Change and God’s Future

This month, our blog series is actually a vlog series – a video blog, that is! We’re calling it “The NEXT Few Minutes.” Over the next several weeks, we’ll share with you short, 2-3 minute videos from a variety of folks around the country with the hopes they spark your own imagination. We hope you’ll learn about some trends, ask questions, and think deeply about the practice of ministry in your own setting.

Glen Bell, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Sarasota, FL, and a member of our executive team, reflects on congregational change and God’s future. Join the conversation by commenting on this blog post or on our Facebook/Twitter pages!

To see all of our videos in our “The NEXT Few Minutes” series, check out our playlist on Youtube.

The NEXT Few Minutes

This month, our blog series is actually a vlog series – a video blog, that is! We’re calling it “The NEXT Few Minutes.” Over the next several weeks, we’ll share with you short, 2-3 minute videos from a variety of folks around the country with the hopes they spark your own imagination. We hope you’ll learn about some trends, ask questions, and think deeply about the practice of ministry in your own setting.

To kick us off, NEXT Church director Jessica Tate offers “What is NEXT Church?” Join the conversation by commenting on this blog post or on our Facebook/Twitter pages!

To see all of the videos in our series, check out our YouTube playlist or this list of blogs.

NEXT Church Denominational Listening Campaign Report

In fall 2015 – winter 2016, NEXT Church embarked on a denominational listening campaign. A listening campaign is a tool we’ve learned from community organizing (specifically the Industrial Areas Foundation). We invited and trained people who have been leaders within NEXT Church to host a listening session with church leaders around questions of “transformational mission.” The sharing of stories and experiences gives space to hear together where God’s Spirit is moving.

We convened 47 groups that involved 447 people. These are our findings.

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Denominational Listening Campaign around Transformational Mission

What is a Listening Campaign?

In fall 2015 – winter 2016, NEXT Church embarked on a denominational listening campaign. A listening campaign is a tool we’ve learned from community organizing (specifically the Industrial Areas Foundation). We invited and trained people who have been leaders within NEXT Church to host a listening session with church leaders around questions of “transformational mission.” The sharing of stories and experiences gives space to hear together where God’s Spirit is moving.

We convened 47 groups that involved 447 people.

Purpose of the Listening Campaign

  1. To learn about how people are experiencing mission in local church settings.
  2. To offer the church a relational tool that can be used for discernment.
  3. To hear themes that can inform future directions for the Presbyterian Mission Agency and our national church structures.
  4. To connect local church leaders more deeply across differences in theology or vision for polity.

Through this campaign, we focused on people’s lived experiences. We believe taking time to build and deepen relationships is a critical practice in the church today. The relational fabric (our connectedness) is what will help us wade through the waters of cultural and denominational change.  

What We Heard

  • People shared exciting stories about transformational mission they/their congregations are engaged in. That is to be celebrated!
    • There seems to be an organic connection between missional engagement and congregational vitality.
    • Most of the mission described is happening at the congregational level, often with ecumenical or secular partnerships.
    • Mission is a place where people are eager to engage in church life.
    • Thought about mission is fluid and changing. Participants noted a shift toward “being missional,” a desire to seek full dignity of all parties in mission relationships, and that the most transformational mission experiences blur the us/them mentality.
  • People enjoy connecting with one another to share experiences or the practice of ministry. Sharing stories was a source of inspiration as people were encouraged by what their sister congregations are doing, made new points of connection around shared concerns, and got new ideas for mission connections in their own settings.
  • There is open wondering about the purpose of denominational structures (presbytery, synod, General Assembly) in the church today.
    • With a few notable exceptions, there was little despair or frustration voiced about denominational structures, but denominational structures or programs were not viewed as “go-to” resources.
    • There is hunger for denominational discernment. Where are the spaces to work through foundational questions that are not about voting?  
    • There is a desire to “flip the script.” We heard multiple sentiments like, “We need the denomination to stop inviting us in and start supporting us as we go out.”
    • People are very appreciative when denominational structures play one of the following roles
      • supporting — usually financially
      • training — educational resources or opportunities to increase capacity (community organizing, New Beginnings, and anti-racism training came up), or
      • connecting — linking people with similar interests/passions/mission engagement to share ideas or join together.
  • There is desire for a different denominational communication strategy around mission.
    • There is a sense that opportunities for connection in mission exist in the broader church but it is not clear how to find out about them or connect with them.
    • Others feel overwhelmed by the volume of mail/email from denominational sources and ignore it all.

Questions Going Forward

  • What does denominational participation mean today?
  • Where are the spaces to work through foundational questions that are not about voting? (Questions such as, what is mission? What is the role of the presbytery?)  
  • Is mission the threshold/entry space that worship was in previous era? If so, what resources exist (or need to be created) to help integrate education and spiritual development through mission, if that’s where people are engaging first?

For more information, contact NEXT Church Director, Jessica Tate, jessica@nextchurch.net.

Book Review: Earning Innocence

Earning Innocence by Andrew Taylor-Troutman
Resource Publications (an imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers), 2015
Reviewed by Carol Ferguson

614dgwywrgL._SX322_BO1,204,203,200_In his first novel, Earning Innocence, Andrew Taylor-Troutman gives the reader entrance to the mind of Rev. James Wheeler, a mind both precise in its renderings of the everyday and aware to the indwelling of the transcendent. Wheeler, a husband, father, and Moravian pastor, takes to the page to record his life, but more than that, to order, disorder, and reorder it again. Taylor-Troutman’s narrative is thick with the study of memory. Though the story is contained in just eight late summer days, Wheeler moves through the crash and eddy of a lifetime of memories, finding meaning in the way old stories slap up against the new ones.  Many of the events of Earning Innocence are familiar and ordinary—celebrating an anniversary, taking a dog for a walk, writing a sermon, eating a family dinner—yet in Taylor-Troutman’s hands they become windows into the faith that transforms ordinary into breathtakingly holy.

Throughout, Taylor-Troutman taunts with stories that might become The Conflict—an accident, a death, a combative son. Yet as soon as each rises, it slides away again, taking its place in the realm of memory, painful but past. In the end, Wheeler’s struggle is not with The Moment that Changes Everything, but with The Moment that Shouldn’t Have Changed Anything At All—an admission by his oldest son. The book concludes with a deep sense of hope, however, that the breach between them can be repaired, and that the innocence of a father’s love for his son can be re-earned.

Taylor-Troutman has created a true community on the page, and I find I want to be a part of it again. I am glad he intends to revisit these characters in another novel.

Wheeler’s mantra is this: “so much of prayer is a calling to mind.” In Earning Innocence, Taylor-Troutman calls to our minds the limping blessings of family and faith. If a book can be a prayer, this one certainly is. I found myself whispering Amen as I closed it.


Carol Ferguson is a native of Salem, VA, a proud graduate of Sweet Briar College, and a final-level MDiv student at Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, VA. A candidate for ordination in the Presbytery of the Peaks, she is currently seeking her first call to pastoral ministry.

2016 National Gathering Wednesday Morning Worship

The Wednesday morning worship service of the 2016 National Gathering was composed of three reflections on Exodus 14:10-31.

Liturgist: Betsy Lyles

Reflections: “Enslaved to the Past,” David Powers; “Delivering a Desperate Word,” Shelli Latham; “Standing in Awe,” Sarah Are

2016 National Gathering Opening Worship

Mark Douglas preaches at the first worship service of the 2016 National Gathering.

Liturgist: Billy Honor

Sermon: “Who’s Got Next?”

Mark Douglas is Professor of Christian Ethics at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, GA, where he teaches a wide variety of classes and directs the Masters of Divinity degree program.  His most recent book is  “Believing Aloud: Reflections on Being Religious in the Public Sphere” (Cascade, 2010).  He is currently working on a series of books exploring the impact of climate change on war and the roles that Christian traditions of pacifism, just war, and just peacemaking may play in addressing climate-shaped conflict.

2016 National Gathering Keynote: BUILD

Clergy affiliated with Baltimoreans United In Leadership Development (BUILD) share about their organization and its successes in Baltimore, MD.

Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development (BUILD), a local affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) and Maryland’s largest citizens power organization. For thirty-five years BUILD has helped identify and develop leaders to build citizen power for change in their own communities. BUILD is responsible for the successful passage of the first living wage ordinance in the world, the largest afterschool program in Baltimore (Child First), and the rebuilding of two blighted neighborhoods – Sandtown-Winchester and the Oliver community (in partnership with The Reinvestment Fund). Recently, BUILD led the effort to secure $1.1 billion dollars in public financing for the rebuilding and renovation of more than 1/3 of Baltimore’s public school facilities, the largest single increase to neighborhood investment in Baltimore’s history.

Andrew Foster Connors is the Senior Pastor of the Brown Memorial Park Avenue Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, MD, a position he has held since 2004. A church “alive in the city and the world,” Brown Memorial Park Avenue continues to live into its mission to become a radically inclusive Christian community, sent into the world to work for God’s peace and justice. Andrew serves as clergy co-chair of BUILD and is an organizing member of NEXT Church. Andrew is a native of Raleigh, NC. He attended Duke University as a B.N. Duke Scholar where he received a B.A. in History with a focus on contemporary social movements. He holds a Master of Divinity from Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, GA. Andrew is married to the Rev. Kate Foster Connors, also ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA). They live in Baltimore with their two children.

Glenna Huber has been a priest in The Diocese of Maryland since 2009. She has served as Vicar in three settings during that time with a consistent ministry at The Church of the Holy Nativity in Park Heights. Prior to joining the Diocese of Maryland Rev. Huber served for eight years in the Diocese of Atlanta her sponsoring Diocese. The Episcopal Urban Caucus, The Maryland Truth and Reconciliation education sub-committee, and Baltimoreons United in Leadership Development, a IAF affiliate, are among some of the boards and commissions on which The Rev. Huber serves. Rev. Huber earned her M. Div. at The General Theological Seminary in New York and her undergraduate at Spelman College in Atlanta. She and her husband are currently raising a 2-year-old son and a baby girl born April 2015.

Bishop Douglas Miles is a native of Baltimore. He has over 44 years of ministry experience in Baltimore, California, and Tennessee. In 1992, he organized Koinonia Baptist Church in Baltimore, which has expanded to two campuses and houses many different community outreach ministries, where he was consecrated Bishop of Koinonia. He is serving for the second time as a Clergy Co-Chair of BUILD. He has served in leadership positions with Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, Greater Homewood Interfaith Alliance, Maryland Health Care Initiative, Baltimore Interfaith Coalition, Maryland Food Committee, and Mission Baltimore. Bishop Miles is a national award-winning columnist with the Afro-American newspaper. He has preached and lectured throughout the world lastly serving as Jellicoe Preacher at Oxford University in England and is published in a book of sermons entitled Living in Hell. He is married to the former Rosanna White, the proud father of two sons – Harvey and Dante and grandfather of five.

2016 National Gathering Closing Worship: Denise Anderson

Denise Anderson preaches during Wednesday closing worship at the 2016 National Gathering.

Liturgists: Mehib Holmes and Janice James
Sermon: “Appointed and Unashamed”

Denise Anderson is the pastor of Unity Presbyterian Church in Temple Hills, Maryland. A nationally-recognized writer and blogger, Denise’s work has appeared in The Christian Century, The Huffington Post, These Days, and on her own blog, SOULa Scriptura: To Be Young, Gifted, and Reformed. Denise writes, preaches, and engages on issues of social justice, diversity, and reconciliation.

2016 National Gathering Ignite: Danita Nelson

Danita Nelson of New Covenant Fellowship of Austin shares about their intentional, multi-national, multi-racial, intergenerational community.

2016 National Gathering Ignite: Sarah Brown

Sarah Brown of the Church of Scotland shares about her churches’ merger and their participation in a pilot program to help them navigate the future.