Each Sunday for the past few weeks, the Rev. Robert Felix has been giving parishioners at Chandler Presbyterian Church in Chandler, Arizona, real answers to honest questions. The way he goes about providing those answers — producing a short film each week based on a top faith question identified on Google Trends, then discussing the film and the question together — has proven to be an effective and innovative platform for, as he says, “figuring out how we share the gospel in Chandler and the world.”
In episode two of the first official season of Everyday God-talk, host So Jung Kim uses the lens of Reformed theology to face what she calls “an inconvenient truth.”
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.
