Dear Friends,
Given the scheduling challenges of summer, with changing worship times, vacations, and other
interruptions, book group studies will operate with a different approach for this year’s summer season. We will read two books, named below, but rather than trying to schedule weekly meetings to discuss individual chapters or sections, we will get together once, perhaps over a meal, and discuss the whole book at one meeting. Both of the books will be on subjects that this church, like numerous churches in our denomination and others, might need to face in the near or further future.
First we’ll read “Part-Time Is Plenty: Thriving Without Full-Time Clergy,” by G. Jeffrey MacDonald. The author is a full-time freelance religion reporter who is also a part-time pastor in the United Church of Christ. The book draws on his own experience and the experiences of more than twenty other pastors leading churches part-time, discussing issues such as overcoming perceived stigma about churches with part-time pastors and laypeople stepping up to responsibility. At six chapters this is a fairly compact read, and we will take orders and deliver in May for a gathering sometime in late June.
The second, rather longer volume is “Gone for Good? Negotiating the Coming Wave of Church Property Transition,” a collection edited by Mark Elsdon, an ordained PC(USA) minister, entrepreneur and non-profit executive. The authors of this volume address topics ranging from what happens to church properties when churches close to finding ways to make the property part of the community, and a range of other topics. In some cases the authors will actually disagree or offer differing perspectives or suggestions; nothing is prescribed here and all are possibilities for churches to consider before that time comes. We will get this book ordered in June for a discussion time in late August.
Hopefully, folks who care about the future of this church and want to be part of making that future happen will grab these books and get in on the conversation.
Charles