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Greetings!
This is the final volume of the Monthly for this cycle! Please take a minute to acknowledge the writers. We are saying goodbye to Ruth Everhart! Thank you Ruth for your inspiring words and commitment to the Monthly!
If you'd like to be part of this dynamic core of writers, drop me a line at lquander@thepresbytery.org.
The Monthly will return in September. Enjoy your summer!
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The Selflessness of Self-Care - by Denise Anderson
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As a token of thanks for my service to them over the past few months, the English Ministry of Taiwanese Presbyterian Church presented me with a gift card to my favorite spa on Mother's Day. It was an unexpected and wildly appreciated gift that reminded me of an important lesson I've learned since being with them: self-care is absolutely necessary when one is in ministry.
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Christ and Culture - by Stephen Hiemstra
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At Pentecost the Holy Spirit speaks Gospel into culture. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to peak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance (Acts 2:4 ESV). Here the Holy Spirit communicates the Gospel among all people groups through languages that previously separated us under the curse of Babel (Genesis 11:7). Language marks culture. Much like Pentecost is God's antidote to Babel, the Gospel is an antidote to culture
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Carol Leaves - by John Wimberly
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For the past seven years, I have been blessed to work with an extremely talented colleague: Carol Howard Merritt. Before even meeting Carol, I started by totally misjudging her. When the search committee asked me to review the PIFs of their three finalists, I jumped to their educational backgrounds. Seeing that Carol had graduated from Moody Bible Institute, I thought the committee was playing a joke on me. Well, the joke was on me. In my close-minded prejudice, I assumed that anyone who attended Moody would be a fundamentalist of the most extreme variety and a terrible fit for this congregation. Of course, Carol is anything but.
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Host or Guest? - by Ruth Everhart
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Do your church members think of themselves as hosts or as guests?
This question was posed to us by Henry Brinton during the Open Space portion of our May Presbytery meeting. His question comes from his upcoming book: The Welcoming Congregation: Roots and Fruits of Christian Hospitality.
The question resonated with me. I had arrived at the meeting after spending three hours helping a complete stranger tackle the boxes which were stacked triple-high in her living room. She is the first client for my newly-launched side business, Clutter CLEAR. She is determined to conquer all the loose ends which are crammed in these boxes, and which have taken over her life.
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