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A New Kind of Christianity

March 25, 2010 By Adam Walker Cleaveland 1 Comment

Deborah Arca Mooney, a progressive Presbyterian as well as the Mainline Protestant Portal Manager for Patheos, had the chance to interview Brian McLaren about his new book and much more. She describes the interview in this way:

The interview was written from my perspective as a progressive Presbyterian and my interest in his cross-over appeal and work in building bridges across theological divides and religions. I had the opportunity to ask him a host of questions about his to reading “new kind of christianity,” including his unconventional approach to reading the Bible, the future of the emergent movement, what mainliners and evangelicals can learn from each other, inter-religious friendship, his views on the church’s response to homosexuality, and the spiritual practices that keep him grounded. His answers, as you might expect, were thoughtful, generous and inspiring. I hope you might share the interview link with your readers.

It’s a great interview and has some wonderful insights in it that would be helpful to Presbyterians who are continuing to seek out new ways of being the church in an emerging world. You can find the interview here.

Filed Under: Resources, Theology Tagged With: Brian McLaren, Evangelical, Mainline, Presbymergent

Technology and the Next Presbyterian Hymnal

January 21, 2009 By adamcopeland 24 Comments

Sing to the Lord a new song!  Technology opens doors in the church and in the world. One tweet on Twitter can connect pastors in ways unimaginable when my Dad was in seminary (sorry, Pops). Blog communities bring new and exciting — though imperfect — ways to discuss Christ and culture. What self-respecting youth group these days doesn’t have a Facebook group? That said, I’m also aware of the growing digital divide in our congregations. Now, when we think of our diversity, we must also remember the diversity of those with email and those without, those with a high-speed internet connection and those without a computer. Ahh, the challenges of ministry in 2009.

The Presbyterian Hymnal Committee, a group formed last year, is in the initial stages of developing the next Presbyterian hymnal. The next hymnal will include songs composed since 1990 (the publication date of the blue hymnal) and will seek to honor our rich heritage. Perhaps it will bring back some from the red book, but it’ll also put into print some of the new places that God is leading us. For all your next hymnal questions check out http://presbyterianhymnal.org , and remember the committee is just beginning its work.

Especially in these early stages, though, I want to take to the committee some ways that new technology might best be used to sing a new song unto the Lord. Copyright law is tricky enough with printed materials, let alone when concerned with electronic formats, but I want to think broadly at this stage.

(On a parenthetical note, let’s not forget the amazing “technology” of the bound paper printed book. What a remarkable, durable, cheap, easy-to-use, technology it is — and will be for years to come. The next hymnal will certainly be in book format, but why stop there?)

The committee can make no promises — we have budget considerations like everybody else — but we will consider, in good faith, how God may be calling the church to use technology in its congregational song and worship planning. That’s where you come in.

Comment away. What tech ideas — hymnal/singing/worship related — would be handy in your congregation? How do you use the hymnal for worship planning and how could that be bettered with new technology? Do you use existing online worship resources? What, technologically speaking, should the hymnal committee consider?

Pop a comment on this post, or email me at adamjcopeland at gmail dot com. Peace.

Filed Under: Emerging Worship, Resources, alt.worship Tagged With: next hymnal, PC(USA), presbyterian hymnal, Technology, worship resources

Associate Pastor Position in Sioux City, Iowa

December 3, 2008 By Presbymergent Admin Leave a Comment

Presbymergent will occasionally receive emails from pastors who would like us to post their CIFs and get the word out to some emergent-types. A brief description of the position is below, with a link to their CIF.

First Presbyterian Church of Sioux City, Iowa is looking for an Associate Pastor to engage the families of our church as followers of Jesus Christ and help them to shine the light of his love through their lives in the world.  We’re a fairly traditional downtown church eager to see how God will reform us as a mission outpost for the kingdom through friendship, discipleship, and acts of love.

View the CIF

Filed Under: Jobs, Resources Tagged With: Associate Pastor, CIF, Employment, Jobs

Twitter of Faith

November 22, 2008 By Neal Locke 6 Comments

Legend has it that one afternoon on November 22nd, Presbymergent founder and about-to-be-ordained-minister Adam Walker Cleaveland was trying to come up with a statement of faith for his Ordination service.  So he did the usual thing any 20-something uber geek would do…he asked his twitter friends how long a statement of faith should be?

After many responses of the usual sort (one page, two page, red page, blue page) fellow presby-geek (and World of Warcraft guru) Shawn Coons tweeted back : “instead of a statement of faith, how about a twitter of faith? Anyone else up to the challenge?”  And so it began…

Here’s the challenge:

  1. If you’re not on twitter yet, click here to see what it’s all about and why you should be.
  2. If you’re on twitter (or just joined), log in and tweet your personal statement of faith…in 140 characters or less.
  3. Add the hashtag #TOF somewhere in your tweet. That will actually make it 136 characters, but it also makes it easy for us to find and compile all of these statements.
  4. Encourage your friends to take the “Twitter of Faith” challenge, too – imagine how cool it would be if this meme spreads, proclaiming the gospel across the internets (well, at least across twitter).

UPDATE:  Adam, Mark, Chad, Wendy, Cobus, Matthew, Makeesha, Geoff, Adele, Drew, Cameron, Dan, Greg, John, Ryan, Angela, John, Greg, Molly, Matt,  Dave Zimmerman from InterVarsity Press, and our distinguished moderator, Bruce Reyes-Chow, have all posted this to their blogs.  If you blog it, let us know in the comments so we can link to it here, and feel free to use the above image (designed by Adam) for your post.

UPDATE: There’s now a facebook page and corresponding event, too.  Even if you’re not on Twitter, you can click here to scroll through the many TOFs that have been filling up the web in the past few hours.

Filed Under: Churches, Events, Presbymergent, Resources, twitter Tagged With: faith, twitter, Web Design

The Offering: An Emergent Theology Tale

October 21, 2008 By Leon Bloder 4 Comments

I have had more than my fair share of days when I have questioned my call to be a pastor. I read somewhere how a young man, who was thinking about becoming a pastor, asked his mentor—a pastor of many years—”When did you feel the call to go into ministry?” The older man didn’t bat an eyelash and replied, “This morning.”

I completely get that. There are days when I feel like I need to hear the call every five minutes just to assure me that I am doing what I am supposed to do with my life. Even when people tell me things that should reassure me, I struggle to believe that God would actually want to use someone like me for such an important task. I once heard that the great reformer, Martin Luther, used to feel as though the earth was going to open up and swallow him whole each time he rose to say the Mass. That comforts me a bit, really. If Martin Luther felt himself to be unworthy of his call, then at least I am in good company. Martin Luther also swore like a sailor and loved beer, which is also pretty comforting.

For the past few years I have felt a longing in me that has been difficult to define and impossible to quench. You see, God, in God’s infinite wisdom and mercy, has seen fit for me to serve in the Presbyterian Church (USA)–a Christian denomination that has been (like most mainline Protestant denominations) in decline for decades. My more conservative colleagues from not-mainline denominations gleefully point this out at every available opportunity—God love ‘em. Once I had a fellow pastor from a conservative, evangelical church inform me over lunch that in his opinion the real moment when the PC(USA) fell into ruin was when it began ordaining women.

“That’s where it all started,” he told me in sage-like fashion. “And now look what’s happening… you’re ordaining them.” I asked what he meant by “them” and he replied, “You know…homosexuals.”
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Churches, Culture, Emergent, Emerging Worship, Events, Leadership, PC(USA), Polity, Presbymergent, Resources, Theology Tagged With: Emergent, emergent theology, pastoral ministry

The Spiritual Book Club

March 5, 2008 By Presbymergent Admin 2 Comments

This message was sent to presbymergent from PCUSA minister Susan Baller-Shepard:

I am a Presbyterian minister, social worker, and writer, and I’ve facilitated www.spiritualbookclub.com for nearly ten years now. I am a parish associate pastor at First Pres-Normal, IL. We also have a local spirituality book club group that meets in Barnes & Noble once a month, makes meals for the homeless, collects items for women in prison, etc. We now have a new blog www.spiritualbookclubblog.blogspot.com which I think would be of interest to the Presbymergent crowd.

We’re collecting interviews to highlight the spiritual lives of real people on this blog. If you’d like to be highlighted, please email me your responses to the below questions and a photo, and we’ll post them. Enjoy reading what’s already posted. We hope to get diversity both of opinion and geography, and so far we have responses from friends in India, England, Australia, etc.

Peace,
Susan Baller-Shepard

Real People, Real Lives, Real Spirituality…
Your Name (you can choose, you can put your full name or just first name):
Where you live (vague as you wanna be):
What you do as a vocation or avocation?
Your two favorite books:
Your two favorite CDs:
Why you are interested in spirituality?
Your favorite quote:
Your favorite web sites:
Your hero?
A spiritual lesson you hope to learn?
A place in the world where you feel spiritually “connected?”
Please include a photo of yourself, or something that represents you, so we can upload it to the blog.

Filed Under: Networking, Resources Tagged With: books, Presbymergent

Grab a Gravatar

December 9, 2007 By Adam Walker Cleaveland 7 Comments

You may notice in the comments section now on this site, there are little places where a silhouette placeholder graphic exists. However, if you check out my author archive here, you’ll see there is a little image that I use as my avatar. In case you’d like to add a little more personalization to your experience here at presbymergent.org, head on over to Gravatar.com and sign up and upload your own photo/avatar. Then whenever you leave a comment on the site, we’ll see your picture/avatar.

Filed Under: Resources, Website Tagged With: avatar, Presbymergent, site