announcement to UUCF email lists

[RevRonRobinson at aol.com]

Hi all. Pardon the interruption to your ongoing threads of discussion. I 
wanted to put in an advance promotion for your own year's planning and scheduling 
regarding our excitement about Revival 2005. Read below for information and 
news about our Keynoters and more. And please feel free to pass this email on to 
others in your groups and churches who might be interested, and to print and 
post. And, of course, more to come....

Revs. Peter  Gomes and Thomas Anastasi
To Keynote Revival 2005
Nov. 3-6, Fort Worth
Put It On Your Schedule Now

    Keynote Presenters for the UUCF Revival 2005 will be the renowned 
preacher, lecturer, author, and American Baptist minister Rev. Peter Gomes from 
Harvard University, and the charismatic preacher and dynamic musician Rev. Thomas 
Anastasi  of Shoreline UU Church in Seattle. This fifth UUCF Revival--full of 
worship and workshops and small groups and music and relationships-- will be 
held in Fort Worth, Texas, Nov. 3-6, 2005, co-hosted by the First Jefferson 
Unitarian Universalist Church of Fort Worth and its UUCF chapter. 

    Revival coordinators are the Rev. Priscilla Richter, interim minister at 
Community UU Church of Plano, Texas, and Rev. Felicia Urbanski, minister of 
the UU Church of Stillwater, Oklahoma, along with Rev. Craig Roshaven of the 
host church in Fort Worth.  Revival worship coordinator is Rev. Melanie 
Morel-Ensminger of Summit UU Church in Cherry Hills, New Jersey.  Registrar is Margaret 
Bartel of Alexandria Virginia. Revival Treasurer is Cecil Bohanon of Muncie, 
Indiana. Other coordinators will be named later. If you would like to help in 
some way, please contact Executive Director Rev. Ron Robinson at 
RevRonRobinson at aol.com 

    Here is a little about both Revs. Gomes and Anastasi

    Born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1942, The Reverend Professor Peter J. 
Gomes is an American Baptist minister ordained to the Christian Ministry by The 
First Baptist Church of Plymouth, Massachusetts.  Since 1970 he has served in 
The Memorial Church, Harvard University; and since 1974 as Plummer Professor 
of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in The Memorial Church.  A member of 
the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and of the Faculty of Divinity of Harvard 
University, Professor Gomes holds degrees from Bates College (A.B., 1965), and from 
the Harvard Divinity School (S.T.B.,1968); and twenty-seven honorary degrees. 
 Harvard University in 2001 presented him with The Phi Beta Kappa Teaching 
Award. He is an Honorary Fellow of Emmanuel College, The University of 
Cambridge, England, where The Gomes Lectureship is established in his name. 
 
    Widely regarded as one of America’s most distinguished preachers, 
Professor Gomes has fulfilled preaching and lecturing engagements throughout this 
country and the British Isles. In 2005 he presented the Harvey Lectures at the 
Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas; in 2004 he 
gave the Convocation Address at Harvard Divinity School; and in 2003 he delivered 
The Lyttelton Addresses at Eton College, England. In 2002 he served as Hein 
Fry Lecturer for the Evangelical Lutheran Seminaries in the United States. In 
2001 he was Missioner to Oxford University, preaching in the University Church 
of St. Mary the Virgin; in 2000 he delivered The University Sermon before The 
University of Cambridge, England, and preached The Millennial Sermon in 
Canterbury Cathedral, England; and in 1998 he presented The Lyman Beecher Lectures 
on Preaching, in Yale Divinity School.

     Named Clergy of the Year in 1998 by Religion in American Life, Professor 
Gomes participated in the presidential inaugurations of Ronald Wilson Reagan 
and of George Herbert Walker Bush.  
His New York Times and national best-selling books, The Good Book: Reading 
the Bible with Mind and Heart, (1996); and Sermons: Biblical Wisdom for Daily 
Living (1998), were published by William Morrow and Company, Inc.; The Good 
Life: Truths That Last in Times of Need was published in 2002 by 
HarperSanFrancisco, which published Strength for the Journey: Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living 
in spring 2003. In 2005, The Backward Glance and the Forward Look was 
published by WordTech. He has also published ten volumes of sermons as well as 
numerous articles and papers.  
 
    Profiled by Robert Boynton in The New Yorker, and interviewed by Morley 
Safer on 60 Minutes, The Reverend Professor Peter J. Gomes was included in the 
summer 1999 premiere issue of Talk magazine as part of its feature article, ‘
The Best Talkers in America: Fifty Big Mouths We Hope Will Never Shut Up.’

    The Reverend Thomas Anastasi has served the congregation at Shoreline 
Unitarian Universalist Church as its minister since August, 1990. He is a 
graduate of the University of Tennessee (1984) and he received his Master of Divinity 
degree from Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley (1987). Shoreline 
Church is his first ministerial settlement. 

    Thomas’ background is not typical for a UU minister.  He grew up in a 
Pentecostal Christian environment, and as a young adult studied for the ministry 
in the Church of God. In the late 1960’s, amid much personal, spiritual 
turmoil in regard to his conscientious objector status to the Vietnam War as well as 
an increased realization of his sexual orientation, he left his childhood 
church. For years after that, he was anti-church, anti-religion, and anti-God. 

    In the 1970’s Thomas became a professional musician, playing and singing 
with rock bands which traveled around the country. Later, he worked as a “
piano bar” musician, and much of his present theological and spiritual substance 
was informed by this experience, what he calls “Cheap Theology.” 

    Twenty years ago Thomas wandered into the Unitarian Universalist church 
in his hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and for the first time in his life 
felt a genuine welcome, signaling that he had finally “come home.” “I had 
never heard this unqualified welcome:  Whoever you are, Wherever you are on your 
life’s journey, You are welcome here! 
“Before this amazing moment in my life, there had always been some kind of 
condition of acceptance, based on the belief that I was ‘a sinner’ and needed 
to change who I am, even the essence of who I am, in order to be ‘saved.’” 

Now, at Shoreline Church, Thomas repeats those spiritually invigorating words 
every Sunday in the Call to Worship: “Whoever you are…” If an overall theme 
can describe Thomas’ spiritual focus, it is about “ordinary theology”: that 
genuine spirituality is found in our everyday human experience. “This is 
Universalism in its pure form. It is found, not so much at the extremes of human 
reality, but in what I think about as I rise out of bed in every morning, what I 
think about when I plan and live out my day, and finally, what I think about 
in my last thought drifting off to sleep at night. The primary theological 
challenge is: How can I embody my innermost spirituality in all my life? With all 
my heart, this is the message I want most to deliver in my ministry.”