What could your congregation do if it didn’t have to worry about keeping up a building? That’s the question Rev. Eneyas Freitas asked when he started a new worshiping community called Urban Connect in Phoenix. His congregation meets at a new event venue called The Vintage 45 in Phoenix’s warehouse district every Sunday morning.
An Idaho pastor and Presbyterian Mission Agency Board member urged new small church pastoral residents to remember the role of mystery as they bear witness to God’s kingdom. During a Small Church Residency Program commissioning service in Louisville yesterday, the Rev. Marci Glass, pastor of Southminster Presbyterian Church in Boise, Idaho, drew from the parable of the sower in Mark’s Gospel to stress that God’s work surpasses human understanding.
His first name, Atef, means “kindness” in Arabic. Those who know him well say is a perfect fit for a man whose passion is equipping leaders for ministry and mission in Egypt and throughout the Arab world.
Ozeas Silva and his wife, Elman, are originally from Brazil and work as pastoral leaders in the U.S., making a daily impact as part of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) The couple moved to Atlanta in 2003 with their children after hearing God’s call to work with new immigrant families in the United States.
Jim Davis, a member of Miami Shores Presbyterian Church in Florida, and a long-time supporter of Presbyterian World Mission, has given $1 million to support church growth in Egypt. The gift will be split between new church development and pastoral training.
Three worshiping communities have been named winners of the 2015 Sam and Helen R. Walton Award—for their excellence as new church starts in their local communities.
A group of six Russian grandmothers who won second place in Europe’s Eurovision Song Contest have pledged to use their prize money to build an Orthodox church in their tiny home village.
The new physical plant at Jerusalem church is just the fourth new church building constructed in the last 20 years by the Presbyterian Reformed Church in Cuba (IPRC), says the Rev. Francisco Marrero, stated clerk of the IRPC and a frequent worshiper here.
The worshippers sat in plastic chairs, not pews. The music they heard came not from a piano or organ, but a CD player. And surrounding the worship area were not stained glass windows, but the sounds of neighbors coming and going.
The setting may have seemed unusual to many Presbyterians used to attending church in the United States, but the message and sense of family presented in this carport church was the same, if not stronger.
Ciudadela Metropolitana is a new church development in Soledad, south of Barranquilla. The congregation meets in a carport, right in the middle …
Church planting is the best way to renew established churches, says the Rev. Pete James, pastor of Vienna Presbyterian Church in Northern Virginia.
He shared this message with 50 pastors from large (600+ members) Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregations and 25 new church development coaches at a Jan. 25-29 gathering here sponsored by the Evangelism & Church Growth ministry area of the General Assembly Mission Council (GAMC).
“We should call the whole church to come together around church planting as our primary mission,” said James. “It is the best evangelistic strategy for the 21st century.”
James has …