The tenor of Lent is one of “complicated joy,” according to the Rev. Carlton Johnson, associate director for Theology, Formation & Evangelism for the Presbyterian Mission Agency.
The Rev. Dr. Tom Bryson, the co-pastor at Southminster Presbyterian Church in Vestavia Hills, Alabama, remembers the day as a young boy when his father brought home the family’s first microwave oven.
When the Rev. Dr. Christina Berry enrolled her congregation to become a Matthew 25 church, little did she know just how the Spirit would move among them. After reviewing the areas of focus that her flock could engage in — building congregational vitality, dismantling structural racism and eradicating systemic poverty — focusing on vitality made the most sense for an all-white congregation living in the shadow of glory days gone by.
Congregations striving to maintain their outward incarnational focus, one of the seven marks of congregational vitality, can thrive for at least two reasons: they’re ministering to others while at the same time being ministered to.
After the first day of the Vital Congregations virtual facilitator training last week, the Rev. Neil Ricketts spoke with elders at the church he serves.
Congregations striving to maintain their outward incarnational focus, one of the seven marks of congregational vitality, can thrive for at least two reasons: they’re ministering to others while at the same time being ministered to.
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 Rev. Dr. Ray Jones III turned to history and the cinema to open a conversation about congregational vitality on the first day of the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board’s February meeting on Wednesday.
