We have received 15 entries into the Official presbymergent Logo Contest. Please vote for the logo submissions you think are best (you can vote again after 24 hrs). The voting will be open from today until Thursday night at midnight. On Friday, we’ll be awarding the prize packages to the top five submissions with the most votes. The panel of judges will be deliberating this week as well and you’ll hear from us shortly after the top five are chosen.

So, let the voting begin!

UPDATE: Please vote using the voting/polling module on the right hand sidebar of this site. Do not leave your vote in the comments section, please.

We’ve added a voting plugin to our website, and are testing it out right now. In the next few weeks, we’ll be having some things we want you all to vote on and give us some feedback, so we wanted to test this out to see if it would work.

So, if you have a minute, would you mind stopping by the website and leaving a test vote in the right sidebar? That will help us know that the plugin works well for everyone. Thanks!

Here are two questions (submitted by presbymergent editor Jim Bonewald) to get your creative juices flowing and serve as examples:

1. How can we (and you as moderator help us) re-frame the conversation in our denomination so that we can move away from the polarizations of the past and can move forward with the gospel in this new millennium?
2. Why aren’t we planting new churches in our denomination? Why have efforts at new church plants failed?  What new approaches do we need to take? What does a post-modern church plant look like? Why do we look for land before we build a community?!?!

Now it’s your turn:  leave a comment on this post to ask your own question (or questions).  Let’s not spend too much time discussing, debating, or answering our own questions just yet - we can discuss and narrow them down once we have a good number accumulated.  For now, dream big and ask the questions that you would ask a Moderator candidate if she or he came knocking on your church door looking for support - especially questions that have special significance among our growing community of “loyal radicals.”

I will be the first person to admit that even our lowest standard of living is higher than many countries average daily income levels. We are not the worst. We are also sitting atop a volatile mountain of debt, spending, and imaginary power cells. What the fuck are we living for? Where is the service to Christ? Where is the transformation? We are dying as a church in the west and people say they care but they are not supporting it.

I wrote this in response to Carol’s post. I am not a pastor, but a seminarian on the verge of graduation. I am terrified to go into ministry. All of the fears you spoke of add to my anxiety. What shall I do to ensure I can afford to raise a family or even serve a congregation? I heard far too much, “trust God! It is a matter of faith.” I agree trusting God is the beginning. Where is the practice of trust when it comes to financial support from the congregations? Folks will complain, but they will not support.

We are all to blame in the decline. We are part of the problem. This stance of “trust God and if you do not then you have no faith” removes the responsibility from congregations, the Body, and all have in supporting the church. We do not train pastors for free. Is it fair and good stewardship to expect these individuals to shoulder the cost of training that is required?

We have to pay 80 dollars per ordination exam — that is 400 dollars if you can pass these antiquated monsters in the first shot. Not many do! Then there are the psychological evaluations, anywhere from 600 to 2500 dollars. Then the cost of seminary itself, from 10,000 to 15,000 per year for tuition and an additional 10,000 or so to live each year. That is about 60,000 to 75,000 in debt to begin your service with. We need to be smarter with this. If we say we are concerned with the death of the church then we need to step up and support.

The day of the full time pastor maybe behind us. I for one think it is. We must seek sustainable ways to minister in the context to which we find ourselves. Does this mean we have to do away with seminaries and the education they provide? No, the seminary education is foundational to service in the reformed tradition. We must change our lives to live responsibly and centered on Christ.

I used to joke that I wanted to open the First Presbyterian Church of Holy Rollers Bowling Alley. I am no longer joking. Is a coffee house, pub, bowling alley, or restaurant the answer? It is sustainable and attracts folks. In some areas it would respond to the desire and need of a distanced population. It would provide a place for community, care, warmth, outreach, and financial resistance. We just need folks to grasp the idea. Like one of my favorite groups would said, “Rage full on!”

In conjunction with a new way we can inventory our stuff and ask: Do we need the ipod? The newest phone? The cable TV? The two cars? The this or the that? All of this stuff is nice. What does it say about what you live your life for and for whom you live for? I am a f’king hypocrite right along with many of us. I crave the technologies! The Apple computers. The name brand running shoes, the jeans, the shirts, the designer vitamins and food. I love to eat out and am overweight and a burden to this world. I do not practice all that I preach. I need grace, forgiveness, and courage to be what I have witnessed in this world. To stand against the tyranny of consumerism and stereotypes, and hopelessness.

There is a better way. Please pray about it and pray that we can find the way to the cross and sit at the feet of Jesus. The rebel rousing Jesus that roundhouse kicks the money lenders out of a house of Prayer. WTFWJD?

But we want to hear from you - what do you think?