SEATTLE – What is the role of creativity in worship? How can music and art and poetry be gateways for connection to the sacred — particularly for people who would never show up to sit in a church pew on a Sunday morning? That’s part of what Coastland Commons, a new worshipping community in Seattle, is exploring — and a question that organizers think has implications for life in more traditional congregations as well. Coastland Commons was born of a conviction: “We believe that everyone has the capacity to be creative,” said Zac Calvo, a minister who Seattle Presbytery ordained to be the organizing pastor of Coastland Commons. Dani Forbess is pastor of Northminster Presbyterian Church in the Ballard neighborhood, and leads Seattle Presbytery’s New Worshipping Communities task force. With Kyle Turver, director of worship ministries at Bethany Presbyterian Church, she is co-director of Coastland Commons. Calvo also serves as director of community and youth engagement at … [Read more...]
Welcome to Bar Church
SEATTLE – It’s called Bar Church and yes, you can get a beer at worship if you want. But don’t get stuck there. Go beyond the surface and think about what church might look like in 20 or 30 years. Think about the idea of people gathering for spiritual conversation and connection in places that aren’t churches. Think about the reality that more and more Americans – particularly young people – have no connection to the institutional church. Think about the idea of “third places” – places where people of faith build relationships with the local community by really listening to what the people who live there want and need. Think about what might happen by creating such a place — even if it is nothing like people think of as Sunday morning church. Seattle – full of young adults and located in what’s considered to be one of the most secular parts of the country – is in some ways serving as a testing ground for what religion of the future could look like. It’s a fluid mix of … [Read more...]
Mid councils and financial stress: Per capita work team hears from presbytery and synod leaders
The financial pressure in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), where it is most deeply felt, is not at the denomination’s national offices in Louisville, but closer to the people — in presbyteries and congregations. And part of it is tied up in memory: in not only what’s happening now, but in the collective trauma of what’s come before. It’s the impact of deciding the congregation can’t afford a full-time pastor anymore, and that long gone are the days when the pews were pretty much full every Sunday. But the church is now being asked to pay a higher rate of per capita – currently $8.95 per member – to support the work of the broader church. And the utility bills are going up too. Presbytery and synod leaders remember a time when at least some mid council offices had robust staffs and more money available for training and to do the work. Now, in some presbyteries it’s just one person, sometimes part-time, trying to do it all — holding it together with duct tape, one committee … [Read more...]
Small contributions add up: Idaho church plays big role to reduce state’s medical debt
So many people are just one car accident, one slip on the ice, one complicated pregnancy, one bad diagnosis away from a tsunami of medical debt. So many people live paycheck to paycheck, with rent due and student loans to pay back and a balance on their credit cards so big it hurts to look at it. They’re barely making everyday life work financially, much less able to pay for a trip to the hospital. What if churches could do something about that – by using their resources to pay off a chunk of their community’s unpaid medical debt? Or what about individual Presbyterians, or a group of family or friends? Here’s a story about two women from New York state, a retired chemist and a psychoanalyst, who raised $12,500 to erase medical debt for people in their region. Marci Glass, pastor of Southminster Presbyterian Church in Boise, Idaho, understands something about people with huge medical bills and no ability to pay them. She knows a young man from the church she serves who has … [Read more...]
Money and structure: Committee considers ideas for the future of per capita and restructuring
LOUISVILLE – With deadlines looming for presenting reports to the 2020 General Assembly, the Special Committee on Per Capita Based Fundraising and National Church Financial Sustainability in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is beginning to hammer out the language it wants to use. But a simmering question is this: How much change can groups currently at work in the PC(USA) reasonably expect to ask this assembly to push through next summer? If the special committee thinks the denomination needs to be restructured to bring better accountability and try to make sure that all the agencies have adequate funding, should it go ahead and recommend that restructuring now (or maybe ask the Moving Forward Implementation Commission to come up with a restructuring plan)? Or does it ask Moving Forward to join with it in recommending that the 2020 General Assembly create another commission to both come up with a restructuring plan and begin to implement it? Is that a smart way to make … [Read more...]
Love locally: Presbyterians care for immigrants in the community
How can Presbyterians respond in their own communities to concerns about immigration? Those who live near the U.S.-Mexico border may feel they’re on the front-lines – seeing the human drama directly before them, with heartbreaking news day after day of families being separated and of people camped on the Mexico side of the border who aren’t allowed to stay in the United States as their asylum claims progress. But the impact of federal immigration policy is also being felt across the country, in big cities and small towns – with deportations, immigration raids at plants in rural America, and the realities of an economy in which sectors such as agriculture and construction depend on migrant workers. Presbyterians who care about these issues and the human pain involved are looking for ways to respond close to home – sometimes in deeply contextual ways. They’re visiting asylum seekers held in detention centers. They accompany immigrants to court hearings and medical … [Read more...]
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