Presbytery Conversations – May 11, 2021 – Presbytery Meeting
One portion of the meeting was dedicated to break out room discussions. Here are some of the comments from the discussion groups.
How have your experienced Community during the pandemic?
- Support for congregations in transition
- Small groups during Presbytery zoom meetings
- Reconnecting and connecting in different ways with families.
- Community Service
- Regular family Zoom gatherings and daily church services
- Nursing home with Mom for transition
- Many ZOOM connections- taking a family history “class” via ZOOM with cousins
- ZOOM weddings
- Walking pet and greeting neighbors outside
- Communication with old friends
- Broadcasting Worship
- Keep ZOOM/Streaming of worship was a great idea to keep the community of church going
- Started an no contact food pantry.
- Connecting with all the people who started walking to get out of their homes. Meeting neighbors for the first time.
- Importance of family, friends and church community.
- Telephone calls to friends who are missing from church
- Bible studies on zoom
- Connected via video games
- More deliberate in connecting to old communities – high school friends, seminary friends, family who live far away.
- Used the outside space for worship
- Reach out to seniors or other shut ins with special occasional baskets.
- We learned how to be community at a distance and pushed us to reach out to folks.
- Formed support groups “Gifts and Graces”
As a new presbytery what are ways we can help build and support being a community as we move forward in ministry?
- Hearing stories/missions of others inspires us to new action for a new community
- Community Service
- Building community around our common struggles and difficulties as pastors and churches
- Connecting via Zoom
- Johnsonburg – keep remote/zoom available
- Stay connected via zoom as well as in person
- Weekly prayer groups
- Small group connections
- Using technology to make meetings more accessible
- We are looking forward to J-burg!
- Getting creative about using technology to continue keeping us connected in the future.
- Clergy gatherings via prayer meetings, Lectio Divina sessions, touch points or just plain fellowship sharing stories. Can be done virtually or in a hybrid fashion
- New name and new policies step in the right direction for building community
- Ministers feeling very fragmented
- We want to continue to offer both in person and worship at a distance but we need tech help.
- There were interfaith stories and hope that we DO NOT go back to the old parochial, insular reality of before but find ways to collaborate, cooperate and share resources, just like we are doing now.
- Looking for help with the “hard discussions” now facing us.
- Seeking out connections with neighboring, or similar, churches in the presbytery.
- we discussed how going forward we must find ways to engage people while continuing some virtual aspect since so many people attend virtually, but also get people to worship and engage mission in person.
