Focus is on leadership during this uncertain time of COVID-19
by Paul Seebeck | Presbyterian News Service
The Rev. Dr. Joanna M. Adams
LOUISVILLE — The “New Way” podcast will drop the first episode of a brand-new season Friday morning. The podcast, a periodic series of conversation from the 1001 New Worshiping Communities movement of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), is entering its fourth season just as many people are feeling the mounting impact of the coronavirus.
“It continues to startle me how the gospel touches every aspect of our lives,” says the podcast’s host, the Rev. Sara Hayden, “even — perhaps especially — in times like these. We are fortunate to have this platform to examine those things that have long afflicted our world, injustices that COVID-19 brings into startling awareness.”
The first episode features a conversation with the Rev. Dr. Joanna M. Adams. Known for building bridges of understanding in both the community and the church, Adams, pastor emerita at Morningside Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, has long been a proponent of the new worshiping community movement — and the emerging church that is meeting in houses of worship but also in homes, bars, on college and university campuses, and many other diverse places.
In her conversation with host Hayden, Adams provides a steady voice of leadership as she discusses how to be authentic in this fearful, uncertain time — during Holy Week and beyond — living with the global COVID-19 pandemic. “Death is not going to have the last word,” Adams says. “This disease will be conquered. How we handle it, how we face and deal with loss, how we care for one another — those are the key questions that we are facing.”
The Rev. Sara Hayden hosts the “New Way” podcasts.
In the introduction to her conversation with Adams, Hayden sets the tone — both for the first episode and season 4 — by welcoming listeners into this “strange and unprecedented time.” Acknowledging that the world feels a “little science fiction-y” right now, she references how movies like the 1995 film Outbreak and Contagion, released in 2011, are topping the charts of streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime in the midst of the coronavirus crisis.
“For leaders in faith institutions and movements like 1001, we realize this is a unique and important time for us to lead,” Hayden said, “lest fear and the internet have the only word.”
With that, Hayden offers the first of six episodes of season 4 of the “New Way” podcast, examining the connections between people and their communities and the ways that context, including our current one, shapes faith.
“New Way” will continue to drop new episodes weekly, gathering in new guests as the context of COVID-19 unfolds.
The New Way podcast is produced by Atlanta-based artist and pastor Marthame Sanders, who also hosts the weekly podcast Aijcast, which is part of the 1001 New Worshiping Communities movement.
For a free subscription to New Way, so that each new episode of season three is downloaded to your listening device, click here (for Apple) or click here (for Stitcher) or click here (for Spotify) or click here (for Google Play).
You can also listen directly from the website after each weekly episode is dropped.
If you need information on how to listen to a podcast, click here.
In 2012, the 220th General Assembly of the PC(USA) declared a commitment to a churchwide movement that resulted in the creation of 1001 worshiping communities over the next 10 years. At a grassroots level, nearly 600 diverse new worshiping communities have already formed across the nation.
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