Today in the Mission Yearbook - ‘I stir the pot a little to promote creativity’

Those who help make house churches thrive share a few of their secrets

October 5, 2020

The Revs. Aaron and Ayana Teter of All Saints Community of Faith in Pittsburgh share their experiences during a Thursday webinar on house churches. (Contributed photo)

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.

How Presbyterians in house church settings are ministering to one another was the topic of a recent 1001 New Worshiping Communities webinar, which can be viewed here. About 50 people participated, including a handful of pastors and other leaders with house church experience to share.

“As we gather people online, we can experience deeply in small groups,” said the Rev. Taeler Morgan of Gather Tacoma in Washington state, a community that’s used to meeting around dinner and worship.

A house church “is less of a location and more of a style,” she said. Recently worshipers have gathered in creative places where they can practice social distancing, including parks. “In this time, even in the first phase of (state-approved) gathering, we can help people be the church in that small gathering,” Morgan said.

Families gather in their homes for dinner, then join others at Gather Tacoma for online worship and discussion. Morgan or another leader often asks discussion-starting questions, such as, “What is God doing in me, around me and through me?”

“They can use that tool,” she said, “as they engage other Jesus-seeking people.”

The Revs. Aaron and Ayana Teter of All Saints Community of Faith in Pittsburgh said they send weekly liturgy to their house church people “so that they can do some of that work,” Aaron Teter said.

“I am much more oriented to being a facilitator, trying to create an experimental environment that will provoke healing conversations and interaction” among house church participants, he said. “I stir the pot a little to promote creativity.”

“I’ve been an administrative pastor. At All Saints, in practice it requires a different level of intimacy with my folks,” Ayana Teter said. “We are trying to facilitate conversations of healing and grace. We try to be a loving and healing presence in the world. These are difficult conversations we are having” during the pandemic, she said. “You are in the moment with people’s real and raw emotions.”

Pre-pandemic, the Teters welcomed All Saints folks into their home for meals and deep discussion.

“We are modeling intimacy and vulnerability every time we gather together as a community,” she said. “We are inviting people to love one another. This is the kind of vulnerability that Jesus is inviting us into.”

If we truly believe in the priesthood of all believers, she said, “that means laying down some of that sense of always having the right answer” and instead “working with people to help them find their own theological voice. It is hard and humbling, but it’s beautiful to see people taking up that work, in our context at least.”

The Rev. Elmer Zavala, pastor of the Presbyterian Hispanic Latino Ministry of Preston Highway, in Louisville, said the dozens of household gatherings he helps facilitate “are anxious and eager to return to the houses. That’s how we desire to be together as a community.”

“We can’t be with them in their houses, but we are trying to figure out how to be present,” by, for example, meeting with the house church host while garbed in protective masks and standing a safe distance apart in the yard or on the porch.

“For me, (the pandemic) is like a blizzard. As long as it’s happening, you stay home,” he said. “Once it passes, you go back to doing things like you used to. And after this, I am sure the body of Christ will have new tools to walk forward.”

The Rev. Keith Gunter, pastor of New Creation Church outside Nashville, said that a series of rotating house groups “worked wonderfully before the pandemic. It was a beautiful way for the community to gather.”

Each small group has what Gunter calls “a lead question-asker” who serves as a facilitator. Someone else is appointed as timekeeper to make sure everyone has the chance to speak.

“You would be shocked by the amount of compassion they show one another,” he said.

 Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Let us join in prayer for: 

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Tina Peters, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)
Jason Peterson, Presbyterian Investment & Loan Program

Let us pray:

Eternal God, in the midst of a world that simply won’t stop, or even slow, its relentless changing, grant us a deep and abiding sense of your sovereign power and steadfast presence in our lives. May we walk the way that is set before us in faithfulness to our calling in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - We the poor — all we have is God to protect us and we put ourselves in God’s hands’

Focus during 1001 webinar is on house churches

September 28, 2020

The Rev. Elmer Zavala, pastor of the Presbyterian Hispanic Latino Ministry of Preston, baptizes the children of families who are now feeling the devastating financial impact of the coronavirus. (Photo by Ellen Sherby)

The Rev. Elmer Zavala of the Presbyterian Hispanic Latino Ministry of Preston in southern Louisville knows about the unusual and difficult challenges that immigrants face with COVID-19.

Many in the house church of more than 40 families work in restaurant kitchens, hotels or construction firms that have been slowed to a standstill by the coronavirus.

Nearly 50% of those in the community have lost their jobs, Zavala said — and those who are still working are earning less because they’re working fewer hours. Making matters worse, under current law, even those who have a tax ID and pay taxes are not eligible for unemployment benefits or government stimulus checks.

Zavala said that what is happening to the community he pastors, in the Presbytery of Mid-Kentucky, is happening in immigrant communities across the country. Recently, in raising awareness for its new church development emergency fund, the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta said that 35% of its new worshiping communities were struggling with poverty before the coronavirus hit and are currently at risk.

The media specialist for the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta, Miranda Emery Segrest, wrote in an email that families in these Atlanta-area worshiping communities “are being hit hard, because they fall outside of the government safety net and stimulus packages as they face such things as job loss, eviction and food insecurity.”

According to Zavala, some families in the Hispanic Latino Ministry of Preston who have access to benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — formerly known as food stamps — are hesitant to use them because they are in the process of trying to gain residency.

“They’re afraid if they’ve been getting public (assistance), it might harm their ability to get a permanent resident card,” he said.

That fear is real. Zavala has heard stories that legal immigrants with Social Security numbers are afraid to apply for benefits because doing so might harm the immigration status of a family member.

In reality, Zavala said, what is coming the rest of 2020 is going to get even more difficult for many in his community. In Kentucky and in other states, landlords can’t force renters to pay rent. Courts are not accepting new eviction filings, at least for the time being. But eventually those worshiping in the Preston Highway community and in other communities across the country will have to pay what they owe to their landlord.

“Even if their working hours get back to normal, they won’t be able to pay their accumulated debt,” Zavala said. “The bills are coming, and the situation doesn’t allow them to stay home, even if they want to.”

Calling the situation for those in the community who are not able to work “a tragedy,” Zavala overheard two members recently having a conversation that went like this: “Thank God I’m working. Are you working?” “No, I’m not working. I don’t have a job right now.”

And another man in the community told him, “We the poor don’t have the luxury of staying home. We the poor — all we have is God to protect us and we put ourselves in God’s hands. We have no other choice.”

“It made me realize how Ellen and I are so privileged,” Zavala said. “We’re having a completely different conversation.  We’re talking about how we’re not working in the same way as we were before.”

On behalf of the Presbyterian Hispanic Latino Ministry of Preston, Mid-Kentucky Presbytery applied for and received a $7,500 COVID-19 PDA Grant. The Rev. John Odom, presbyter for Community Life, said the presbytery has already begun dispersing the money to the southern Louisville ministry.

Paul Seebeck, Communications Strategist, Mission Communications, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us join in prayer for:  

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Jenny Oldham, Presbyterian Mission Agency
Dayna Oliver, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray:

God of justice and peace, we mourn for our country’s growing homeless population and ask you to inspire congregations and individuals to work for affordable housing so that all your people will have a home. Amen.