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Congregational Vitality
During Tuesday’s devotion/reflection at the Vital Congregations East Coast gathering in Atlanta, Dr. Anna Carter Florence, preaching professor at Columbia Theological Seminary, shared a personal experience that she said changed her life.
Nearly 140 leaders including representation from presbyteries, pastors, clerks of session and the Presbyterian Mission Agency are meeting at Montview Presbyterian Church in Denver this week to pray, plan and worship together during the West Coast Vital Congregations gathering.
Some Sundays, five or 10 people show up for worship at Yaphank Presbyterian Church on Long Island, N.Y. The church, established in 1851, has 41 members on its rolls. The average Sunday attendance is about 15.Yet the session of the historic church, whose sanctuary was destroyed by a December 2013 fire, has embraced the invitation to become a Matthew 25 church. Its chosen focus is eradicating systemic poverty.
Art Cullen, winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize and the editor of the Storm Lake (Iowa) Times, will speak at Central Presbyterian Church in Des Moines at 7 p.m. on Thursday, May 30.
Kirk in the Hills Presbyterian Church sits on a sprawling 41-acre lakeside campus in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., northwest of Detroit. Passersby often slow down to take in breathtaking views of the church’s majestic gothic-style architecture. Visitors from near and far come in to appreciate its beautiful sanctuary.
Now that churches in South Carolina’s Trinity Presbytery have gone through the seven marks of congregational vitality, as part of their participation in the two-year Vital Congregations initiative pilot program, pastors are beginning to notice a difference in their congregations.
About five years ago, Adam J. Copeland met with a husband and wife who were co-pastoring a church.The couple tithed their income to the congregation and had no extra income to give to other charities and causes that they wanted to support. That reality had made them resentful of the church.“If tithing to church is the goal, there needed to be a reality check,” Copeland says.
Meeting together since 2010 as a group dedicated to “vibrant theological discussion, spiritual growth and evangelistic courage” in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), NEXT Church is gathering this week under its 2019 theme “Woven Together: Stories of Dissonance, Sacrifice and Liberation.”
The Rev. Duke Dixon, pastor of Presbyterian Church of Easton in Easton, Md., part of New Castle Presbytery, returned from a sabbatical last summer feeling his congregation needed to pray — really pray — for its community.
The Kentucky Wildcats men’s basketball team lost its showdown at the University of Tennessee Saturday, but that didn’t dampen the warmth of the spirits of those watching the game on a big projector screen at Maxwell Street Presbyterian Church next to the UK campus.
