CATEGORY: Presbyterian Church (USA)

Epitaph

How much will engaging the world as a church newly committed to addressing and ending systemic racism, addressing and ending poverty bring a new vitality to our congregations, families and communities?

Welcome to the Future

We don’t lack motivated, called people who love Jesus. We lack care about God’s people who live in small towns and rural communities.

Coffeyville, Kansas: Population 9,481

In 1999 the First Presbyterian Church had 193 members.  In 2019 the number was 75.  This 20-year decline is not much different than what I see elsewhere in our presbytery.  However, a church of 500 that drops to 250 can still support a pastor.  The Coffeyville church can’t, at least not a seminary trained, ordained, and installed pastor.  

Chase, Kansas: Population 436

I asked if they had ever had conversations with the town 12 miles away, which has a part time PCUSA pastor, about a yoked pastorate. They wondered aloud about what a pastor would do. The pulpit is filled by church members, retired pastors, and commissioned ruling elders, and they – the members and community – do everything else.

I’m Rooting For Everybody Black!…. I Think?

I spend a significant amount of time on Youtube every few months watching writer/producer/actor/model/unrequited BFF, Issa Rae do press and various interviews. I was deep in one of these YouTube rabbit trails not too long ago and ran across her interview with a correspondent from Variety. The same correspondent to whom she told her now famous line on the Emmys red carpet in 2017, “I’m rooting for everybody black!”. What a line, what a statement, what a vibe (as the young folx say)?  The film and television industry has historically been a very white industry where privilege and nepotism reign supreme. I know another mammoth institution that can claim this history, do you?

Ad Astra Per Aspera – To the Stars Through Difficulties (the Kansas state motto): a portrait of rural ministry

A church with 30 members in a town of 400 people will never install a full-time pastor again, and I can’t imagine anyone moving to rural Kansas for a quarter time call. Still, that church created a food pantry to feed their neighbors, and they send children in their town to camp each summer. Churches like this need a different conversation, and they can be leaders in it.

Black Congregations Matter

The African American experience can be seen through the lens of five ‘Ps’: property, problems, performers, purchasers, and paranoia.