PSEC helps prepare churches for necessary adaptation
Two very important and very different events happened last Saturday in the life of our Conference. Our first “Necessary Endings Workshop” was presented by the people who created our “Necessary Endings” document a manual for church closure. You can find that here:
psec.org/church-closure
. Twenty-seven people, representing five congregations, were encouraged by the fact they are not alone in facing the potential end of their congregation’s ministry. And that there is support from brothers and sisters around the conference to move through this very difficult discernment and decision process.
At the same time, Associate Conference Minister, Rev. Cean James was leading a workshop for one of our congregations on Natural Church Growth and Development. If you have not heard Cean's presentation, I encourage you to invite him to your local church or association meeting at which time you will hear him talk about the factions of healthy church: empowering leadership, fostering good small groups, developing a passionate spirit, living by a functional structure, creating inspiring worship, committing to need-oriented evangelism, loving relationships. Knowing HOW to be a healthy church is not difficult. Living into that and making space for strangers is VERY challenging.
Both of these ministry initiatives are contingent on faithful, effective lay and authorized minister leadership. Monday and Tuesday of this week Rev. Sharon Morris and I and members of PSEC association Committees on Ministry met at Lancaster Theological Seminary to review the new Pennsylvania Academy of Ministry Training and Formation Program for Lay leaders and people discerning a call to ordained ministry. It is a very biblically based, theologically sound, practice orientated approach to training willing participants to meet the needs of an ever-changing church.
The key theme of three events was adaptation. It has never been easy to be a ministry. Never. But the world in which we live moves at a faster pace than our ancestors ever knew. That will not change. And our capacity to minister in it requires a willingness, a faithfulness to try new things, to have difficult conversations and to confront systems that sometimes resist the proclamation of the Gospel. I am delighted to be joined in this work with you and give thanks every day that we do this work in the presence of God and the connections we share with each other.
Bill
Rev. William P. Worley
Conference Minister
