Today in the Mission Yearbook - A place of great danger

Encountering God by comparing pandemic challenges with the wilderness experience

March 1, 2021

The sunset in the Negev Desert near Yeruham, a town in the southern district of Israel. (Wikipedia/Bill Brown)

Describing the Israelites’ passage through the wilderness in Exodus and Numbers as a metaphor for challenges the church faces today, Dr. William P. Brown 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.

Leading the recent Bible study, the Columbia Theological Seminary professor said the wilderness is also a place of hope and guidance.

“It is revelatory,” Brown said. “Many of us, living with the triple pandemics of COVID-19, racism and poverty, are increasingly aware of the enduring reality of communities of color — Black, brown and Indigenous.”

Comparing what we are living through with what the Israelites experienced, Brown said they were living in the extreme opposites of deprivation and provision, which is where they cultivated resilience.

As they moved from enslavement to freedom — and from chaos to community — their greatest challenge, Brown said, was to move backward instead of forward into the blessings and wonder God had for them in the lessons learned along the way.

Deprived of water and food, the Israelites cried out because of their thirst and hunger. Moses struck a rock with his staff for water, and God provided manna — bread from heaven. But eventually, Brown said, “the manna became a curse.” Longing for the foods they’d eaten in Egypt, they cried out, “If only we had meat to eat!” They yearned to return to Egypt, but Brown said that would have sabotaged God’s plan to free them by molding them into diverse community.

“It’s often overlooked, but it wasn’t just Hebrews making their way to the Red Sea,” he said. “There were others with them who remained nameless.”

When the Israelites learned they would be in the wilderness for 40 years, they became impatient and impulsive. Despite Moses warning them, the people charged the land that the Lord had promised them, with disastrous results.

Brown sees the same thing happening in America’s struggle with the coronavirus.  As people became sick and tired of staying put, some rushed forward with impatience, crying out, “How dare you infringe on our freedom!”

“The struggle of people in the wilderness,” he said, “is trusting the provisions of God.” In Exodus 19:4–6, God gives the Israelites a new mission at Mount Sinai. Brown said they were now to be a blessing to the world — not only by looking inward, but outward, as a holy nation. And when God introduces the giving of the decalogue in Exodus 20 by opening with the commandment that “they are to have no other gods,” he said, that should be a reminder to us, too.

“The wilderness is the place and time to shed idolatries,” he said, “and become connected to the true source of vitality, the Lord our God.”

Knowing in a new way that they are God’s people, the Israelites forge ahead with creativity and innovation. They still fail and succeed. But now, Brown said, God holds them accountable, judging them in forbearance as well as blessing them.

Brown reminded those gathered that the Israelites’ greatest technological achievement came in the wilderness when they constructed the tabernacle. God gave them seven instructions for building it, which were parallel to the seven days of Creation recorded in Genesis.

“In the tabernacle, God was present to the people in the flesh,” Brown said, “walking through the thick and thin with them every step of the way.”

In closing, Brown reminded those gathered of one of the foundations for Vital Congregations found in Isaiah 43:16–21. Here, the prophet is having a wilderness experience with people in exile. He tells them something radical: to “forget the things of the past,” Brown said, “for God is doing something new.”

And when the coronavirus pandemic is over, Brown wondered, “What shall we remember from this time?”

Reminding that more than 400 years ago slaves arrived on the shores of what would become the U.S., Brown showed images of some things he wants to remember, which included graphs showing the number of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. — and Black people dying at 2.5 times the rate of white people — and police officers and protesters kneeling together.

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

Let us join in prayer for: 

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Chad Dusatko, Presbyterian Mission Agency
Sandra Duverge, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray:

Eternal God, as you have created us and redeemed us for your loving service, so guide us to the darkened corners in the lives of others, that we might bring them the light of your eternal presence. Grant that, as in Christ you have served us, we might serve all your children, that you may never be without a witness in a hurting 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.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Spirit-inspired worship requires breathing life into dry bones

About 70 people join a ‘spirited’ Vital Congregations Zoom call

July 25, 2020

Using Ezekiel’s stark vision of the Valley of Dry Bones, the Rev. Dr. David Gambrell elicited any number of innovative ideas from about 70 pastors and other church leaders during a recent videoconference on Spirit-inspired worship, one of the Seven Marks of Vital Congregations.

David Gambrell, associate for worship, office of Theology and Worship. (Photo by Gregg Brekke)

Gambrell, associate for worship in the Office of Theology & Worship, hailed the passage — Ezekiel 37:1-14 – as one that speaks to people everywhere suffering through the coronavirus pandemic. It comes from the context of Babylonian exile after people had been overrun, scattered and driven from their spiritual home by a brutal enemy. “Does that sound familiar?” Gambrell asked. “I can’t imagine a more appropriate passage to lead us in a discussion of Spirit-inspired worship,” he said.

It’s especially “painful and poignant” to talk about breath and respiration as witnessed by the prophet Ezekiel “when COVID-19 is attacking the lungs and the breath of loved ones around the world,” Gambrell said. “It really does feel like we are standing in a valley of dry bones and the dust of death is all around us.”

Drawing from the Vital Congregations Immediate Toolkit, Gambrell identified four qualities of Spirit-inspired worship:

• It’s God’s gift to humankind, and it’s a gift of God’s self — a double gift.
• It’s a calling, both a calling in and a calling out. It’s an invitation into a deeper relationship with God and others, and it’s the invitation to mission and service in Jesus’ name.
• It’s a witness to the resurrection, our opportunity to bear witness that the crucified One is risen from the dead.
• It’s a way of life, flowing from the sanctuary to our workplace, home, neighborhood and community. It’s connected to everything else the church does, including the formation of caring relationships, lifelong formation for discipleship and the other marks of vital congregations.

Then Gambrell stopped teaching and asked participants to talk about their own experiences with Spirit-inspired worship, beginning with how they’ve seen the Spirit moving and working during the past weeks of online worship.

One participant has been watching church families seated on their sofa reading Scripture together during worship. “I get to see the homes of families where I have never been invited into their homes,” this participant said. “The Spirit is working in an expansive way.”

The Rev. Michael Umbenhaur, pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Orange, Texas, said the past few weeks have demonstrated “that homebound ministry will take on more importance for each and every church. It’s a scary sight, but an exciting sight.”

The pastor at Community Presbyterian Church in Redmond, Oregon, the Rev. Andrew Hoeksema, said he believes worship “can bring a moment of hope in this horrible crisis,” during which he’s declined to preach sermons “that won’t comfort and encourage people.” The church is also “selective about which songs we are singing” during worship, because “we don’t want to give people cheap hope.”

The Rev. Charlotte Lohrenz, pastor of Faith Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, said she’s seen “a spirit of gratitude, a clear recognition of the love and power of worship” over the past few weeks. “I think people realize how much they hunger for and appreciate true worship,” she said.

Dr. Cheryl Carson, associate executive presbyter at Central Florida Presbytery, said pastors have been checking in with the ways they’ve seen the Spirit at work “in all the creativity” that’s been occurring in churches around the presbytery.

A woman who does children’s ministry made a video depicting her walking around the empty church building and describing how much she missed the congregation’s young people. Another pastor has been beginning worship using the Zoom platform 30 minutes early to give church members time to visit with one another before the service begins.

“I don’t think God caused the coronavirus,” Carson said, “but I think God is using it to help us get into the 21st century.”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Let us join in prayer for: 

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff

Linda Jacobsen, Board of Pensions
Lisa Jacobson, Office of the General Assembly

Let us pray:

Dear Lord, sustain us as we seek to sustain each other: in the beauty of your kingdom, with the bounty of your earth, amid the needs of our cities and through the fellowship of neighbors working together. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - What does a vital congregation look like?

Presbyterian Mission Agency Board considers key characteristics of living out Matthew 25

May 4, 2020

The Rev. Dr. Kathryn Threadgill talks to the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board about the Seven Marks of Vital Congregations while the Rev. Dr. Ray Jones III listens. (Photo by Rich Copley)

The Rev. Dr. Ray Jones III turned to history and the cinema to open a conversation about congregational vitality at the February meeting of the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board.

Jones was 9 years old, he said, when he first encountered the story of Harriet Tubman, who saved more than 70 people from slavery. But the scene he invoked was from the Oscar-nominated biopic “Harriet,” which came out last fall. Tubman is ready to flee her home and master for the first time, and she goes to her church, where her pastor counsels her.

“He speaks these words to her: ‘You remember, fear is the enemy,’” said Jones, director of the Theology, Formation & Evangelism (TFE) ministries of the Presbyterian Mission Agency. “My goodness, y’all. In the church, fear is the enemy. Fear about change is the enemy. Fear about confronting people is the enemy. Fear about doing God’s justice work is the enemy.

“And then he said, ‘Trust God.’

“That’s what congregational vitality is about. It’s dealing with our fear of a powerful Spirit and trusting God to be the people of God.”

Jones was leading into a discussion by the Rev. Dr. Kathryn Threadgill about the Seven Marks of Congregational Vitality, which is one of the three components of the Matthew 25 invitation, along with dismantling structural racism and eradicating systemic poverty. The three components go hand-in-hand, both ministers said.

Threadgill, who is the Vital Congregations coordinator for TFE, talked about her work in a two-year pilot program with presbyteries around the country to grow vital congregations.

“We’re striving to be Matthew 25 churches and see how the Spirit of God is leading them into change and new vital life together,” Threadgill said. “We know that Christ is doing a new thing. So, our job is as the people of God is to receive that new thing together and be there to be a part of it.”

She went on to enumerate the seven marks, defining what a vital congregation is and isn’t.

1. 1. Lifelong discipleship formation complacent “Christian” piety, simply teaching good morals or offering the latest programs
   2. Intentional, authentic evangelism “Jesus freaks;” “Christian” hypocrisy; a committee
   3. Outward incarnational focus inward institutional survival; closed communities of assimilation/exclusion
   4. Empower servant leadership the pastor’s job; monopolized leadership; hiring the young, energetic pastor
   5. Spirit-inspired worship self-gratifying worship, stale ritual divorced of meaning, or consumer entertainment worship
   6. Caring relationships any other social club; facades, hypocrisy, and judgment of “church” and “religion”
   7. Ecclesial health vs. unhealthy dysfunction; toxic environments; obsolete and irrelevant buildings

“We believe that if we show these marks — like Thomas needed to see the marks of Jesus and feel them in order to believe that was the risen Christ — we believe that if people can see and feel these marks within their congregations then they will come to know and believe their Lord and Savior is in Jesus Christ,” Threadgill said. “That’s what we’re after in congregational vitality.

“Notice I didn’t say anything about our buildings, our budgets or butts in the seats. Congregational vitality is about spiritual faithfulness. It’s about following where Christ is leading the church in a 21st century, North American context, where Christ has planted these particular churches, given them life and vital life together, so that they can in fact be Matthew 25 churches, sharing and living out of vision together.”

Rich Copley, Communications Strategist, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us join in prayer for: 

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff

Omar Chan, Office of the General Assembly
Perry Chang, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)

Let us pray:

Gracious Lord, open our eyes and hearts to see your mission in the world and give us discernment and courage to participate in ways that bring glory to your name. Amen.