CATEGORY: NEXT News

Resources for Doing Church Digitally: A NEXT Church Response to COVID19

We at NEXT Church are committed to equipping faith leaders and congregations and much of our work is done through a virtual medium. Given this, we’ve prepared several resources that […]

Jessica Tate and the Power of Openness

The truth is that we need to be light on our feet and open-minded to creativity and innovation; to new ways of considering how to connect with people and adapt to culture; to interpret theology and biblical understandings with the myriad of lenses available to us.

Next Church executive director and this year’s Next Church National gathering preacher Rev. Jessica Tate is a voice urging this movement.

Miguel De La Torre and the Power of Hopelessness

Dr. De La Torre’s keynote is what I am most looking forward to at NEXT this year, not because I will enjoy it the most but because I am convinced he will speak to me words of discomfort and hopelessness that I need to hear in order to sit in the dust and ashes that properly fuel the gospel.

Brian Blount And The Power of Proclamation

Dr. Blount also taught me about the power of proclamation (even though I never took a preaching class from him) – how to make the gospel relevant, how to use stories and metaphors to illustrate a difficult-to-articulate biblical concept, how to awaken your listeners to the awareness that even we, broken as we may be, have within us the capacity to make God’s kingdom a reality, here and now. 

Mike, De’Amon, and Miguel

The National Gathering of NEXT Church is perennially inspiring, fun, and motivating.  Yes, there have been speakers who jolt us and spark new ideas.  The 2020 National Gathering – in particular – promises to make us uncomfortable.

Yay.

Keynoters Mike Mather, De’Amon Harges, and Miguel de la Torre will make us decidedly uncomfortable in Cincinnati March 2-4, 2020.  And this is very good.

Listening to Living Stones

With 700 amazing church leaders descending on Cincinnati for the 2020 NEXT Church National Gathering shaped by that Joshua passage, the team tasked with inviting key-noters, preachers and testimony-givers for this conference knew that our invitations needed to go to people actively involved in relevant ministry. The team needed these speakers to help us look to the future, to reflect on the way in which God has worked in them and through them, and to give us a word of challenge to ignite our witness, hope, and power in God.

A New Statement of Faith

The hope of NEXT Church and the writers of the Sarasota Statement is this: We encourage groups of Presbyterians, in a rich and colorful diversity of relationships, both within and beyond congregations, to conceive and declare their own faith statements, proclaiming the light of Christ.