AT THE SUBWAY STATION. While I waited for my friend, I saw a sign with prices and told myself, "I can do this.

"If you are looking for a story about a really alive branch church," Tessa Bray, a customer service representative for The Mother Church, recently told a Journal staff editor, "definitely be in touch with First Church, Seattle. I have never been in a church that expresses so much joy, family, and generosity.

CHURCH. The structure of Truth and Love; whatever rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle.

In April 2004, Linda Ozanne got a call from a fellow Texan and church member. Would she and her husband, Buddy, consider chairing a committee to organize a 75th anniversary celebration for their church? the caller asked.

Recently I became intrigued when a friend shared a dictionary definition of the word shall. Besides meaning "must," shall also implies inevitability" — that the object spoken of is fact.

Establishment. SECTION 1.

Many of our readers have responded to our invitation at the end of this column every month to tell us: "What works in your church?" We've gathered some recent responses, as well as excerpts from Web postings at TMC Youth and e-mails/letters to The Mother Church to share with you. OUR Branch Church Found that too much business meant too little time to spend on the "good of the church" at the end of each meeting.