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Bonnie Bates

The Reverend Doctor Bonnie Bates currently serves as the Associations Associate for Congregational Vitality and Development for the Eastern Ohio and Western Reserve Associations of the Ohio Conference of the United Church of Christ.  The Reverend Dr. Bonnie Bates received her Masters of Divinity and Doctor of Ministry from Colgate Rochester Divinity School.  The focus of her doctoral work was transformational leadership and her dissertation is titled, Navigating the River of Grief.   She has served churches in New York both as a licensed and ordained minister.  She directed and taught in the Graduate Human Resource Development program at St. John Fisher College in Rochester.  She has worked for several non-profits and has served on several not-for-profit Boards including the Dunkirk Camp and Conference Center in western New York.  She has been an active member of the associations where she has served as well as numerous leadership positions within the New York Conference including its work in becoming a Global Mission conference and designing its current governance structure.   She has recently completed the development and implementation of a Boundary Training model for local congregations.

Her hobbies are singing, reading, fly fishing. She once sang with a national choir in Carnegie Hall, Constitution Hall, the White House, Royal Albert Hall, and a variety of locations in Belgium, France, Switzerland, Austria and Italy.   She and her husband, Steve Vulcheff, have one son Samuel and two grandsons Kiel and Jakob.
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Illustration

Emphasis Preaching Journal

Sermon Illustrations for Christmas 2 (2016) -- Jeremiah 31:7-14, Ephesians 1:3-14, John 1:(1-9) 10-18 -- R. Robert Cueni, Mark Ellingsen, Bob Ove, Bonnie Bates, Bill Thomas, Frank Ramirez, Ron Love -- Second Sunday after Christmas - C
Jeremiah 31:7-14

Sermon

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John Jamison
Object: An old, worn-out shoe and an old banana.

* * *

Hello, everyone! (Let them respond.) Are you ready for our story today? (Let them respond.) Excellent! Let’s get started!

The Immediate Word

Christopher Keating
Thomas Willadsen
Katy Stenta
Mary Austin
George Reed
Dean Feldmeyer
For May 18, 2025:
  • Smoke Gets In Your Eyes by Chris Keating based on Acts 11:1-18 and John 13:31-35. As Peter, popes, pastors, and even pew-sitters learn, change often becomes the smokescreen that conceals deeper conflicts that keep us from loving as Jesus commanded.
  • Second Thoughts: Giving and Accepting Love by Tom Willadsen based on John 13:31-35.

Emphasis Preaching Journal

Mark Ellingsen
Bill Thomas
Frank Ramirez
Bonnie Bates
Acts 11:1-18
Who do we exclude? In the days of the early church, everything was about purity, about the acts that made one a member of the Jewish community first and then a part of “the way” of Jesus. Imagine the horror among the crowds of the faithful when Peter traveled to the Gentiles, to those who did not believe in the one true God before Jesus came into the world. Yet, Peter is clear. He has had a vision and, in that vision, was declared, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” God ordains who is included, not people.
David Kalas
The old idiom claims of certain people, “To know them is to love them.” A variation on the saying might be appropriate when talking about the Lord.  Specifically, we might say that to know him is not merely to love him, but to know that he is love.

This may seem like an unspectacular statement to church folks.  I fear that we are perhaps so accustomed to the affirmation that God is love that we no longer recognize the profundity of it. Or the scandal of it.

StoryShare

John E. Sumwalt
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
‘See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them and be their God;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’
(vv. 3-4)

SermonStudio

Bonnie Bates
We continue this Easter season with the epistolary readings from Revelation. In this reading, we see the final vision of the world to come: the new heaven and the new earth, the new Jerusalem. This is also an apocalyptic vision, the vision the seer shared with us of the end of the world as we know it. This is a writing about a prophetic promise of what is to come at the end of time as we know it. John’s vision is almost complete and we may be comforted by this vision of what is to come.
James Evans
(See Christmas 1, Cycle A; Christmas 1, Cycle B; and Christmas 1, Cycle C for alternative approaches.)

The theme of this psalm is the glory of God. The praise is extravagant and unrestrained. The psalmist makes good use of repetitive themes to drive home the central message of the psalm, namely that God is worthy of praise. The psalmist, with great deliberation, leads worshipers through a litany of causes and effects that demonstrate the praiseworthiness of God.

David Kalas
Professional sports has no statistic for measuring talking. Yet talking can be an important part of the game.

We can measure how fast a player pitches or serves. We keep statistics on batting averages, shooting percentages, and quarterback ratings. We track yards-after-catch, on-base percentages, and shots on goal. We record height and weight, wins-and-losses, and times in the 40-yard dash. But we have no way of measuring a player's talking.
John M. Braaten
It is often difficult for Christians to get past the idea that those who have given themselves to the Lord should be treated a little better than the average woman or man who does not possess a living faith. In other words, there ought to be some kind of return for what you have done for God, for what you have given in time, energy and money. That doesn't sound outrageous, does it? In this "you get what you deserve" world, you really ought to be rewarded. Harmless as that sounds, it is the first step toward a theology of glory.

The Village Shepherd

Janice B. Scott
Prayers usually include these concerns and may follow this sequence:

The Church of Christ

Creation, human society, the Sovereign and those in authority

The local community

Those who suffer

The communion of saints


These responses may be used:


Lord, in your mercy
Hear our prayer
Lord, hear us.
Lord, graciously hear us.

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