Today in the Mission Yearbook - The limits of forgiveness

Author and lecturer Kaya Oakes is the most recent guest on ‘A Matter of Faith’

September 18, 2024

Kaya Oakes

Kaya Oakes’ new book “Not So Sorry: Abusers, False Apologies, and the Limits of Forgiveness,” which was published by Broadleaf Books, made her the logical choice to recently appear on “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” to talk about forgiveness in faith communities.

“One thing that doesn’t happen a lot in faith spaces is we don’t talk about what we mean when we say ‘forgiveness,’” Oakes told hosts Simon Doong and the Rev. Lee Catoe. “We assume we’re all on the same page and we know what it means to say, ‘I forgive you’ or ‘I’m asking for forgiveness from somebody.’ What does that actually mean? Does it mean severing a relationship? Taking space from somebody? Moving past something? Forgetting?”

Furthermore, considering deep societal issues such as racism and the nation’s incarceration rate, “What do we mean when we talk about, ‘Can I forgive an institution?’ Churches are wrestling with this, too,” she said. “I think it helps to define what are we talking about when we talk about forgiveness.”

Oakes is an author and senior lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley. Listen to the 52-minute conversation Oakes had with Catoe and Doong here.

Catoe asked her about how she classifies what he called “cheap forgiveness.” He asked Oakes: What does the process of forgiveness look like for you?

“I’m glad you used the word ‘process,’ because a lot of the time we expect forgiveness to be instantaneous,” she said. “We don’t realize when you ask someone for forgiveness, you’re putting the burden on them, and they have to decide pretty quickly whether to give it or not. We don’t give people a lot of time to decide if they’re going to forgive, and that’s a really big problem.”

Forgiveness is a spiritual and psychological process, and sometimes it’s a physical process, too, “because trauma resides in the body,” she noted. “Sometimes when people are asked for forgiveness, they have to revisit the traumatic experience, which can be very difficult.”

“I can imagine one can forgive somebody but also want to see that person held accountable,” Doong said. If the institution isn’t able to do that, it can impact people’s willingness to enter into the process, he said.

“A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” with the Rev. Lee 

Catoe and Simon Doong drops each Thursday.

A recent op-ed from a member of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission “talks about this very topic: what is forgiveness, and who is it for?” Oakes said. The op-ed argues that being forgiven “is the beginning of systemic change,” but Oakes has her doubts, especially in institutions including the church.

“Christians unfortunately use forgiveness as an excuse to sweep things under the rug, and as a result, accountability is ill-defined,” she said. “I think we need to be more specific in our conversations about accountability, whether that’s an individual or an institution.”

Because our society is so litigious, often “the outcome is settled in a court of law, and so much of it is financial,” Oakes said. The message becomes, “Here’s some money and that should solve the problem. There’s a gap that happens between thinking about it and actually doing something.”

“From what I know about your denomination, there’s a lot of different people involved in the decision-making process, and as a result it gets more complicated and it takes longer for action to happen,” she said. In her book, Oakes explains the Mennonite process of bringing people back into the community after they’ve wronged somebody. “It’s more time-consuming, but it’s more specific, she said. “The end goal of forgiveness is bringing the person back into the community. Other denominations are not that specific about what the action is going to be.”

“I think we put pressure on marginalized communities to forgive wrongs because it enables us to feel like history is over and it doesn’t continue today, and the legacy of these historical harms is done. It’s tragic,” she said, “because it makes forgiveness feel like something that ends a story, rather than being the beginning of a bigger conversation about grace, compassion, and individual and systemic change.”

New episodes of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” drop every Thursday. Listen to previous editions here.

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Today’s Focus: Author and lecturer Kaya Oakes is guest on ‘A Matter of Faith’

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Elizabeth Sanders, Customer Service Representative, Presbyterian Publishing Corporation 
Natarsha Sanders, Associate for Intercultural Leadership Development & Recruitment, Racial Equity and Women’s Intercultural Ministries, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray

Holy God, thank you for the privilege of planting and watering the ministries that you give to us. We marvel at the growth you provide. Give us a hunger to live in the fields and to bend down low to gather the fruits of the Spirit you provide as we move in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Jesus and jazz in the wilderness

Endless Field musician Ike Sturm is a guest on the ‘New Way’ podcast

September 17, 2024

“What’s the worst that could happen?” musician Ike Sturm asked his co-composer and bandmate, Jesse Lewis, as they stood with their instruments and recording gear on top of a glacier in Alaska.

Lewis answered, “There’s a lot on the line, actually.” Sturm and Lewis make up the atmospheric jazz and folk acoustic duo Endless Field. Lewis, a guitarist, and Sturm, a bassist, compose and record songs out in the wild.

Sturm is also the convener of a new worshiping community that meets in the Times Square neighborhood of New York City. He was a recent guest on the 1001 New Worshiping Communities movement’s podcast, “New Way,” hosted by the Rev. Sara Hayden and produced by the Rev. Marthame Sanders.

Hayden described Sturm, who has “recorded everywhere from Denali to Acadia and in between,” as “living intentionally in the balance of wild and tame and responding to both poles by integrating the experiences into thoughtful and transformative gatherings and compositions.” As their podcast conversation reveals, Sturm approaches worship and community as thoughtful and transformative gatherings and compositions as well.

In the first of two episodes titled “Finding Our Way Home: A Conversation with Ike Sturm,” Sturm discussed the evolution of his path as a musician and how it coincides with his understanding of faith.

“The last two summers, we’ve been in Alaska scouting, and then last year we went and filmed an entire project,” said Sturm, who talked about the process he and Lewis used to challenge themselves as musicians through longer compositions in more remote locations. “We actually wrote everything in the moment and in the spaces.”

Sturm also described how long it took Lewis and him to hike up a glacier with their gear and set up and compose the music in the space before recording. “It was very raw.” Sturm said he could feel God moving them even while feeling “really freaked out to do it.” Sturm described a point at which they realized, “Wow, we have everything we need. Everything is right here and inside us and around us.”

In the second episode, “Endless Field: More with Ike Sturm,” he and Hayden discussed how to understand Jesus through a jazz framework and break God out of institutional boxes.

“We like to kind of institutionalize Jesus, or we like to put him in these very understandable spaces, and it’s just not how it was,” said Sturm, who describes how he likes to imagine “who would Jesus be hanging out with in my little framework, in my little community. And I always try to take a hint from that and be like, ‘Oh, this cat.’ That’s what I would say in my jazz language for ‘This is the person.’”

“How can I be loved being that way?” Sturm asked when he considers the “pretty funky combination of different things” that he or “that cat” is.

Inspired by the image of an “endless field,” Hayden called Sturm’s approach to music in open spaces and community with all sentient beings beautiful, open and generous. “I see the endlessness of this field of God holding this space where we can find ourselves at any point. If the field is endless and we are all in the field, then it’s OK to be at countless and infinite places in that space, within that space,” said Hayden. “We can find and connect with one another. It’s such a beautiful and open way to foster spirituality, foster a sense of self-awareness and deeper connection to the people in our lives and even the creatures in our lives, the non-human beings we’re surrounded by and fed and uplifted by and nurtured by. It’s so generous.”

Beth Waltemath, Communications Strategist, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Today’s Focus: Endless Field musician Ike Sturm is a guest on the ‘New Way’ podcast

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Yvette Russell, Vice President, Customer Engagement, Board of Pensions 
Alicia Samuels, Vice President of eCommerce & Marketing & Flyaway Books Editorial, Presbyterian Publishing Corporation 

Let us pray

Almighty God, our Creator and Sustainer, you provide richly for your people and for the mission of Jesus Christ. Anoint us with your Spirit that we might trust your word and hear the good news of Christ to the nations. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Getting organized without getting partisan

The Rev. Dr. Aaron Stauffer is a recent guest on the ‘A Matter of Faith’ podcast

September 16, 2024

The Rev. Dr. Aaron Stauffer

Are there elements of community organizing that churches can learn from?

That was among the questions the hosts of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” had for the Rev. Dr. Aaron Stauffer, Director of Online and Lifelong Learning and the Associate Director of the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice at the Vanderbilt Divinity School during a recent episode. Listen to Stauffer’s 55-minute conversation with Simon Doong and the Rev. Lee Catoe here.

“The question of polarization is exactly where to start,” said Stauffer, author of the book “Listening to the Spirit: The Radical Social Gospel, Sacred Value, and Broad-Based Community Organizing,” an academic work that carries this discount code: AAFLYG6. Stauffer begins his book recounting a listening campaign he helped a congregation engage where the pastor told his flock, “I want to make sure everyone knows this is not a political meeting.”

“He told me later that some in the congregation were fearful we were encouraging the congregants to vote a particular way. I said, ‘You know, that’s partisanship. That’s not politics,’” Stauffer said. Politics is “about the contestation and the production, consumption and distribution of the things we hold in common,” such as health care and education, he said, and “Christian faith is deeply concerned about that.”

People often conflate partisanship and politics, according to Stauffer, “instead of thinking about how my local community is really doing or what are the statewide policies that are hurting my neighbors or myself. What are the federal policies that I really need to be concerned about? Politics is something that’s at the heart of our collective life, and Christian faith and the Christian tradition have something to say about that.”

“A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” with the Rev. Lee 

Catoe and Simon Doong drops each Thursday.

For churches, the work is about building “relationships of liberation and love,” he said. A benefit is that community organizing efforts often build strong churches. “It’s about developing people and building leaders,” he said, and in many churches, that leader is the congregation’s matriarch, “the one who in their very person holds the identity of the community.”

In the Kansas church where Stauffer grew up, “if I wanted to get something done, I went to Sally. I didn’t go to the pastor. Sally had been there for 40-plus years. Sally got things done,” he told Doong and Catoe. “More often than not, the pastor took orders from Sally. That’s just how it worked.”

After Stauffer completed his undergraduate studies, he spent a year in the Young Adult Volunteer program in San Antonio, Texas, working with the Industrial Areas Foundation, which was founded by famed community organizer Saul Alinsky. “It was hard work. It really kicked my butt,” he said. A senior organizer there told him that organizing “is about building power.”

“There are really important lessons in faith traditions and in churches that can help organizers organize better. Many people organize because of their faith values,” Stauffer said. “It’s listening to God who’s calling us into deeper relationship with each other and pushing us out into the public. You move inward into the congregation and then out into the public.”

Organizing is different from protest, Stauffer said, and power “is effective only if it is grounded in relationships. It takes time attending to the human who’s next to you.” He called that “the practical, mundane aspect of organizing. These are very sacred spaces. It’s pastoral in a lot of ways.”

Some organizations — even some churches — engage in “purity politics. If you don’t do this, you’re not radical enough,” Stauffer said. “That’s just not going to work. It’s not democratic or inclusive.” When he did anti-Islamophobia work as a seminarian, Stauffer heard an evangelical pastor say, “I feel called by Jesus to quit this hate in my heart.”

“I had never heard a progressive pastor speak that honestly about their own prejudices, their own Islamophobia, their own anything,” he said.

New editions of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” drop every Thursday. Listen to previous episodes here.

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Today’s Focus: Rev. Dr. Aaron Stauffer is a recent guest on the ‘A Matter of Faith’ podcast

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Carol Rusciano, FDN Trust Officer, Presbyterian Foundation 
Joseph Russ, Mission co-worker, Coordinator for Migration Issues, Advocacy & Mission with the Northern Triangle, Presbyterian Mission Agency 

Let us pray

Gracious and loving God, give us humble hearts so that we can recognize the gifts of others and encourage the use of those gifts for the building up of your church for the fulfillment of your mission. In the name of the One we call Teacher, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Minute for Mission: Evangelism Sunday

September 15, 2024

In May 2022, Wilmington Kitchen Collective in New Castle 

Presbytery held its grand opening. More than 200 people turned 

out to celebrate. (Photo by Cindy Kohlmann)

Picking up on his previous day’s theme of faith communities and mid councils “seeing beyond the standalone model of being church,” Dr. Corey Schlosser-Hall told the 540 or so people attending Synod School that he talked to several attendees about how they’re “creatively using God’s resources to be a blessing beyond themselves.”

One church is in the early stages of using its property to build housing needed in the community. Another church makes its commercial kitchen available for small businesses to bake items for sale.

One ministry Schlosser-Hall, deputy executive director of Vision, Innovation and Rebuilding in the Presbyterian Mission Agency, has been following is the Wilmington Kitchen Collective in New Castle Presbytery. The collective began when a congregation partnered with a worshiping community who had connections with food vendors. The collective, which has a long waiting list of culinary entrepreneurs waiting to enter the program, has four goals:

• Provide low-cost shared kitchen facilities for growing food-based businesses.
• Increase access to capital and startup grants for entrepreneurs.
• Increase access to training and business development for entrepreneurs.
• Build a community of culinary entrepreneurs to support and encourage one another on their journey.

“The business development and economic support is important to us because we have heard over and over again from our entrepreneurs that space is not enough,” the Rev. Chelsea Spyres, the collective’s executive director, said during a 2022 webinar. “To launch and do business well in the startup phase, they need more support and resources,” including micro grants and business development coaching.

“We are not business experts,” Spyres said of Wilmington Kitchen Collective. “But we have a lot of connections in the community. We are more than a kitchen space.”

Yees Ku Oo Dancers presented a song of celebration at the 

conclusion of the service of apologies and responses Oct. 8, 2023, 

at Kunéix Hídi Northern Light United Church in Juneau, Alaska. 

(Photo by Rich Copley)

Schlosser-Hall went over some of the statistics from the PC(USA)’s 1001 New Worshiping Communities that show of the 800 worshiping communities started over the past dozen years, 600 are still providing ministry. “That’s a much higher ratio than most innovation that happens,” he said.

New worshiping communities in the PC(USA) worship in 17 languages. Forty percent are multicultural. Seventy-eight percent of people involved with worshiping communities are under the age of 55.

“This is happening in your neighborhood,” Schlosser-Hall said. “You are providing the resources and encouragement and engagement.” He said his prayer is that “we keep learning from each other and the synergy becomes infectious.”

However, even with all that imagination and innovation going on, there are places that many of us are not paying attention to, he said: the places where relationships are broken.

“The Church has been a place that caused harm for others. People are at odds with one another, and reconciliation has to happen,” he said. “When shalom is not present, there is distrust and suspicion that often keeps us stuck.”

When Schlosser-Hall was a new presbytery executive, his mentor told him that in the last 10 years of his ministry, 10 nearby congregations had shut down. Each of the closed churches had an instance of sexual misconduct unresolved and unaddressed, Schlosser-Hall said. “The suspicion and mistrust led to the spiral of inability to relate well to the community,” he said, “and the church ended up closing.”

“In our past as a denomination, there have been many ways where our theology and missional practice has harmed others,” and Schlosser-Hall showed this video to help Synod Schoolers understand one such case. The video tells the story of the 225th General Assembly directing an official apology and reparations for the racist manner in which Memorial Presbyterian Church in Juneau, Alaska, was closed in 1963.

“As we were working with the congregation on what reparative actions they would take to seek to reconcile this, we had to listen closely to what the folks who were experiencing the harm needed from this relationship,” Schlosser-Hall said. “Out of that listening came pages of compelling future-oriented cooperation in ministry. It released imagination that had long been dormant about what we might do next.”

“It’s not about events,” Schlosser-Hall said of the October 2023 apology and reparations. “It’s about relationships.”

Mike Ferguson, Presbyterian News Service

Today’s Focus: Evangelism Sunday

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Cindy Rubin, Administrative Assistant, Ministry Engagement & Support, Administrative Services Group (A Corp) 
Gabrialla Rudovic, Housekeeper, Stony Point Center, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray

Loving God, we want to love as you love. Please make us executors of justice, lovers of strangers, and providers of food, medicine, clothing and shelter. As you give us resources and directions, we will follow your examples. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Modeling faith at home

The Rev. Neema Cyrus-Franklin of Around the Table is a guest on the ‘New Way’ podcast

September 14, 2024

The Rev. Neema Cyrus-Franklin, Around the Table’s project coordinator for its nationwide initiative supporting faith practices in the home, recently appeared as a guest on the “New Way” podcast.

Cyrus-Franklin is a pastor, parent, part of a clergy couple, an advocate for youth, a certified coach, a trauma-informed yoga instructor and a group facilitator. The “New Way” podcast is hosted by the Rev. Sara Hayden, associate for the 1001 New Worshiping Communities movement, and produced by the Rev. Marthame Sanders of Mudeif Productions.

In the first of two episodes, “Modeling Lives of Faithful Transparency,” Cyrus-Franklin discussed the “third phase” of her ministry and reflected on how God has been faithful in the midst of constant change and flux.

As a preacher’s kid, Cyrus-Franklin described a childhood surrounded by a household of faith and a community of faith with parents who expressed their faith publicly.

“My dad’s a Presbyterian pastor. I’m not one of those who didn’t grow up with faith in the home,” Cyrus-Franklin said as she described how affected she was by her parents’ practice of “casting our cares” (1 Peter 5:7). “My parents were very intentional about showing us and not hiding the concerns, problems, issues that they faced as ministry leaders, as parents and as folks who had bills to pay.” In front of her and her siblings, her mother talked to the Lord out loud in plain language while doing household chores. “My dad was the pastor, but my mother was the practical theologian at home,” Cyrus-Franklin said.

As an adult, Cyrus-Franklin answered the call to ministry and found the constantly changing landscape of contemporary congregational ministry. She found herself called upon to be creative and offer solutions to new situations, especially regarding supporting the faith formation of families.

In the second episode, “The Gift and Challenge of Parenting in the Faith,” Cyrus-Franklin, who lives in Los Angeles, described the challenges of parenting children in a world where gun violence in schools and racist crimes and policing policies are an ever-present reality. She also discussed some of the ways her spiritual practices have evolved through life’s difficulties and the surprising ways the faith she models has empowered her kids.

Cyrus-Franklin brings her experience to her work with the Around the Table initiative. She shares insights through the Around the Table blog and will be launching online cohorts of others involved in supporting faith formation in communities and in the home in the fall of 2025 and the spring of 2026. Around the Table also offers resources like a faith practices toolkit with offerings on prayer, Sabbath, hospitality, service and retreat. The initiative is also developing ways to explore topics like holy listening, mental health, sharing individual stories and God’s story, and trauma-informed parenting.

“We’re looking to work with individuals to help us to craft a way forward in this new, untraversed terrain,” said Cyrus-Franklin. “We call this initiative Around the Table. It’s a callback to the table because most people aren’t gathering around the table.”

Time together may not be traditional, but it can be intentional and formational, according to Cyrus-Frankin, who described the initiative as “a place where we can learn, because what we know for sure is the way that we’ve done ministry in the past is not going to be the way forward for how ministry is done in the future.”

Beth Waltemath, Communications Strategist, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Today’s Focus: Rev. Neema Cyrus-Franklin of Around the Table is a guest on the ‘New Way’ podcast

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Jermaine Ross-Allam, Director, Center for Repair of Historical Harms Visioning, Rebuilding, and Innovation, Presbyterian Mission Agency 
Jashalund Royston, Research Analyst II, Research Services, Administrative Services Group (A Corp) 

Let us pray

Loving God, open our hearts and minds to the leading of your Spirit that we may continue to grow in faith and knowledge. Guide us as together we study your work and word. May we respond with dedication and commitment in the places to which you call us and send us. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Howard University School of Divinity dean offers ways to use prophetic preaching to be heard in a tone-deaf culture

Dr. Kenyatta Gilbert speaks to New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C.

September 13, 2024

Dr. Kenyatta GIlbert

Dr. Kenyatta Gilbert, a nationally recognized expert on African American preaching and the dean of Howard University School of Divinity, shared his thinking on “Prophetic Preaching in a Tone-Deaf Culture” during a recent online presentation for New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. Watch Gilbert’s talk, which was  followed by a question-and-answer session, here.

Gilbert, who’s taught homiletics at Howard’s School of Divinity since 2006, recalled sitting on a park bench with Walter Brueggemann ahead of Gilbert writing a 2018 piece for Sojourners on the 40th anniversary of Brueggemann’s classic book, “The Prophetic Imagination.” Gilbert asked Brueggemann what advice he had for being prophetic in these times. Brueggemann told Gilbert, “We have to do social analysis better, how to follow the money to see where it creates hurt, and that white people are not very good at social analysis,” Gilbert recalled. The other thing Brueggemann told Gilbert was to “trust the biblical text.”

Much of what Gilbert shared came from his 2018 book, “Exodus Preaching.”

“Writing is first inner work,” Gilbert said. He said he seeks to “get readers to see Jesus rightly” and “give them voice to name reality.” He defined tone deafness as “the failure to perceive incongruities of human experience that is often tied to willful ignorance born of ideological entrenchment.”

He said prophetic preaching “carries a truth-telling agenda.” It’s daring “because it offers a vision of divine intent … among people who appear to be tone deaf and can’t hear a voice outside their own.”

As preachers, “our seeing, if we see anything at all, is revealed through the lens of our experience,” Gilbert said.

Having studied “countless sermons” preached by African American preachers, Gilbert identified four marks of prophetic preaching:

• It unmasks systemic evil.
• It remains “interminably hopeful” when confronted by tragedy and despair.
• It connects speech with action “to help people name their reality.”
• It carries an impulse for beauty, especially in its use of language.

Then Gilbert offered preachers four strategies “to earn a hearing in this tone-deaf culture”:

• Paint a robust picture of Jesus’ “compassionate orientation of justice.”
• Seek to understand the relevant and factual details of political and social happenings. Remember, he said: the preacher is not the only interpreter in the room. The sermon reminds those in worship “that evil and despair have an appointed end.”
• Address controversial topics respectfully without demonizing others. The preacher “has to take the hermeneutic risk of saying what the text says and taking the theologically responsible stand of teaching listeners what a text means and why it matters,” he said.
• Decenter the progressive vs. conservative battle, which Gilbert calls “the idolatry of perspective.” There’s “no one way to parse or see a text. The preacher’s best friend is self-criticism,” he said.

The Rev. Lionel Edmonds, pastor of Mt. Lebanon Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., then engaged Gilbert in some Q&A time. Edmonds led off by asking Gilbert about the causes of spiritual tone-deafness.

“I think the cause centers on the work we do or don’t do,” Gilbert said. “Tone deafness happens when we are excessively busy, and we don’t pray and study to hear from God.”

Edmonds wondered how listeners can aid the preacher if prophetic preaching is more individualized than communal.

“There are often messages that would be more helpful if they were birthed in a community of dialogue,” Gilbert said. “There is nothing corruptive” about inviting others to share in the production process, he said.

Asked to say more about the inner work that must go on before writing, Gilbert labeled it “very difficult to be self-critical when one takes an arrogant posture with respect to what’s required in preaching. I don’t know how you preach well without praying fervently.”

“It’s not just petitioning,” Gilbert said of the preacher’s task. “It’s giving thanks that God would use frail human beings to give a message to people who need to hear it.”

“We all fall short, but that doesn’t mean we are worthless,” Gilbert said. “God decides to use human beings such as ourselves to give a faithful and relevant witness.”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Today’s Focus: Dr. Kenyatta Gilbert, dean of Howard University School of Divinity

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Chris Romine, Associate Mission Director, Racial Equity & Women’s Intercultural Ministries, Presbyterian Mission Agency 
Melanie Roney, Mission Specialist, Asia Office, World Mission, Presbyterian Mission Agency 

Let us pray

Heavenly Father, as you have sent your Son, Jesus Christ, so send your children today to be instruments of reconciliation. Amen.

Ministry Matters - Helpful principles for writing public prayers | Prayer is the end of preaching

What do you feel God is calling you to do with this opportunity for prayer? Helpful principles for writing public prayers by Anne Williams & Steve Langhofer   Coming up with prayers is a labor of love. It doesn’t always come easily, and it can seem to take too long. Some days we think, “I don’t have time to write out my prayer. I’ll just wing it and trust the guidance of the Holy Spirit.” Read here

What is preaching directed to and shaped by, in the end? Prayer is the end of preaching by Thomas H. Trouwer   My goal is to show that when “Praying’s the end of preaching,” prayer is not an escape from the terrifying realities of here and now to a privatized piety, but rather prayer is a different mode of being and doing that engages us with the world in ways that can start and sustain the impulses of transformation. Read here

Bearing our cross through preaching this Sunday Finding elements for worship this coming Sunday

Making connections in prayer and praise for worship this Sunday