1001 New Worshiping Communities hosted a conversation for online and hybrid church leaders at the Wild Goose Festival in mid-July. Started in 2011, the four-day spirit, justice, music and arts festival took place at VanHoy Farms Family Campground in Union Grove, North Carolina. Read more »
August 27, 2024
Gathering new communities of faith from the online to the wild
1001 New Worshiping Communities hosted a conversation for online and hybrid church leaders at the Wild Goose Festival in mid-July. Started in 2011, the four-day spirit, justice, music and arts festival took place at VanHoy Farms Family Campground in Union Grove, North Carolina. Read more »
Rola Al Ashkar is a Presbyterian Christian from Lebanon. She grew up in a nonreligious family, in a culture drenched in religion. Her parents took her and her brothers to church and Sunday school on occasions. When she had her confirmation class, she received her first Bible, and even as a teenager, she read the Bible with critical eyes, questioning parts of it and searching for answers. Her curiosity led her to regularly attend Sunday services, youth meetings and church summer camps, and through those experiences her faith grew, and she found a community in the Presbyterian Synod of Syria and Lebanon. 
The International Day of Peace is a day set aside originally by the United Nations. They hoped that by focusing our attention on peace on this day, we would have a yearly opportunity to stop and educate ourselves on issues of contemporary concern, to mobilize ourselves to address these domestic and global conflicts, and to memorialize and celebrate hard-won peaceable achievements. This is a timely reminder for us Presbyterians, one we would do well to take a minute to reflect on today. 
More than 30 members of the PC(USA)’s national staff were recently privileged to hear a sermon during their online Chapel Service by the Rev. Dr. Robert Ngugi, Secretary General of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa, as well as musical offerings from Kenyan choirs. 
As one of two PC(USA) churches recently honored as Cool Congregations by Interfaith Power & Light, Warner Memorial Presbyterian Church in Kensington, Maryland, relishes telling the story of how it covered its roof in solar panels to provide all the electricity it needs, as well as filling some of the needs of its neighbors, including very low income adults in mental health recovery. 
“The ministry you are called to serve may not even exist yet,” the Rev. Michael Gehrling said to a group of 18 seminary students and recent seminary graduates at a Discerning Entrepreneurial Ministry event held at Columbia Theological Seminary from Aug. 16–18. 
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. 
“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. 
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.
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.”