Highlighting worship efforts during the pandemic ranging from high-tech and labor-intensive to one church’s “Call ‘Em All” telephonic approach, Thursday’s webinar on Hybrid Ministry: The Scattered Church was a balm for clergy and worship leaders who’ve struggled mightily with pandemic-induced issues including pastoral care, trauma and self-care.
“If you reach out to people and provide a way for them to use their gifts, God will use that to build community.” That is what the Rev. Debbie Bronkema has learned the past two years.
Some of the best worship and most meaningful preaching the Rev. Landon Whitsitt has seen and heard during the pandemic has come from preachers and other worship leaders willing to share themselves in an authentic way with those attending the online services they’re creating each week.
If “Zoom fatigue” is really a thing, the nearly 200 participants in the second day of the Mid Council Financial Network’s (MCFN) virtual conference showed no traces of this pandemic phenomenon.
The Presbytery of Cincinnati has received a grant of $997,412.00 from Lilly Endowment Inc. to help establish the Living Churches Initiative under the presbytery’s newly-formed Center for Learning.
A couple months ago, which now seems a couple lifetimes ago, a pastor friend described an intentional day away from the tasks of ministry as a “restorative day.” It sounded so lovely … and elusive.
Known for their creativity and their ability to improvise, pastors and church educators are passing along what they’re learning about how to reach and minister to the most senior members of PC(USA) congregations during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Rev. Mike Mather, who along with his longtime friend De’Amon Harges presented Wednesday during the final day of the NEXT Church national gathering, took a walk in South Africa a few years ago with a South African who related a joke about apartheid he’d heard years before.
