All Are Beloved, All Belong: Creating LGBTQIA+ Affirming Ministries Working and living in Beloved community requires engaging theological discussion, creativity, collaboration, and vulnerability. Church workers are often asked to lead ministries which deftly navigate...
New Members…An Intergenerational Approach When a new family comes into our faith community, we typically invite the adults(parents) to a New Members class. There they learn all about our faith community and being Presbyterian. Yet, when youth and children come into faith communities, we send them off to Sunday school, Youth group, or Mid-week programming […]
Reading the Bible Queerly: Beyond the Basics! This workshop will help participants dig deeper into trans and queer approaches to the Bible in ways that can help them transform their teaching, preaching, and personal interpretation/devotional practices. The workshop goes “beyond the basics” by skipping over the traditional “clobber passages” and questions of “what the Bible […]
Lament WITH Children and Youth: Practices, Rhythms, Rituals that Empower Faith Communities to Address Loss and Injustice My story: In 2021, I lost both of my parents suddenly to Covid within 10 days. As a worship leader, I was immediately struck with how little room our faith communities provided for grief, let alone a framework […]
Unboxing the Church: Becoming Courageous Congregations 1 John 3:18. Let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth. We’re interested in co-creating a more peaceful world, but how do we do that with only an hour together on Sundays? The Presbyterian Peace Fellowship can help! This workshop engages congregations of the peace-curious, […]
The Advocate Jan. 2024 Volume 1
To share ideas with others who desire to live in a more just and equitable world and explore how the principles of community organizing–listening and building relationships–can give us tools for speaking and acting and risk, in the words of John Lewis “getting into good trouble.”
The Advocate reached out to leaders across the church inviting them to share with us, and with our readers, important lessons about faith formation. This week, we present the second blog in this series. “There’s no way I could pay you back, but my plan is to show you that I understand.” * I understand […]
By Nancy Diaz As I sat and listened to APCE’s 2022 Annual Event speaker talk about our personal cloud of witnesses, I remembered those who took part in my own faith formation, los ancianos de la iglesia, the elders of the church. These were hard working, blue-collared, many newly immigrated or second generation Mexican-Americans who […]
