During the years when I was growing up, we had a number of cars in our family. Big cars, little cars, new cars, old cars — they came and went, according to the fortunes of my dad’s business and my mother’s teaching salary. We were a suburban family in the Sixties, which meant there was often one common denominator amongst all those vehicles that ever occupied our driveway: the station wagon.
Read MoreThe third installment of Come to the Table is scheduled for November 8-9, 2019 at the Stony Point Center in Stony Point, NY. The planning team is hard at work designing the experience focused on worship, joint learning – with a mission fair, and two 1½-hour-long workshop sessions on three tracks – and fellowship. The theme around which our Synod community will gather is For Such a Time as This: Change, Crisis, & Opportunity.
Read MoreWhen we entered the opening gathering for the May Mission & Ministries Commission meeting, we were told to bring our chairs into the inner part of the room. There we sat in a semi-circle. It created a discomfort around the room because it was not what we were used to doing. Everyone waited for the activity to begin…and you could feel the palpable tension as we waited for this activity to be over so we could return to our normal seats. Yet, it never happened. As I squelched my complaints about why this did not create a productive meeting space in which I could take notes for my reporting, I began to shift my perspective. I began to fully engage the process at hand. This was no longer an activity to be endured, but I could see the value in it.
Read MoreWhile the New Jersey Missional Structures (NJMS) working group is convened and facilitated by the Synod of the Northeast, the group’s members were appointed through the moderators of each of the seven NJ presbyteries. This is an incredible group of talented, creative, and visionary people, and we are so grateful for their work to imagine a new approach to presbytery life!
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