UNIVERSAL LIFE CHURCH

UNIVERSAL LIFE CHURCH MAILINGS ARCHIVE - OCTOBER 2007

Hello!

I'm sure some of you have noticed that the deadline for the Who's Who book has passed. I have to apologize for not being more on top of things on this end. I've had some very difficult things going on in my personal life that has captured my attention. It will be difficult for a little while yet, but I'll do my best not to let that interfere. If you've sent me some emails in the last several weeks that have not been responded to, that's why. I'm doing my best, so please bear with me.

I'm copying below a sample of MY story for the book. For those of you who haven't submitted yours yet or don't know what to write, maybe this will help. I still need a few more people to sign up to give this book the weight that I believe it deserves. I'm working on the cover as well. I'm going to leave the deadline open for another month or so. I apologize for those who have hurried to submit your stories. I greatly appreciate your submissions. My issues here have just taken precedence and I hope you'll understand. Prayers and well-wishes would be appreciated.

Here is my story:

Hello. My name is Rev. Amy Long. My ULC story started in 1992. It was then that I heard that my former church where I attended seminary was going to charge its ministers $250/year to maintain our licenses. I didn’t want to pay that, so I looked for other options. My friend told me that I could get ordained through the mail, so I sent off my information and request to become ordained through the Universal Life Church.

Once ordained, I did absolutely nothing with my ordination for several years. In 1994, however, I decided to get into the wedding business and booked my first wedding. From then until now, I’ve probably done at least 600 weddings.

In 1998, I decided to write a book about weddings. I had it in my mind that ULC ministers would be the perfect ones to benefit from such a book as I had in mind, so I wrote it, published it, then contacted the largest ULC site on the web at the time and offered my book. He bought a box and promised to put it up. After several years, nothing had been posted on the site about my book, so I offered my assistance in putting it up myself.

In mid-2002, I began volunteering with the ULC site, improving the site, adding new features and content, answering long-ignored emails and more. I also published a second book called ‘Weddings, Funerals and Rites of Passage.’ It didn’t take long for me to see that the ministers were not being treated well and were not being trained properly.

Having been through Seminary myself, I recognized the need for training. I was getting many emails asking, essentially, “I’m ordained; now what do I do?” So I thought about starting a Seminary. My goal was to give people an option for learning about how to be ministers. I wanted to change the image of ULC ministers as being more than ‘internet ministers’ or ‘mail-order ministers.’ I wanted ULC ministers to be proud of what they were doing and what they were working towards.

In 2004, I launched the ULC Seminary and have been working ever since to increase the training and education of ULC ministers worldwide.

One of the best things I’ve found about doing the Seminary is how good I feel helping people. I’ve never considered myself a selfish person, but I also never considered myself someone who’s main focus is helping others either. What I have found though, and this may seem obvious, is that as I give, so shall I receive. Simple, yet true.

I get the most amazing emails from people. One woman wrote to say she’d taken the Spirit Quest course and it had saved her marriage. She had been ready to give up, but after reading a few of the lessons, decided to hang on a little longer. Now she’s working towards forgiveness and happiness. There have been others who I’ve met who I can tell don’t necessarily have too many other people to talk to – so they talk to me. I’m pleased to be able to be there for them and I generally find them to be very interesting individuals.

I’ve found that over the last couple of years, I seem to find it much easier and more natural to give – and by that I mean not only things, but information, compliments and love. My self-created job is to give support and validation to people I don’t necessarily know and I’ve found that I love it. The more I give, the more my light seems to shine. I find that I am attracting kind people around me. I’m finding that I feel generally loved and appreciated more than I ever have in my life and that I truly look forward to every new thing I can create and share with the Seminary congregation at large.

I have found great passion for what I do and I look forward to what the next step on my journey will bring. Thank you all for being there and for being who you are.

Please check out the new courses on the seminary page. The Mystical Christianity course is wonderful, as well as the Shamanism course. And the Metaphysical Healing is very interesting as well.

As always, I appreciate having you as a member of the ULC Seminary. I do my best to keep things fresh for you all and appreciate all your suggestions, assistance and input.

If there's anything I can do to help, please let me know by writing to amy@ulcseminary.org.

Amy Long

ULC Seminary Director

*******************************

The Universal Life Church is a comprehensive and affordable online seminary where we have classes in Christianity, a beginning course on  Wicca, as well as a beginning course on  Paganism, two courses in Metaphysics and much more.

Ordination with the Universal Life Church, is a free and lifetime ordination, so use the Free Online Ordination, button. We also make available many free wedding ceremonies for your use, as well as funeral ceremonies and other types of ceremonies.

 

The  ULC, run by Rev. Long, has created a chaplaincy program where you can earn the coveted title of Chaplain. We also have a huge selection of Universal Life Church materials to help you with your professionalism and confidence.  I've been ordained with the Universal Life Church for many years and it's Seminary since the beginning and an amazed by the frequent upgrades and new functions of the seminary.
 

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Universal Life Church

UNIVERSAL LIFE CHURCH MAILINGS ARCHIVE - SEPTEMBER 2007

Hello!

Well, I have some good news and I have some bad news. It's actually the same news, so it's really a matter of perspective. I'm going to be extending the deadline for the Who's Who book at least through the end of September.

The good news part of this is that I'm finding a whole bunch of new ULC ministers to share this information with. I underestimated the amount of time it would take to spread the word. Please put the link information or book information on your websites or in your yahoo groups or other forums. I would love to see this be a huge success, and I really need your help.

The bad news (for me) is that my book printer seems to have gone belly-up, so I need to find a new printer. That's another reason for the change in deadline. If any of you know of any good book printers, I'd love to have the company's contact info.

I also want to have as many people as possible in this book and I've had quite a few people ask me to extend the deadline for financial reasons or time constraints. I want the book to have as many people in it who wish to be a part of it, so I want to do whatever I can to accommodate that. If financial concerns are an issue, I'm happy to spread the payments out for you, so please feel free to ask. You can send several post-dated checks or we can make another arrangement. I would hate to have money stand in the way of your being in the book. As a reminder, the cost for the one page is $50, which includes one page of text, a picture (high resolution) and two copies of the finished book. Extra copies of the finished book are $15.

I have already received quite a few wonderful stories. What I'm finding interesting is that most (if not all -- I haven't read all of them yet) are talking more about their experience with ULC and how it changed their lives, as opposed to the 'horn-tooting' that so many are concerned about.

Please, when you do send your picture, send one with as high a resolution as possible. They will look much better in the book if they are higher resolution. If you sent one that is low resolution, please send me a new one.

So, for now, I'm extending the deadline for another month. I'll extend it again if I have to, but I'd like to get this show on the road. Once I have a substantial number of participants, we'll go to press. Be sure to get your submission in as soon as possible, so you can be sure to be included. And please let me know of anyone else you think qualifies for inclusion in the book. You can add them yourself at _____ or just send me their email and I can add them myself.

As for other news, of course we have some. We are launching a new seminary course. The Dr. of Shamanism Course is back! It's a brand new course, written by a new author. Bishop Pat has written many things for us before and is an excellent author. He is very generously donating this course to the Seminary, which will allow us more money to have more clerical help for the Seminary. Right now, the website upkeep and adding of new programs and materials falls entirely on me. Josh Copeland maintains our forum (and does a great job!) and we have Monica doing the bulk of the orders, with Jon, our cardmaker, taking care of those. Headquarters sends the credentials. But still, I could use some help with the course, the blogs and the RSS feed, and the extra money from the donated course will let me hire Monica to help add new sermons to our weekly sermon page and weekly Sunday School lessons to the new Sunday School Lesson feature as well.

Oh, did I mention that we now have a new weekly Sunday School feature? You can go to http://www.ulcseminary.org/sundayschool.php and sign up for this free service. Once a week, we will send you a Sunday School lesson that you can share with your children or your congregation. This is similar to the Religious Sermon feature that I talked about a few weeks ago.

To see all of the courses we have to offer, go to Seminary Courses, which lists all of the courses. We have a lot of amazing courses, so take a look in case you've missed any of the recent mailings. This is also your last chance to take the Islamic Studies course, as it ends on the first of September. Please sign up and reserve your spot.

Lastly, we have a new product -- Photo ID cards. You can get a ULC ID card with your picture on it, but please, if you do, send a very high resolution picture. Keep it big. People are sending in tiny, little, shrunk for the web, pictures which look terrible on the card. So please send large pictures.

I know this one was pretty long, so thanks for hanging in with me!

As always, I appreciate having you as a member of the ULC Seminary. I do my best to keep things fresh for you all and appreciate all your suggestions, assistance and input.

If there's anything I can do to help, please let me know by writing to amy@ulcseminary.org.

Amy Long

ULC Seminary Director

*******************************

The Universal Life Church is a comprehensive and affordable online seminary where we have classes in Christianity, a beginning course on  Wicca, as well as a beginning course on  Paganism, two courses in Metaphysics and much more.

Ordination with the Universal Life Church, is a free and lifetime ordination, so use the Free Online Ordination, button. We also make available many free wedding ceremonies for your use, as well as funeral ceremonies and other types of ceremonies.

 

The  ULC, run by Rev. Long, has created a chaplaincy program where you can earn the coveted title of Chaplain. We also have a huge selection of Universal Life Church materials to help you with your professionalism and confidence.  I've been ordained with the Universal Life Church for many years and it's Seminary since the beginning and an amazed by the frequent upgrades and new functions of the seminary.
 

Try our new free toolbar at: ULC Toolbar

Universal Life Church

UNIVERSAL LIFE CHURCH MAILINGS ARCHIVE - AUGUST 2007

Hello,

As always, we have lots of changes and exciting things going on with the Seminary. The Shamanism program will be back up within the next couple of weeks, so keep an eye out on the Seminary Program page. I will likely send another announcement about it when it goes up.

I have some bad news too. The author of the Islamic Studies program has decided to get the course published and is therefore pulling the program from us. We can, however, offer the program through the end of August. So if you are interested in this course and degree, you have 3 weeks to sign up for it and then it will be permanently gone. The link is here:

For the Who's Who book, we are still looking at an August 31st deadline, but that may be extended depending on interest. Please get your entries in as soon as possible. For information on how to proceed, go to www.ulcseminary.org/whoswho.php.

Since I have been asked these a couple of times, I'll answer the questions here as well:

• The cost is $50.
• You can order through the church store.
• Send a high res. picture in an email
• Please send your bio in an email as well.
• Please send a 1 page bio.
• If you want more than one page, you can pay for two if you like.
• You will receive two copies of the finished book.
• Extra copies are available

I have gotten some great response about the video sermons idea. To reiterate, if you want to videotape yourself doing a sermon, upload it to youtube and send me the youtube link. Then I'll embed it on the website.

Also, as I mentioned before, we now have the option for sermons to be emailed to you once a week. Right now, we only have the Christian ones done, but the S and Pagan ones will be done soon too. I'm going to merge the latter because I don't have enough Pagan ones for its own mailer. If you have a sermon of any kind you'd like to share, send it to guestsermon@ulcseminary.org

The Sunday School mailer will be ready soon as well. One lesson sent once a week. Mostly it has come down to me having enough time to upload them.

We have had the new Shamanism program donated to the Seminary and we're going to use the revenue from that class (and from another upcoming class which has also been donated) to pay for more admin. support. The site requires so much upkeep these days that I just can't keep up!

I'd like to talk again about our new course on Mystical Christianity. It's really fascinating and I think you will enjoy it. You can read a sample of the course at www.ulcseminary.org/mysticalchristianity.php. The details for ordering it can be found here: http://www.ulcseminary.org/oscommere/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=29&products_id=174

We have also launched a new course called The Miracle of Prayer. This course, designated as the Dr. of Spirituality, is written by Loretta Siani, the author of the Dr. of Metaphysics program. As many of you know, she is an excellent instructor and she has created another wonderful course. Check it out at http://www.ulcseminary.org/oscommere/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=29&products_id=175

For those who are concerned that we seem to have a plethora of Christian programs, rest-assured that our goals have not changed -- we want to teach our ministers as much as possible about all types of religions. We will soon have a course on both Shamanism and counseling. We have hopes of creating a chaplaincy program that can be another option for our seminary students.

Obviously, I'm back from vacation and back to work. For those of you who have had a delay in receiving any of your materials due to my absence, I do appreciate your patience.

There are many of you who are on the newsletter list, but haven't considered signing up for the Seminary Program. Just to let you know, it's free to sign up and you're under no obligation. As a seminary student, you'll get free samples of all the programs, as well as free mini programs and other readings of interest and you're under no obligation to take courses. Being a student of the Seminary gives you additional credibility as a minister, as well as access to a lot of material that is not available to the casual passerby.

I'd also like to ask that if you haven't put a link to the Seminary on your website, that you please do so. Even though we are the largest of all the ULC sites, with the most pages and most information, we still don't have the top rankings in the search engines. Crazy, but true. We would really really appreciate it.

And if you're not in our directory, please add yourself. If you want to update your information, the default password is 'password'. You can change it once you have an entry.

Keep up the good work!!!

--Amy

*******************************

The Universal Life Church is a comprehensive and affordable online seminary where we have classes in Christianity, a beginning course on  Wicca, as well as a beginning course on  Paganism, two courses in Metaphysics and much more.

Ordination with the Universal Life Church, is a free and lifetime ordination, so use the Free Online Ordination, button. We also make available many free wedding ceremonies for your use, as well as funeral ceremonies and other types of ceremonies.

 

The  ULC, run by Rev. Long, has created a chaplaincy program where you can earn the coveted title of Chaplain. We also have a huge selection of Universal Life Church materials to help you with your professionalism and confidence.  I've been ordained with the Universal Life Church for many years and it's Seminary since the beginning and an amazed by the frequent upgrades and new functions of the seminary.
 

Try our new free toolbar at: ULC Toolbar

Universal Life Church

UNIVERSAL LIFE CHURCH MAILINGS ARCHIVE - JULY 2007

Hello!

We have been having so many exciting and new things happening lately through the Seminary, that I haven't even had a chance to write a new regular newsletter, so I hope you will excuse this simple note.

As you know, we are well on our way with the Who's Who book for the ULC. We have decided to extend the deadline to get your submission in, to August 14th, 2007. As it turns out, I'll be on vacation during the last week of July and first week of August, so I won't be able to process all of the submissions right away anyway. I figured that I might as well extend the deadline. :)

Information is available for how to be included at ___. If you haven't already, please take the time to submit your registration fee and get me your story and picture as soon as possible so I can get a clear idea how many people are interested. I hope to have between 200 and 300 people in it. A hardback book has been requested, but this costs a lot more, so I need more participants to make it a reality.

I'd like to talk again about our new course on Mystical Christianity. It's really fascinating and I think you will enjoy it. You can read a sample of the course at www.ulcseminary.org/mysticalchristianity.php. The details for ordering it can be found here: http://www.ulcseminary.org/oscommere/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=29&products_id=174

We have also launched a new course called The Miracle of Prayer. This course, designated as the Dr. of Spirituality, is written by Loretta Siani, the author of the Dr. of Metaphysics program. As many of you know, she is an excellent instructor and she has created another wonderful course. Check it out at http://www.ulcseminary.org/oscommere/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=29&products_id=175

Another new feature we have is in the Religious Sermon section. (http://www.ulcseminary.org/sermonReligious.php) If you'd like to receive a new sermon every week by email, sign up for this free service. We have a lot of sermons posted on the site, but not everyone has time to sit online, so we have offered an email alternative. We will soon have that available for the other sermon sections as well.

Soon, I'll also have that option for the Sunday School lessons. I have a lot of lessons waiting to be posted, but I don't always have the time, so I thought I'd upload them as a weekly email to those who are interested in instructing the young in religious and spiritual matters.

As always, I appreciate having you as a member of the ULC Seminary. I do my best to keep things fresh for you all and appreciate all your suggestions, assistance and input.

If there's anything I can do to help, please let me know by writing to amy@ulcseminary.org.

Amy Long

ULC Seminary Director

*******************************

The Universal Life Church is a comprehensive and affordable online seminary where we have classes in Christianity, a beginning course on  Wicca, as well as a beginning course on  Paganism, two courses in Metaphysics and much more.

Ordination with the Universal Life Church, is a free and lifetime ordination, so use the Free Online Ordination, button. We also make available many free wedding ceremonies for your use, as well as funeral ceremonies and other types of ceremonies.

 

The  ULC, run by Rev. Long, has created a chaplaincy program where you can earn the coveted title of Chaplain. We also have a huge selection of Universal Life Church materials to help you with your professionalism and confidence.  I've been ordained with the Universal Life Church for many years and it's Seminary since the beginning and an amazed by the frequent upgrades and new functions of the seminary.
 

Try our new free toolbar at: ULC Toolbar

Universal Life Church

Universal Life Church Announcements - June 2007
Hello,

I have several big things to announce. The first is we have yet another new course. I'm really pleased with the direction that the seminary has been taking. In the last couple of months, we've released the metaphysical healing course, the course on Islamic Studies and now, a new course about the Life of the Apostle Paul.

If you are interested in studying some of the origins of Christianity, you'll love this course. The address for the sample of the first lesson is www.ulcseminary.org/stpaulsample.php. There's also a brief description on the seminary program page.

It's exciting to see so many new courses coming our way. I have just had submitted to me a class on Mary Magdalene as well. Keep your eyes peeled for that one.

Anoher great thing is that we have another graduate from the Seminary program! Lucinda Parker has just completed her Master of Ministry and I expect to have her information posted soon.

If you are a serious student of the Christian religion, you'll also want to download the free course by Rev. Hook. There's a link at the bottom of the seminary program page or you can download it directly at http://www.ulcseminary.org/OmegaDawn/OmegaDawn1.zip and the second one at: http://www.ulcseminary.org/OmegaDawn/OmegaDawn2.zip.

The last announcement is about something that is really important to me. As you know, the goal of the Seminary, since its inception, is to improve the credibility and skill level of our ministers. We are making great strides with that. I have an idea for something that will take it one step further.

I'd like to put together a ULC book of 'Who's Who'. I have information about it at www.ulcseminary.org/whoswho.php. What it will be is a book that all ULC ministers are welcome to participate in. Each minister would get one full page to talk about themselves, probably with space for a picture. I will give some sample questions to answer to give your bio some form (if you like) and I'm happy to help anyone with the writing who needs it.

My feeling is that a professional book on who's who can lend you credibility with your potential clients, as well as give you a place to document your journey. We all have a story to tell and it's a rare opportunity to find a place to tell it.

Please check it out and if you're interested, sign up for the newsletter that will be discussing the details as they unfold. I need to find out the interest level on this project before I take it any further, so the number of sign-ups on the newsletter will affect that. We need at least 100 people to make it happen, but more would only add weight and substance to the overall project. Signing up for the information does not obligate you in any way, but please only sign up if you think it's something that really interests you.

If you have comments or questions about the project, of course drop me a line at amy@ulcseminary.org. Please read the information on the page first before writing.

Rev. Amy Long

Program Director,

www.ulcseminary.org

*******************************

The Universal Life Church is a comprehensive and affordable online seminary where we have classes in Christianity, a beginning course on  Wicca, as well as a beginning course on  Paganism, two courses in Metaphysics and much more.

Ordination with the Universal Life Church, is a free and lifetime ordination, so use the Free Online Ordination, button. We also make available many free wedding ceremonies for your use, as well as funeral ceremonies and other types of ceremonies.

 

The  ULC, run by Rev. Long, has created a chaplaincy program where you can earn the coveted title of Chaplain. We also have a huge selection of Universal Life Church materials to help you with your professionalism and confidence.  I've been ordained with the Universal Life Church for many years and it's Seminary since the beginning and an amazed by the frequent upgrades and new functions of the seminary.
 

Try our new free toolbar at: ULC Toolbar