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Worshiping Communities
What could your congregation do if it didn’t have to worry about keeping up a building?
“YOU BELONG HERE NO MATTER WHAT,” reads the sign outside Broad Street Ministry, located in the heart of Philadelphia—a city where deep poverty and rapid gentrification exist side by side.
In a world that is less and less biblically literate—and where even people who are already coming to church are by and large unfamiliar with scripture—the Rev. Casey FitzGerald loves to tell the story.
From the outside it’s a very non-descript place—a small building surrounded by buildings that are the homes of Amazon and Microsoft workers.
As the Rev. Dana Vaughn was completing her studies at Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, the Presbyterian Mission Agency (PMA) was innovating several new initiatives designed to allow Vaughn—and a new generation of risk-taking pastors like her—to change and transform the world through their ministries, all while freed from the burden of educational debt.
In Manhattan, a new worshiping community is being formed thanks to a nearly 140-year-old church that has taken seriously its belief that all God’s people are holy. Founded in 1887, Jan Hus Presbyterian Church had always been eager to invite the most marginalized people in the city. But the congregation had dwindled in numbers, down to fewer than 12 worshippers.
The third installment of “Keeping Faith” the video newsletter from Tony De La Rosa, interim executive director of the Presbyterian Mission Agency of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) was published earlier today.
When I began the apprenticeship for 1001 [New Worshiping Communities], my coach and I sat in a diner and I scribbled my vision on the back of a placemat.
New worshiping community housed in a gym promotes physical and spiritual wellness
What could your congregation do if it didn’t have to worry about keeping up a building?
That’s the question Rev. Eneyas Freitas asked when he started a new worshiping community called Urban Connect in Phoenix. His congregation meets at a new event venue called The Vintage 45 in Phoenix’s warehouse district every Sunday morning.