I've belonged to Central my entire life. It's not simply out of habit-- I accept the Methodist theology. I'm an Arminian--all good Methodists are (it's an essential part of our theology, like predestination is to Presbyterians)-- and I cannot remember when I wasn't an Arminian. It seems to me that if you accept Calvin's teaching, then what's the sense of living? Everything is predetermined, and you can't do anything about it.

Oh yes--Arminianism. It doesn't mean that you from Armenia. That place in Asia, a former kingdom, now in Turkey. That's an Armenian. An Arminian is a follower of Jacobus Arminius, who preached the doctrine of free will, opposed to absolute predestination. Read about it here.

If you are in the area, come on by to the church. We can probably meet your needs and wants. There are three different services on Sunday morning, each one different for different tastes.

Besides that web-site I also am a member of the Methodist Men and belong to several committees. There seems to be committees ad infintim in the Methodist Church, and they don't call them committees. Here we call them "Teams". They don't like the word "committee." To each his (or her) own. We do have to be politically corect, don't we??

I'm also one of the two lay members from my church to the Greater New Jersey Annual Conference. The annual conference is the rough equivalent of an Episcopalian or Catholic diocese. Every Methodist church has as many lay members as they have pastors appointed by the bishop, and every church is required to have a pastor. That should seem obvious--there must be an equal number of clergy and lay members, and all United Methodist clergy attached to the conference belong. My annual conference includes the entire state of New Jersey, about a half-dozen churches in northeast Pennsylvania and about 35 in New York state. We meet annually (therefore the name "Annual"<g>) for three or four days in June to take care of the business of the conference. That would be to pass the budget, elect people to almost every position imaginable, pass resolutions on any number of issues, vote to ratify--or not--amendments to the church constitution, establish, abolish or merge local congregations, and the clergy authorizes the ordination of those seeking ordaination. We all attend the ordainations. And I'm certain I forgot a few things.

I'm also a member of the Atlantic County Democratic Committee. Their web-site went down and was gone for some time because somebody forgot to renew the URL... It's up now. They are supposed to run the Party on the county level, mainly because they are the County Party. Unfortunately, I live in a Republican county. I was first elected in June 1997, and have been re-elected ever since. My first term was for one year, and then every two years since then, in the same primary election as when we choose our candidates for the House of Reprensenatives.

Locally, the Democrats received a majority on Council a few years back. The majority lasted just one year. The local Republican Party simply couldn't stand it. We already had a Democrat as Mayor. An excellent gentleman whom I went to school with. He's the first Democrat to be re-elected Mayor, and the Republicans hate that fact. He was re-elected. And he's been re-elected twice, the last time (November 2003) he carried every election district, and most by wide margins. The Republicans can't stand that.

We did the best job we could, showing the local populance how the Republicans had skewed up the government for the years they had control. What did the people do? Return the Republicans to power. And the unions supported the GOP! No sense to it whatsoever! The GOP broke the union a few years before. The union turns around and endorses those who broke the union. It just doesn't make sense. Come this November (2007) the Republicans will have a chance of retaking the mayority. The mayor is retiring. But we Democrats do have an excellent candidate for mayor in one of our city councilmen.

I administer (at present) three surname mail lists and a mail list dealing with the descendants of the Schwenkfelders at Rootsweb, and several message boards. Some would call the administrator the listowner. The term is from the time when he did own his list; he doesn't now. But as long as he follows a few rules, he's a king over his list. It's easy to do, doesn't take much time (a few minutes a month, if that) and why not? I've written more about it, and my Lists, here at my Rootseb.com web-site.