Page 8 - Presbyterian Connection

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LEADERSHIP
Light and Thankful Hearts in Campbellville
8 WINTER 2021
PRESBYTERIAN
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By the Rev. Drew Jacques, St. David’s Presbyterian Church in Campbellville, Ont.
When you last heard from us at St. David’s Presbyterian Church in Campbellville, Ont., we had enlisted the help of Canadian broadcast per- sonality and Spiritual Director Ralph Benmergui to teach us about devel- oping “spiritual tool boxes” to equip us with the necessary tools for facing times of “giant uncertainty.”
At the time of writing that article, I could not report on the final outcome of these online sessions. But now, after a great deal of thought, we’ve come to the conclusion that we don’t need “spiritual tool boxes” as much as we need “spiritual life preserv- ers.” As we move rapidly toward an
uncertain future, we realized that we need to be much more buoyant in our faith. We don’t need to be weighed down with tools as much as we need to get light, so we can float.
The truth is our congregation does not need to create new tools or re- sources, or to look online for them. We already have all that we need. Having thankful hearts is the starting point for “getting light” in our faith.
However, this is not a given. Grati- tude is an attitude adjustment.
Jesus got up every day, went to a quiet place, and began the day by giving thanks to God in his heart. Getting to that quiet space, quieting the mind, being still and opening your heart with thanksgiving requires dis- cipline and practice.
Following in Jesus’ footsteps, we
initiated a daily challenge to help us practice gratitude in our everyday lives, which involved asking our- selves once each day: “How far into the day did you get before giving thanks to God? Breakfast, lunch, din- ner, bedtime?”
A thankful heart is the “green light” God is waiting to see in us. It comes from understanding how much God has given us. Instead of dishing out what we deserve, God gives us mer- cy and grace.
Without thankful hearts, we’d all sink. To quote the lyrics of Bob Dy- lan: “If your time to you is worth savin’, then you better start swim- min’ or you’ll sink like a stone, for the times they are a-changin’.”
While practicing our daily thanks- giving challenge, a book—Breath:
The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor—serendipitously came our way.
In the book, there is a passage that reads: “There is nothing more es- sential to our health and well-being than breathing: take in air, let it out, repeat 25,000 times a day. Yet as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave con- sequences.”
The book goes on to say: “Modern
als Gather,” and the second, “Choic- es for Churches”).
After the videos, we moved into the narthex for small group discussion, all held within the COVID-19 guide- lines in Alberta. This was a chance to explore the day’s ideas and to brain- storm how and whether they could fit into our future congregational life. On the sixth Sunday, we gave a capsule summary of each topic and allowed people to choose the table discuss- ing the topic in which they were most interested, and to come up with “one big idea” to share. Each session ended with prayer, a hymn and a benediction.
So what became of all this? First, the congregation had a chance to be exposed to some innovative and potentially challenging ideas, and to re-imagine a future together. There is already some movement afoot on us- ing our property for mission, with the
research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can jump start athletic performance, rejuvenate in- ternal organs, halt snoring, asthma, and autoimmune disease. None of this should be possible, but it is.”
This book introduced our congre- gation to another means of practic- ing gratitude: the practice of mindful breathing. We are finding mindful breathing to be very helpful in quiet- ing the mind and opening the heart to a thankful place. We’re calling this practice “Thankful Breathing,” and it is helping us at St. David’s to be much more buoyant in spirit.
CORRECTION NOTICE
On page 34 of the Fall edition of the Presbyterian Connection (See “Spir- itual Companionships in Campbell- ville” by the Rev. Drew Jacques), the article incorrectly stated “giant com- plexities” as a quote from Paul Bun- yan when it should have been John Bunyan. As the Rev. Drew Jacques explained, “While Paul and John both had ‘giant complexities’ in their lives, they were quite different in nature.”
placement of signs designed to wel- come the families from the adjacent middle school to use our parking lot to ensure safe drop-off and pick-up of their kids. We have adopted an ex- cellent curriculum for our Faith For- mation program (“Follow Me” from PCUSA), which has great ideas on incorporating the theme units into adult studies and worship, as well as Sunday School. More participants have joined the team in the Missional Certificate Course, and together they’ve developed a project that will form the basis of the course’s sec- ond year. And part of that project in- volves developing a deeper relation- ship with the community, which will help us rethink how we gather.
Sometime before the publication of this article, we will have elected and inducted a new Westminster Ses- sion, and we hope we will be well down the road to prayerfully devel- oping our congregational profile as a foundation for calling a new min- ister. We remain grateful for so many in the PCC who made the original learning oppor tunities available via online seminars, and to our presby- tery, who provided us with the gentle leadership needed so the congrega- tion could find its sense of shared purpose again. We have felt the Holy Spirit moving among us, and we feel poised to embrace a new mission together. Spirituality And Mission— that’s what we brought forward with the SAM talks, and we are committed to renewing a community of God’s love in northwest Calgary.
Renewal in a Time of COVID-19 in Calgary
By Heather Bryant, Assessor Elder, Westminster Presbyterian Church in Calgary, Alta.
Are you familiar with the book Love in the Time of Cholera? The title of this novel, by Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, seems especially salient during our current COVID-19 pandemic. And for us at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Calgary, we have gone through a journey that, were we to write a congregational biography, might be entitled Renewal in the Time of COVID-19.
Why “renewal” instead of “survive and thrive”? At the beginning of the pandemic, Westminster underwent some challenging times, and, at the end of May 2020, just weeks into the COVID-19 interventions, there was a simultaneous dissolution of pastoral ties and the Session. As you can im- agine, these events would be difficult at any time, but they were especially challenging to cope with when we were unable to gather in person.
Over the next few months, as an In- terim Moderator Team and assessor elders took on some of the congrega- tional leadership, it became clear that we needed healing and some reinven- tion of ourselves prior to moving for-
ward. Several congregants enrolled in opportunities provided by the PCC in an effort to look outside ourselves and to find new potential paths for- ward: some enrolled in the Certificate Course on Missional Leadership, and others participated in conferences or in opportunities provided by Cyclical PCC and the presbytery-led church planting support initiative, Cyclical Calgary-Macleod. A few Westminster elders were eventually added to the Assessor Session, and as they be- gan to meet and discuss, they came up with a plan to share some of this information with the congregation so that everyone could begin to look at the future with fresh eyes.
And so the SAM initiative was born. The name was a shameless “borrow” from the TED lecture series.
TED is an acronym for Technology, Entertainment and Design; we named our series SAM as an acronym for Spirituality And Mission. Over the summer of 2021, we held six SAM sessions, which were embedded into our worship services. Each Sunday, following the call to worship, prayer and scripture reading, the sermon was replaced with video clips, used with permission of the presenters, that we hoped would introduce some of the same kind of innovative think- ing that is the hallmark of the TED talk series. The topics discussed in- cluded Intergenerational Faith Forma- tion, the Missional Church, Using our Property for Missional Work, and two sessions from the Art of Gathering, featuring Casper ter Kuile (the first week, we discussed “How Millenni-
Cyclical PCC is a church-planting suppor t initiative of The Presbyterian Church in Canada, in partnership with Cyclical Inc. It is designed to encourage presbyteries and individuals within the denomination to take first steps towards beginning new worshipping communities. If you are interested in learning more about this network, please contact the Rev. Jeffrey Crawford, Program Coordinator New Worshipping Communities, at jcrawford@presbyterian.ca.