Today in the Mission Yearbook - When the Word moves into the world

This Christmas Eve, may we be ready to bear Christ again and anew

December 24, 2022

The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes … (John 1:14, MSG)

In the fall of 2010, two years of planning and work were coming to fruition. A group of leaders stood on the cusp of the opening of a new worshiping community. Many in the neighborhood were anticipating the arrival of a new gathering place and spiritual home. I had been shepherding the planning team and overseeing the ways we had been laying the groundwork for this launch. Because there was construction involved, the launch date was much like a birth. We knew roughly when it would happen, but not exactly. And as the days drew close, I felt very much like I did when the time for my children’s births approached. I was beyond excited and so very aware that life would never be the same once they arrived.

Growing up, my mother read the text of John 1 to our family when we returned home from Christmas Eve services at Morningside Presbyterian Church. When I was older, I discovered Eugene Peterson’s version captured in The Message. The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. God moved in with us. For months, Mary had welcomed God into her own body. The Word moved into her womb. And on Christmas Eve, she knew this Grace and Glory would soon push its way out into the world, first in Bethlehem, then Egypt and Nazareth, to the towns of Galilee and Jerusalem. From there the world was never the same.

For weeks we have been preparing anew for the birth of Christ into our lives. Now our celebrations mark the movement of the Word into the world again. This time, God has made us the Body of Christ. May Christ be born again and anew in us that we might bear Christ again and anew into our own neighborhoods — so the world will never be the same.

Nikki Collins, Coordinator, 1001 New Worshiping Communities, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
James and Jodi McGill, Mission co-workers serving in Niger/South Sudan, Presbyterian Mission Agency
Carol McGinn, Executive Business Administrator, Facilities, Board of Pensions

Let us pray

Still our hearts, O God, that we might be ready to behold your Glory.
Quicken our ears to your voice that we may not miss your burning cry.
And fill us, God of Wonders, with your Love that we might bear your grace into this world.
Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - When the Word moves into the world

This Christmas Eve, may we be ready to bear Christ again and anew

December 24, 2021

The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.

We saw the glory with our own eyes … (John 1:14, MSG)

In the fall of 2010, two years of planning and work were coming to fruition. A group of leaders stood on the cusp of the opening of a new worshiping community. Many in the neighborhood were anticipating the arrival of a new gathering place and spiritual home. I had been shepherding the planning team and overseeing the ways we had been laying the groundwork for this launch. Because there was construction involved, the launch date was much like a birth. We knew roughly when it would happen, but not exactly. And as the days drew close, I felt very much like I did when the time for my children’s births approached. I was beyond excited and so very aware that life would never be the same once they arrived.

Growing up, my mother read the text of John 1 to our family when we returned home from Christmas Eve services at Morningside Presbyterian Church. When I was older, I discovered Eugene Peterson’s version captured in The Message. The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. God moved in with us. For months, Mary had welcomed God into her own body. The Word moved into her womb. And on Christmas Eve, she knew this Grace and Glory would soon push its way out into the world, first in Bethlehem, then Egypt and Nazareth, to the towns of Galilee and Jerusalem. From there the world was never the same.

For weeks we have been preparing anew for the birth of Christ into our lives. Now our celebrations mark the movement of the Word into the world again. This time, God has made us the Body of Christ. May Christ be born again and anew in us that we might bear Christ again and anew into our own neighborhoods — so the world will never be the same.

Nikki Collins, Coordinator, 1001 New Worshiping Communities, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Ruth Gardner, Director, Human Resources, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)
Shelley Gardner, Chaplain, Board of National Mission, Presbyterian Foundation

Let us pray

Still our hearts, O God, that we might be ready to behold your Glory.
Quicken our ears to your voice that we may not miss your burning cry.
And fill us, God of Wonders, with your Love that we might bear your grace into this world.
Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Lurkers welcome

Vital Congregations wraps up its seven-part series with a spirited session on empowering servant leadership

September 15, 2020

The Rev. Nikki Collins is national leader of the 1001 New Worshiping Communities movement.

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.

“I didn’t know what he was talking about,” said the national coordinator of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s 1001 New Worshiping Communities. “But I knew he was well-respected in the community.”

Collins was the guest for the Office of Vital Congregations’ final online installment on the Seven Marks of Vital Congregations.

Here’s how Collins thinks of empowering servant leadership, a term coined by Robert Greenleaf in 1970: We know everyone is created in the image of Christ, that everyone is given gifts to build the body of Christ, and that every gift is needed. “As leaders, our task is to equip and nurture and support members,” she said. “God calls some of us to the task of ministry, but it’s never just about the pastor. It’s about identifying and equipping the servants and leaders among us.”

Collins said she likes the way Paul puts it in Romans 12, as it’s offered in The Message: “So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life — your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life — and place it before God as an offering. … Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”

“That’s where our call to servant leadership is really clear,” Collins said.

At this point, Collins and Vital Congregations staff opened the hourlong webinar to comments and questions from the nearly 50 participants. To the question, “What are you experiencing?” one participant wrote, “At a time such as this (the name for the series of VC webinars), we need the skills and abilities of all to shape and reshape the new normal in churches as well as society. Everyone has a gift to give if we enable them through our own efforts as servant leaders.”

While “we’re becoming clear about the tech skills we need to do church in a dispersed, scattered space,” Collins said servant leaders should also “think about identifying leaders who can cultivate skills in others. That way we can create a more vibrant ecosystem of leaders.”

She recalled a coffee mug she recently saw, which sported a message written by a Presbyterian pastor: “Welcome to the virtual Presbyterian church. Lurkers welcome.”

That reminded Collins of a new worshiping community she founded as a coffee shop. “Sometimes customers would choose to hang out and lurk,” she said. For several months, one man sat at a table in the corner as the coffee shop closed and worship was about to begin.

“Over time he worked his way into the community at a pace that felt comfortable and safe to him,” she said. He’d just been through a divorce “and felt displaced in society as a newly single middle-aged man,” she said. “When he felt ready, he joined the community. I was never more grateful that was the setup we had.”

Social media platforms including Facebook Live and Zoom are “much the same,” she said. “People can lurk and sit in the corner” while, for example, taking in online worship. Collins called that “the value of lurking.”

Before praying, Collins concluded the webinar with this story: A colleague is serving a congregation that’s not streaming weekly services during the pandemic. Instead, this pastor was asked to mail a copy of his sermon each week to congregants with no internet access and email the sermon to those with email.

What this pastor soon learned is that one parishioner would fetch his sermon out of the mailbox each week and meet her neighbor, who belonged to another church, across the backyard fence they shared. There the two would read each other the respective sermons.

“That’s the sharing of the gospel,” Collins said.

 Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff 

Diane Minter, Office of the General Assembly
Rosa Miranda, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray:

Gracious God, we give you thanks for the gift of life. May we welcome others, as you have welcomed us, with loving hearts and embracing arms. Amen.

Minute for Mission:1001 New Worshiping Communities

In 2012, the General Assembly made a bold commitment — to create an environment within the denomination that would lead to the flourishing of the existing church and the birth of at least 1,001 new communities of worship and witness. The Presbyterian Mission Agency went to work creating a system of resources to support this call to equip presbyteries, help potential leaders discern God’s call, develop a system of grants, build leadership capacity, and create a network of coaches prepared to accompany a new worshiping community through all the stages of development. Establishing partnerships and collaboration with other North American denominations, the reach of these resources extends far beyond the PC(USA).

Eight years into a 10-year commitment, the PC(USA) has launched almost 650 new communities across the denomination in small towns, on college campuses and in urban hubs. The courage and witness of these young expressions of church are breathing new life into our historic communities as they call and form new disciples of Jesus Christ.

Research reveals that 1 in 10 new members of an existing congregation was previously unchurched or dechurched, but 44% of the people participating in these new worshiping communities say they were unchurched or of a non-Christian faith before becoming a part of this new community. One leader describes their mission in this way: “Our greatest focus is on the ‘unchurched’ people in our area. We seek to introduce (or re-introduce) Jesus to people in our area who either did not grow up in the church or left the church for some reason. We seek to do so in the manner that is hospitable, nonthreatening and reflecting the love of which Jesus so often spoke.”

 Hospitality is a driving value in these communities, and most are marked by flexibility and creativity in their gatherings.  In this time of social distancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of these young communities have quickly shifted to online worship and fellowship. For others, working closely with vulnerable populations, meeting in prisons and assisted living facilities where digital gatherings are not possible, this is an especially difficult time of isolation. As we remember those most affected by the pandemic, may we especially pray for these young expressions of church among us, often led by bi-vocational leaders, many of whom are recent immigrants serving without the full privileges of U.S. citizenship or ordination in the PC(USA). They are a part of our family because of the bold action of the General Assembly. They are among us because we prayed they would be and became intentional about inviting them. They are here because the Spirit has led them to find a home in this church. We belong to one another.

To hear more voices from our growing family, particularly as they minister in the midst of pandemic, download our most recent podcast season and listen to some of our new worshiping community leaders describe their journey and the joy brimming over in their communities. Listen at newchurchnewway.org/season-2-1.

And to see some of our newest communities in action, visit our library of video stories, go to  presbyterianmission.org/ministries/1001-2/about-1001/videos.

Nikki Collins; Coordinator of 1001 New Worshiping Communities; Theology, Formation & Evangelism; Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us join in prayer for:   

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff

Angela Duffy, Presbyterian Foundation
Amy Dusatko, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray:

For the leaders of new worshiping communities across the PC(USA)
For presbyteries nurturing new worshiping communities within their bounds
For the staff of the 1001 movement
For the Spirit to continue moving across the church calling new leaders and removing barriers for the birth of new communities among us.

New Church New Way April 2020

1001 responds to COVID-19 quarantine measures The 1001 team has planned and hosted a series of Zoom webinars to address the urgent needs of leaders across the Church. Speaking to a max capacity group of 300 pastors, the Rev. Marthame Sanders provided helpful technical tips for leading worship through digital platforms such as Facebook Live and Zoom. Marthame is the founder of "Aijcast," a podcast 1001 New Worshiping Community and the producer of the 1001 podcast "New Way." On March 26, we hosted three pastors of churches and new worshiping communities in the PC(USA), along with ELCA pastor the Rev. Emily Scott to discuss creating community and intimacy in our digital gatherings. Following those events, Mission Engagement Specialist Jon Moore and Princeton Abaraoha, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Midlothian, Texas, provided help to NWC leaders on maintaining offering income and raising funds during times of crisis. And on Maundy Thursday, our coaching associate Jeff Eddings hosted a midday prayer gathering for leaders — providing a moment of quiet and connection to God and one another via Zoom. Find out information about our next Zoom conversation below — and know that we're also working on making these conversations available Facebook Live. Grace and Peace, Nikki

Coming April 16: Caring for the Caregiver — a Zoom Conversation with Presbyterian Disaster Assistance How do pastors and new worshiping community leaders care for themselves while responding to the unique demands of this time — working from home, learning new ways to connect with parishioners, being present with the grieving, and tending to our families and responsibilities with new restrictions and daily rhythms? The PDA staff will share resources for building resiliency, even in the midst of pandemic, on Thursday, April 16, at noon EDT. Participation is limited to 300 people, but the call will be recorded and shared on our website and on social media. Join zoom call →

NWC leader under COVID-19 self-quarantine Serving those living on the street, G.W. Rolle is concerned how the coronavirus is impacting the most vulnerable. Read more → Serious JuJu’s warehouse is closed But the ministry of the 1001 community that provides food and care to skateboarders — and those who love them — continues. Read more →

1001 coaches to complete certification A cohort of 10 coaches from the 1001 coaching network were set to gather in April at Stony Point Center for the first of two coach certification intensives led by Laurie Ferguson. The COVID-19 outbreak forced our team to adapt and find another way for beginning the training together. Thanks to technology, the training will still happen as scheduled — but virtually — and by the end of this year, 10% of our coaches will be certified with this international credentialing body. In response to the increased pressures felt by church leaders during this pandemic, 1001 is offering free coaching and spiritual direction sessions to its leaders. Coaches will be especially equipped for the targeted support this crisis demands. Learn more by contacting Sean Chow. Email Sean →

Become a Matthew 25 Church Matthew 25:31–46 calls all of us to actively engage in the world around us, so our faith comes alive and we wake up to new possibilities. Matthew 25 is a bold new vision and invitation from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) with over 460 congregations and mid councils that have already pledged to become a Matthew 25 church by working to build congregational vitality, dismantle structural racism and eradicate systemic poverty. We invite you to join us on this journey! Find out how →

A paper chain built by Presbyterian generosity is unbreakable! Our Links of Love special giving challenge celebrates our united and collective impact toward making a difference in the lives of others around the world. Get involved today. Learn more →

Coronavirus/COVID-19 Resources for Congregations and Members

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