THURSDAY
June 20, 2024
Video Message from the General Presbyter
The Rev. John Molina-Moore
From the Desk of Rev. David Baer, Stated Clerk
From the Desk of
Rev. Tara Spuhler McCabe, Dir. Congregational Dev. & Mission
Series on: What to do with your CAT! (Congregational Assessment Tool)
June 24 – Zoom (final session)
Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival
June 29 – Washington, DC
GENOUT Youth Chorus
June 29 – Sixth Presbyterian Church
Prophetic Preaching in a Tone-Deaf Culture: A Webinar with Dr. Kenyatta Gilbert
July 9 – New York Avenue Presbyterian Church
Building Community, Making Peace: A Restorative Church Gathering
August 3 – The Church of the Epiphany
Save the Date! Hearts and Minds Prepared for Worship
August 17 – Union Presbyterian Seminary
Sail Away with Us! Retirement Party
September 7 – Celebrating the Rev. Bernice Parker-Jones
Dialogue for Peaceful Change Training (collaboration between NCP, Baltimore and New Castle Presbyteries)
September 16-19 – Lewinsville Presbyterian Church
Stewardship Kaleidoscope – Real Tools for Real Ministry
September 23-25 –Portland, OR
SAVE THE DATE: Presbytery-Wide Installation Service
October 19 – Gaithersburg Presbyterian Church
SAVE THE DATE: Matthew 25 Mid-Atlantic Summit
October 26 – First Presbyterian Church of Howard County
Montgomery County Resiliency Council
Seeks community members to join a conversation about clean energy, power outages, etc.
Announcements:
Healthy Boundaries Training: The Ministry Relations Team (MRT) of the Committee on Ministry (COM) is actively reviewing our Healthy Boundaries Training. If you are due to renew, look for an upcoming TM announcement.
SAVE THE DATE: Presbytery-Wide Installation Service, Saturday, October 19, 2024 @ 3:00 PM at Gaithersburg Presbyterian Church. More information to follow.
SAVE THE DATE: Matthew 25 MidAtlantic Summit, Saturday, October 26, 2024 at First Pres of Howard County. More information to follow.
Register for Bible and Church Music Conference 2024 (July 21-27, 2024) today! Come listen to leaders and speakers like Rev. Dr. Brian Blount and Rev. Shannon Johnson Kershner. For more information about BCMC 2024, please visit https://massanettasprings.org/programs/bcmc
Calling All Pastors who are interested in a Restorative Wilderness Experience - Candidate Emily Crower seeks your input! As part of her Adaptive and Innovative Ministry emphasis, Emily is designing a restorative wilderness experience for pastors that will consist of desert canoeing and camping on the Lower Canyons section of the Rio Grande from Monday, January 27th through Thursday, February 6th, 2025. The program is designed to address the challenges of sustaining ministry in our rapidly changing context through offering a restorative immersive experience for a cohort of pastors and equipping participants with tools for transferring their learnings into their home lives to cultivate sustainable ministry.
Emily seeks your valuable feedback as she designs this experience. For more information about Emily and to provide input, click the form - Restorative Wilderness Experience for Pastors (google.com)
June 20, 2024
Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
~ Romans 13:8 (NRSV) ~
Dear Friends,
Next week the General Assembly begins meeting, with its committees gathering first virtually, beginning June 25, and then with the whole assembly gathering in-person from June 29 to July 4. The General Assembly is (mostly) made up of commissioners and advisory delegates sent from presbyteries like ours, who gather once every two years to discern the will of Christ for the whole Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
The Book of Order describes the General Assembly as “the bond of union, community, and mission among all its congregations and councils, to the end that the whole church becomes a community of faith, hope, love, and witness” (G-3.0501). I have participated in a few General Assembly meetings over the years, and I have been grateful to see how Presbyterians have faithfully lived up to this calling. One committee meeting I observed had nearly gone off the rails, when one of the members asked everyone to pause for prayer, remember the covenant they had made with one another, and begin their work again. By letting go, for a moment, of doing the work they had been assigned, and instead focusing on being a covenant community rooted in God’s love, they had restored a solid foundation to build on.
The Book of Order reminds us that its elaborate system of rules, structures, and procedures for governing the church is “not designed to work without trust and love” (G-1.0102). Being governed by our church’s polity, therefore, requires first and foremost that we attend to our relationships, which are the foundation of everything else.
I invite your prayers for this year’s General Assembly, and especially the commissioners and Young Adult Advisory Delegate (YAAD) that you have chosen to represent us: Rev. Dr. Chris Deacon, Elder Lou Durden (Northminster), Elder Mark Eakin (Warner Memorial), Ms. Jackie Hager (Lewinsville), Elder Jesy Littlejohn (Oaklands), Rev. Dean McDonald, and Rev. Bernice Parker-Jones—that God would keep them safe as they travel, and that they would both experience and bear witness to God’s love in Jesus Christ as they carry out their governing responsibilities.
Grace and Peace,
Rev. David A. Baer
Stated Clerk
“Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘I am going to come to you in a dense cloud, in order that the people may hear when I speak with you and so trust you ever after’.”
- Exodus 19:9
Greetings People,
Many of us received the message from our GP, Rev. John Molina-Moore, about the benefit of being in the ‘dense cloud’. The benefits are needing to stay with one another, sitting in the denseness in discernment, and listening to God with one another. I was listening to this sermon and was so happy to hear this is another way to live into slowing down from being a 120 mph Presbytery and shifting down to say, 70 mph. A dense cloud still moves, but maybe with more weight! Maybe with deeper or “higher” spirituality from our listening.
Our ‘dense cloud’ with one another is about listening to our faith stories together. As we speak and ask deeper questions that we may be too cautious to share. Here is a primer:
• What keeps me returning to this particular faith community or congregation?
• How is my faith being nurtured? Or how am I being spiritually fed with my congregation?
• What would I like to be with or about in a deeper way with my congregation?
• Therefore, what can I pause in order to have space for this deeper growth?
• Therefore, what can we as a congregation to slow down or pause in order to have deeper experiences with our God?
• Where can we sit, walk, and listen in order to be in a dense cloud (with God) with one another, together?
God is the dense cloud! Sometimes we need to hang deeply with one another with a focused pace. Think of it as the Clarity Circle practiced out of the Quaker Tradition. When we sit with our covenanted groups (fellow church members) we have to listen together. We have to listen to our assumptions that are based in isolation of maybe what is really going on. Listen to where the gap of relational knowledge is and have that be the next question.
My office is here to support and coordinate DENSE CLOUD LISTENING with one another. We will make sure you have some real time data to support your listening and deepen our group’s understandings with our assumptions. Monday, June 24th is the third in the series on “What to do with your CAT: Spiritual Vitality!” Join us in the Dense Cloud of God!
Peace
and Courage, Rev. Tara Spuhler McCabe(final session of the series) Monday nights from 7pm – 8pm via
Saturday, June 29, 10am ET | Third and Pennsylvania Avenue, NW 1. Abolishing poverty as the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S.
If you believe in these 17 issues that ought to be at the center of our political agenda because our votes are about demands and not merely about popularity and personality, then march and assemble with us, mobilize voters with us, and bring everybody who believes in love, justice, truth, and nonviolence.
17-Point Agenda
A living minimum wage of at least $15 +/hour (indexed for inflation) 3. Full and expanded voting rights
No more voter suppression
11. Environmental justice that secures clean air & water
12. Justice for all Indigenous nations
13. Fully-funded public education 14. Just immigration laws
15. Addressing militarism and the war economy
16. Standing for peace not war; an immediate ceasefire in Gaza that allows humanitarian relief, the release of all hostages, and peace with justice to be pursued; and an end to genocide around the world
17. An end to hate, division, and the extremist political agenda
the DC area’s only vocal ensemble for LGBTQ+ and allied youth will present its Year-End concert at 6th Presbyterian Church 5413 16th St., NW, Washington, DC Sat. June 29, 2024 ● 1:30 PM
FREE ● ASL-INTERPRETED
