“Singing together in congregations is a practice that we dearly love and are eager to promote, but loving our neighbor is job one here and so the time for fasting from this wonderful practice may be longer than any of us would like.” – John Witvliet, director of the of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship (in an interview with Religion News Service) … [Read more...]
The inheritance of voice
Guest commentary by Charlene Jin Lee When I came home after throwing my Jessica McClintock prom dress in the fire, my dad greeted me at the front door and extended a firm handshake. I was a first-year college student returning from a protest against inhumane conditions of covert “sweatshops” operated by major retail brands. It was my dad who took me to my first protest; he woke my sisters and me one spring morning to march for peace in the aftermath of the LA riots in 1992. We drove 20 miles into the tarred city from our suburban home, in the family Volvo station wagon no less. “Koreans need to join the march so many Black people suffered for,” our dad would repeat throughout those chaotic days. My dad arrived in the U.S. from South Korea as a freshman at Georgetown University. It was 1954, a year after the Korean war ended, the year of Brown v. Board of Education, one year before the lynching of Emmet Till. In the thick of the civil rights movement, at the nation’s capital, … [Read more...]
Welcome to GA … online!
Welcome to two-dimensional screens, Zoom rooms, mute buttons and voting icons. Welcome to worship online. Is there a seat at the Lord’s Table online? Seminary commencement, confirmation and new member orientation… online. Welcome to Bible study, session meetings and youth game night… online. Have we not gathered in the name of Christ to proclaim the resurrection on behalf of those who have died… online? If not by the grace of God. House church, handwritten notes, casseroles on porches, lunches for homeless neighbors, public statements of hope and prayerful sighs too deep for words fill our spaces with purposeful waiting and serving. The church is still the church. During our ubiquitous anguish and two-dimensional screens yielding three-dimensional cacophonies of partisanship, fear and human suffering, the world is restless yet still hunkered down. The embodied grief of our disembodied communities is disorienting. It sits just below the surface of every “official” statement. … [Read more...]
Youth Rising Coalition GA event supports entrepreneurship in Baltimore youth
Justice Georgie remembers a phone call with 30 other young black entrepreneurs. It “ignited the fire I already had inside of me, because I wanted to be better.” Georgie, owner of Embrace My World Unlimited and Youth Rising Coalition photographer and storyteller, noted the significance of the connection with colleagues in Baltimore. As part of the General Assembly’s commitment to engaging in local outreach in its host city, assembly leaders chose Youth Rising Coalition for its dedication to improving the lives of young people. Due to the coronavirus pandemic and the decision that the 224th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) would meet virtually, assembly-goers would not have the chance to meet the youth of Baltimore. So, on June 23, commissioners to General Assembly and interested Presbyterians were invited to join an online 35-minute event, “Youth Rising: Advancing Youth and Young Adult Entrepreneurs.” The event was designed to give participants a chance to … [Read more...]
Delighted: What Teenagers Are Teaching the Church about Joy
Kenda Creasy Dean, Wesley W. Ellis, Justin Forbes and Abigail Visco Rusert Eerdmans, 176 pages Reviewed by Sarah Dennis When you begin reading a youth ministry book, you might expect references to C.S. Lewis, Aladdin and Katy Perry — but not often Jürgen Moltmann, Thomas Merton and Miroslav Volf. However, as I was reading through this incisive book, I was continually struck by the graceful weaving of practical application and deep theology. As someone who felt called into pastoral ministry to youth, grounding youth ministry in a theological construct compels me. I’m drawn in by theology that is not esoteric but rather highly accessible. The authors do that masterfully. In “Delighted,” they equate the joy of God – God’s delight in humanity simply for their being – to the role youth workers play in the lives of young people in a readable and relatable way. They accomplish this by urging readers to rethink the concepts of friendship, celebration and confession in youth ministry. … [Read more...]
Youth faith formation in a digital age
One morning last fall, I excitedly headed to a local coffee shop to meet with one of our congregation’s college students, lamenting that I could not get coffee with most of our other students because they attend schools around the country. The distance has made ministry very hard, and I have watched students become more and more disconnected from the church while I try to figure out how to reach out in the best way. I started to think about how I could meet with them virtually. That same afternoon, I found out that I could pay for a membership with a virtual meeting platform for roughly the same cost as the two coffees earlier that morning. The next week I hosted our very first “Virtual Coffee” with my college students. Well, I tried to host Virtual Coffee. No one logged on! I hosted a few more, staring at only myself. I sat there one afternoon wondering why my college students were not logging on, and I sent a Facebook message to a few of them to check in. The response to that … [Read more...]
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