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Congregational Vitality
The last Saturday before school starts has come to be known as Back-to-School Fair day for Nottingham Presbyterian Church in Nottingham, Pennsylvania. This year the tradition continues with the 11th annual event set to provide 850 to 900 elementary through high school students in the Greater Oxford Area with grade-specific essentials, allowing financially disadvantaged students to begin the year on an even playing field with their peers.
“If you’re a leader expect sabotage, because sabotage is the experience of every leader trying to bring change. If you’re trying to lead a vital congregation and you haven’t experienced the sabotage of your own people — you will.”
Describing the Israelites’ passage through the wilderness in Exodus and Numbers as a metaphor for challenges the church faces today, Dr. William P. Brownn took 160 people participating in the 2020 Vital Congregations Virtual Gathering on a journey into a place of great danger and extremes — a place where they can encounter God.
On day one of the 2020 Virtual Vital Congregations Gathering on Tuesday, four panelists from Trinity Presbytery described how beginning the two-year VC initiative in January — and its Seven Marks of a Vital Congregation — helped prepare them as church leaders for the pandemic.
As a seminary student I heard a constant refrain from our professors: Jesus came to preach and teach. It was the pretext underlying our whole seminary education as they trained us to preach and teach.
Nearly eight in 10 Americans say houses of worship should be required to follow the same rules about social distancing and large gatherings as other organizations and businesses in their local area, a Pew Research Center released Friday states.
The registration deadline is Monday for the 2020 Vital Congregations annual gathering, being held via Zoom August 18-20.
For congregations across the denomination, is the pandemic an interruption or a disruption?
The Rev. Edwin Gonzalez-Gertz at Light of Hope Presbyterian Church in Marietta, Georgia, says the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s Matthew 25 invitation has given the congregation language to articulate what they’ve been doing for a while — out of necessity.
After the first day of the Vital Congregations virtual facilitator training last week, the Rev. Neil Ricketts spoke with elders at the church he serves.