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Congregational Vitality
The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a tremendous toll on communities of color across the country. And while black and brown people are adversely affected in times of health and economic crisis because of decades of systemic racism and poverty, they remain resilient in their ability to forge ahead despite structural obstacles.
The killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, recent attacks and ridicule of people of Asian descent during the pandemic and many other horrifying examples all point out why the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) must be a Matthew 25 church, even as the coronavirus still keeps many Christians from worshiping and doing ministry in person.
The Office of Vital Congregations will resume weekly Wednesday Zoom conversations at 3 p.m. Eastern Time on May 27.
The Rev. Crawford Brubaker has been to the town he pastors only once, for an interview. It occurred pre-pandemic at nighttime, in the small community of Buckley, Washington, the home of Community Presbyterian Church. At the end of the interview, Brubaker said the pastor nominating committee told him to come back in three weeks to preach so they could “see the goods.”
Congregations looking for ways to be the church together during and even after the pandemic might well find what they’re looking for in the early church practice of house churches.
Chicago pastor says crucial clergy values are empathy and effectiveness by Mike Ferguson | Presbyterian News Service LOUISVILLE — Asked what’s made her come alive during the pandemic and the… Read more »
Nick Pickrell, organizer of The Open Table KC, has never set foot in a seminary. But after five years co-leading this new worshiping community in Kansas City, he’s going through the process of becoming a commissioned ruling elder. “I wanted to be more connected to the PC(USA) denomination,” he says in the new 1001 Worshiping Communities video, “Becoming Presbyterian.”
The Rev. Nikki Collins has been aware of the concept of empowering servant leadership since her high school days, when a teacher brought in a prominent community leader to speak to Collins and her classmates about what it means to be a servant leader.
In the latest edition of Everyday God-Talk, So Jung Kim, associate for Theology in the Presbyterian Mission Agency’s Office of Theology & Worship, visits with Jaco Hamman, a PC(USA) ordained pastor who’s a professor at the Vanderbilt Divinity School.
As a scientist and science lover since he was a child, Fred Hanna has always found the disconnect between science and religion to be odd, if not utterly horrifying. Once in his early 30s he was having a conversation about dinosaurs with a Christian who told him, “Dinosaurs aren’t real. They were made up. Science made them up.”
