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A Corp board meets alongside Triennium to discuss finances, agency culture (and sneak in an energizer)

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While some 4,000 Presbyterian teenagers are bringing the energy to Purdue University this week at the Presbyterian Youth Triennium, the board of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), A Corporation is meeting at Purdue as well — taking care of the business of the church. The A Corporation board chose this location intentionally — breaking during the first afternoon of its July 18-19 meeting to worship with the young people, set aside their financial discussions and get their energizers on. Because: Who doesn’t want to see adults in khakis trying to dance? There is, however, a more serious question of how the board of the A Corporation (the corporate entity for the Presbyterian Mission Agency and the Office of the General Assembly) can build connections across the church that will benefit the denomination. For example, the board is having conversations at this meeting with representatives of both the Moving Forward Implementation Commission and the Special Committee on Per-Capita … [Read more...]

Tagged With: A Corp

2020 Vision Team makes plans for Presbyterians to engage the guiding statement

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The 2020 Vision Team is moving ahead with plans to get Presbyterians involved with the guiding statement it has produced – using everything from a social media blitz to a hymn-writing competition to a plan to pass out bracelets at the Presbyterian Youth Triennium at Purdue University July 16-20 and at Big Tent in Baltimore August 1-3. The team also hopes it can provide tools for Presbyterians to engage with the statement in their local contexts – for example, a session or a Bible study group might do a lectio divina exercise using Scriptural passages on which the team has leaned, or a pastor might build a sermon series around on ideas in the statement. The Vision Team’s guiding statement says that“God calls the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to be Prayerful, Courageous, United, Serving, Alive” – with first letters of those words spelling out the PC(USA) acronym. For each of those words, the team has also fleshed out more of what it means – for example, that in being courageous … [Read more...]

Tagged With: 2020 Vision Team

Structure and money: Presbyterian special committee thinks big about denomination’s future

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Is it time to reconfigure the national structure of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)? What do Presbyterians at the mid council level have to say about per capita? The work of the PC(USA)’s Special Committee on Per-Capita Based Funding and National Church Financial Sustainability is beginning to take shape, some four months after its members were appointed, although exact recommendations to the 2020 General Assembly won’t emerge until the end of 2019 (on financial sustainability) and February 2020 (on per capita). But it’s becoming clear in the discussions of the committee’s two work teams that its members are thinking big – including considering whether the current structure of the PC(USA), more or less established when the northern and southern branches of Presbyterians reunited in 1983, still works given the current financial realities. Laura Cheifetz, a minster from Georgia who is co-moderator of the special committee and who leads the financial sustainability team, sat … [Read more...]

Tagged With: per capita

Partners in mission: World Mission hold consultations

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Sometimes, the day-to-day complexities of working in mission around the world can be all-consuming: there’s always a crisis, pain or joy, places in transition. So part of the work of Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) World Mission in recent months has been to hold a series of consultations, first with key global partners and then with domestic constituencies, to ask these broader questions: What is our calling in mission today? What does it mean to be partners in mission? As part of that process, World Mission leaders have held four international consultations beginning in late 2018 with global partners in Africa, Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Europe, and Latin America and the Caribbean. That’s being followed by a series of consultations in the U.S. with representation from mission networks, advocacy groups and congregations and mid councils that are involved in international mission work. “It’s designed to be a collaborative process,” said Philip Woods, World … [Read more...]

“This is community” — Writing new stories at Seattle’s Recovery Café

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SEATTLE – What does it mean to be church? For some, it’s gathering in pews in a sanctified space on Sunday mornings. For the Recovery Café community in Seattle, it’s offering connection, accountability, support and hope for a new day. “We believe with all our hearts that being church is being in recovery,” said Killian Noe, the founding director of Recovery Café, a recovery support program in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood. “Recovering from all kinds of things. … Most of us are recovering from an exaggerated need for control,” for approval, for security, for something to numb life’s pain. Those forces “make us hold on to more things than we need, rather than letting them flow through us to create a more just world.” Recovery Café helps those struggling with addiction to drugs and alcohol — some of whom have mental health challenges or are also troubled with isolation and loneliness. “We get to see them stabilize and build lives they are excited about living,” Noe said. … [Read more...]

Tagged With: NEXTChurch

Commission clarifies oversight authority in Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) legal cases

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The Moving Forward Implementation Commission – meeting in an unannounced closed session on a Sunday night – has acted to make it clear that the board of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), A Corporation has the authority to manage secular litigation involving the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Although the action the commission took doesn’t say so, this meeting came on the heels of an action in May by John Sheller, an outside counsel in the case, to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court a defamation case involving Eric Hoey, who was the PC(USA)’s former director of evangelism and church growth and one of four men who lost their jobs with the denomination following an ethics investigation involving the 1001 New Worshipping Communities program. And it comes just before a called meeting June 27 of the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board – another closed meeting, according to the public notice of it. The U.S. Supreme Court considered Sheller’s petition for a stay on May 30 from a 2018 … [Read more...]

Tagged With: Moving Forward Implementation Commission • PMA board

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