Archive for October, 2008

Church Retreat or Haunted House?

0

Have you ever been to a church retreat facility in October? Have you ever noticed that with the right lighting and camera-work (and a bad script) your retreat could be the Halloween movie sensation of the year?

When I was a teen, the youth group from our church held an annual retreat at Gracefield in October and I can tell you that early dusk, rustling leaves and creaky trees can make just about any place spooky!

Apparently I’m not alone. One of my favourite bloggers, Jon Acuff, re-posted an article from his ongoing list of ‘Things Christians Like.” This one is #137, “Holding retreats at locations that could double as horror movies.”

After a few minutes in solitary thought, we were supposed to return to the basement entrance of the building we were meeting in. When I came back there was a single candle lit in the middle of a circle of chairs. (I need to post about youth group “special effects.”) When we all finally came back, we realized that someone was missing. That’s when we started hearing the screaming. It got louder and louder and louder, slowly circling the building. Youth leaders scattered like my grandma at the opening scene of the movie American Beauty.

Jon’s work is irreverent to be sure, but more often than not he hits the nail the head for those of us who grew up (or are growing up) in the church.

Happy Halloween!

: General
: , , , ,

The Presbyterian Record – Our National Magazine

0

I had the pleasure of having lunch on Tuesday with Andrew Faiz, Managing Editor of The Presbyterian Record, the national magazine of the PCC. Andrew, a life-long member of Gateway Community Church in the Flemingdon Park area of Toronto, is clearly passionate about the PCC and its future in Canadian society. He is equally passionate about his magazine and its place in the Presbyterian community.

Our lunch gives me a perfect excuse to share a little information about the Record and its role in the denomination. I don’t think most Presbyterians realize that the Record is not the ‘official’ magazine of the denomination – it is, in fact, an independent publication devoted entirely to the Presbyterian experience in Canada.

The Record’s independance can be both a blessing and a curse for a guy like me who is responsible for communicating on behalf of the denomination. The blessing, of course, is that the Record provides a direct line of communication from the national office to the pew. This is an incredibly useful tool for us in the Life & Mission Agency to spread the word about the programs offered through the national office and to educate the denomination about the great work being done on behalf of Presbyterians across the country and around the world.

The curse, though, is that the Record is under no obligation to simply regurgitate the messaging coming from my office or elsewhere. They are free to challenge our thinking as a denomination in a way that most other Presbyterian organization can’t. The Record is also free – and has a moral responsibility – to report on what is going on in our churches and our communities, warts and all.

This is how it should be. The Presbyterian Record is representative of the principles of a free and independant media that western society, I think, now takes for granted.

As long as I’m talking about the The Presbyterian Record, I should mention that they are currently in the midst of their annual appeal for financial support. The magazine is facing dramatically rising costs associated to changes Canada Post has made to postal rates. The Record has also embarked on a ‘greening’ of their operation by moving to recycled paper which has also increased costs.

I encourage you to consider supporting the work of the Record in addition to all of the other wonderful work we Presbyterians support. A publication devoted to reporting on the work of the PCC deserves our consideration.

: General,People
: , , , , ,

Godly Technology

0

I’m a huge fan of technology and spend a lot of time thinking about how it affects our lives.  It is impossible in 2008 for our personal and professional lives to remain untouched by the latest and greatest advances in technology.

But what about our spiritual lives? Has technology improved (or perhaps diminished) your relationship with God?

Websites like BibleGateway, for example, make it very easy to find that bible verse you vaguely remember from Sunday School – in dozens of different translations! Sermon podcasts and pastor blogs are not that uncommon anymore and GodTube is an unfathomably large library of Christian video content.

These resources, of course, build on the advances in sanctuary technology made over the last decade or so: projectors, powerpoint, advanced sound (for show and for the hard-of-hearing), etc.

Last week Bruce Reyes-Chow, Moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA), posted a cartoon on his blog about the intrusion of technology in the pew and I thought it was worth sharing here:


www.reverendfun.com

So, at what point does the adoption of cutting-edge technology diminish rather than improve our spiritual lives?

: Resources
: , , ,

The PCC on LinkedIn.com

0

One of the social networking tools that I use every day is LinkedIn.  It is a social network designed specifically to help professionals network. It’s largely a business card, resume and rolodex all rolled into one – then turbo-charged with Groups, a Q&A section, and job postings, among other things.

A few weeks ago I setup a group on LinkedIn just for folks associated in some way with the PCC. The group will allow us to network among are Presbyterian brothers and sisters. It also allows us show our affiliation with The Presbyterian Church in Canada right on our LinkedIn profiles.

If you’re already on LinkedIn, click this link to join the group: http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/151302

If you’re not on LinkedIn yet, I recommend you take a moment to create a profile, and then join the group. Happy networking!

: Uncategorized

PCC Website Gets a Makeover

0

Yesterday we made some changes to the PCC denominational website at Presbyterian.ca. Most obvious is a completely new home page layout that we hope will make it easier for our visitors to find the information & resources they are looking for – and discover new things that they don’t even realize exist! We also made some significant changes to the navigation structure for similar reasons.

The feature I’m most excited about is something we’re calling SnapShots. This relatively large area in the upper-right quadrant of the home page is intended to offer glimpses into the denomination at the congregational and agency program level – the grassroots. Photos in the SnapShots area are randomly selected from a collection of photos of church buildings, congregations and Presbyterians in action. If you have a photo that you think would be appropriate for SnapShots, please send it along to me at pccweb@presbyterian.ca.

As pleased as I am with this makeover, I can’t take much of the credit. Most of the work was done long before I arrived at 50 Wynford. The Life & Mission Agency’s internal web strategy team deserve the bulk of the credit for guiding this process over the course of the summer. My thanks to Alex MacDonald, Karen Plater, Anne Phillips, Matt Donnelly and Peter Johnson for their work and continued support.

The website refresh, and SnapShots in particular, are representative of a very real desire for the communications activities of the PCC to encompass the entire denomination. Presbyterian.ca is the website for the denomination, not just 50 Wynford, and I am committed to extending that philosophy to the broader communications strategy for the Life & Mission Agency.

I welcome and encourage your feedback on the changes to Presbyterian.ca – and there are more changes to come over the next several weeks… stay tuned!

: General
: , , , , , , ,

The Reformation’s First Blogger

0

Any guesses who the first blogger of the Reformation might have been? I’ll admit that it’s a bit of a trick question, since there were no bloggers in the 16th century. Not literally, anyway.

I’ve always maintained that social media in general, and blogging in particular, are nothing new. The ‘conversational web’ is merely the continuing evolution of how we communicate with each other. I’ve used a phrase from time to time that goes like this:

Social media is merely the latest cave wall.
All that’s changed is everything.

From cave walls to quills to printing presses to telephones to the web, the tools of communication have evolved steadily, sometimes slowly but often quite rapidly. You could add a church door to that list of communication media through which blogging can trace its ancestry. (your first clue to the question posed earlier.)

The PCC national office conducts a worship service each Wednesday morning just before lunch. It’s an opportunity to enrich our work by worshipping God with our co-workers. This morning we were blessed to be led in worship by Rev. Gordon Timbers from Unionville Presbyterian Church. During the service Rev. Timbers talked about how small and seemingly insignificant actions can lead to great and unexpected results. A simple smile at a stranger, for example, can have a cascading effect that might dramatically change the life of another.

One of Rev. Timbers’ examples, given that this Sunday is Reformation Sunday, was the relatively small act of Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the church door. The unexpected result, of course was the reformation movement that continues to this day in the form of the Presbyterian Church in Canada and the other Reformed churches worldwide.

I argue, therefore, that this Being Presbyterian blog traces its ancestry directly back to those 95 theses posted on the church door by the first blogger of the Reformation, Martin Luther. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

[photo courtesy of unionvillepresbyterianchurch.ca]

: History,People,Theology
: , , , , ,

Traffic Patterns at Presbyterian.ca

0

Yesterday I gave a brief presentation to the staff at the Presbyterian national office about upcoming changes to the denomination website - more on that later. I started with a few interesting numbers related to our web traffic which I thought I’d quickly share here. These numbers represent traffic from the end of July through yesterday, October 20th, 2008.

  • the site has been visited just over 53,000 times.
  • almost half of the visitors (48%) came to the site directly, meaning a bookmark, an email link, or typing in the address.
    • Of those, over 80% landed first on the home page
  • The next largest group of visitors (31%) came to the site via Google.
    • Of those, 38% again landed first on the home page.
  • Overall, more than 60% of our visitors reach the homepage first.

The point of those numbers was to emphasize the importance of the homepage of this site in particular. A refreshed homepage will go live this week – perhaps as early as today – that I hope will help folks find what they’re looking for more easily at presbyterian.ca.

: General
: , , ,

Canada Youth 2009

0

Last wednesday Reuben St. Louis, the PCC’s Youth-In-Mission Coordinator, kindly took me out for lunch half way through my first (almost overwhelming) week at the PCC national office. Reuben and I have been friends for many years and it was nice to catch up over a meal.

Among other things, we chatted about the upcoming Canada Youth event that he is responsible for organizing. In July of next year a few hundred Presbyterian young people and youth leaders will gather for five days of worship, education and fellowship. The potential for life-changing experiences is high and Reuben’s enthusiasm is even higher!

The website for Canada Youth 2009 is now up and you can find more details there, or give Reuben a call at (800) 619-7301 ext.249.

I encourage anyone who is involved with youth in church to give Reuben a call and get your church’s kids registered!

: Events,People
: , , ,

This Presbyterian Church of Ours

0

Welcome to the Being Presbyterian blog. The purpose of this little corner of the web is to offer my readers a glimpse into The Presbyterian Church in Canada and all of the work it does across the country and around the world. 

When I was appointed Associate Secretary, Communications earlier this month I thought I had a fairly good understanding of the Presbyterian experience in Canada. I was raised by two Presbyterian elders and have been an elder myself for a few years. I had even been to the national office several times to consult on matters where my expertise in web development was useful. I knew my church. Or so I thought.

As it turns out, I know very little about the work of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. One of the best primers on the Presbyterian Church in Canada is John Congram’s “This Presbyterian Church of Ours” published in the mid-nineties. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand how the PCC has developed over the centuries and what makes it unique in the Canadian Christian landscape. Early on in the book, Congram makes reference to the Presbyterian stereotype of being rather cold and drawing the metaphor of an iceberg.

During just the first week of my appointment, I have discovered that the PCC is indeed an iceberg not because it is cold but because you only ever see just the very tip. The vast majority of the life and work of the PCC sits just below the surface – in appropriately Presbyterian modesty.

My job now is to help that Presbyterian iceberg float a little higher in the water and expose more of the wonderful work that is going on under the surface.

The Being Presbyterian blog will be your insider’s look at the PCC as I spend the next several weeks, months, and years learning about every nook and cranny of this Presbyterian church of ours.

: People
: ,
Calotropis theme by itx