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office of vital congregations
The Office of Vital Congregations will resume weekly Wednesday Zoom conversations at 3 p.m. Eastern Time on May 27.
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.
Before COVID-19 forced him to work from home, the Rev. Dr. Alonzo Johnson, coordinator of the Presbyterian Committee on the Self-Development of People, was walking in downtown Louisville one day when he came across a man holding a “I’m homeless and I’m hungry” sign. Johnson made eye contact and asked how the man was doing. The man clutched Johnson’s arms and told him, with tears streaming down his face, “Thank you for recognizing that I am a human being.”
The coronavirus has inflicted any number of health crises on Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregations — but in some tangible ways it’s also enhanced their ecclesial health.
As more than 50 pastors and other church leaders explored together “Lifelong Discipleship Formation” — which is one of the Seven Marks of Vital Congregations — it became apparent that during the coronavirus crisis they are discovering new ways to help people live out their Christian faith.
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 Wednesday’s videoconference on Spirit-inspired worship, one of the Seven Marks of Vital Congregations.
For a Zoom gathering of about 65 people ready to hear Wednesday about doing intentional, authentic evangelism in the time of a pandemic, the director of Theology, Formation & Evangelism, the Rev. Dr. Ray Jones III, looked to one of his favorite biblical texts in Paul’s second letter to the church at Corinth: “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.”
At 3 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, the Office of Vital Congregations will continue its weekly Zoom conversations around “The Seven Marks of a Vital Congregation: For Such a Time as This.”
The ecumenical U.S. Congregational Vitality Survey (USCVS) is designed to help church leaders understand the attitudes, opinions and perceptions of worshipers and leaders in congregations. Created through a collaboration of sociologists, theologians and Christian educators in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the survey has been helping congregations from many denominations measure their vitality since 2001.
Both the 2020 Vital Congregations facilitator training and national gathering in Austin, scheduled for April 24-30, have been postponed. The Office of Vital Congregations in the Presbyterian Mission Agency is looking at the possibility of rescheduling the event in August 2020.
