General

Doing versus Being

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The title of this blog pretty clearly sets out my perspective on communicating what the PCC is all about: the most important story about The Presbyterian Church in Canada is the illustration of what it is to BE Presbyterian in Canada today.

I came across a blog post written last year by Bruce Reyes-Chow, who is now the Moderator of the PC(USA). In it he outlines what he sees as the obstacles that are killing the Church. He does this by pushing several issues through the dichotomy of the modern and post-modern worldviews. One in particular seemed particularly relevant to the BeingPresbyterian readership:

OBSTACLE // We value the DOing of the institution over BEing in relationship:
Modernity says that community is in the methodology and ways we DO church; Postmodernity says that community is about BEing church.

We Presbyterians are gooooooood at this one.  Our Book of Order is "clear" and we can use polity to create community.  We can structure our way into being the body of Christ. Buzzzz.  Thank you for playing.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I love our polity, the spirit in which it was and is written, the guidance it gives, the bounds it helps to set, etc. but it will NOT create community.  The ways we DO church should only be lifted up in as much as the DOing helps to sustain the BEing. 

At the same time, if a church community believes that it’s ministry is worth outliving the people who are there at a particular moment and time, some kind of structure and DOing church must take place in order to create sustainability.  In the end though, every time we face a choice, we should be about BEing church.

Until today I had considered doing and being to be interchangeable. Bruce has successfully challenged that part of my thinking, and I thank him for that.

: General,People
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PCC Branding Guidelines

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presbylink

  • All congregational websites must prominently display the official PCC logo on the homepage
  • The PCC logo may not be used without the express permission of the folks up at Wynford
  • The official colour of the PCC is blue. We like blue.
  • Forming committees to discuss the use of PCC branding elements is encouraged

Hopefully you’ve realized that I’m joking.  There are no branding guidelines for the PCC – and the word ‘branding’ itself raises the ire of many in the church.

I said something in a conversation I had late last week that I think I’ll be repeating a lot over the next several months.

The brand of the PCC is not a logo or a name or a colour. Our brand is us – the lives we lead and the work we do every single day.

I have referred to my job at the PCC as “Chief Storyteller” of The Presbyterian Church in Canada. Telling stories about logos and names is boring – I’m much more interested in telling stories about people! To do that, though, I need your help.

SEND ME STUFF!

Send me your stories, your photos, your announcements – whatever you’d like the rest of the PCC family to know about your life as a Presbyterian. You can reach me at ccarmichael@presbyterian.ca.

I look forward to hearing your stories!

: Action,General
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The Box Pew Metaphor

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Every once in a while I read a blog post somewhere that is so completely relevant to my life or work that I have to resist the urge to sweep my home and office for listening devices. Jon Swanson, of the Levite Chronicles, wrote just such a post this morning.

His story of a “social media pastor” named Emilio faced with the metaphor of box pews illustrates brilliantly the challenges we face in the realm of church communications in the 21st century.

A few excerpts:

As he stared at them, Emilio pictured the cubicles in his own church, and in many other churches. This time they weren’t around families. They were around generations, around interest groups, around social strata. There were groups that went into their cubicles every Sunday, with walls around them.

And he knew that they were trying. There were weekly bulletins, biweekly mailers, web updates, a facebook group, Sunday school class email prayer chains. There were displays in the hallways, announcements in the services, notes on clipboards in classrooms. There was a limited circulation enewsletter. There were hundreds of pieces of information. And there were people who said they never heard what was going on who, when questioned, acknowledged that they didn’t read the newsletter.

I highly recommend that you visit Jon’s blog and read the article (it’s not long) and leave a comment there (or here) about the manifestation of the box pew metaphor in your own church.

link: http://levite.wordpress.com/2008/11/19/emilio-and-the-box-pews/

: General,Resources
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Deep River Choir Perishes in Fire Drill

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Please note the word “DRILL” in that headline. Everybody is fine.

Last week I received an email that contained the October edition of the “Grapevine” newsletter from Deep River Community Church. In the newsletter was this little gem:

Fire Drill Results: Unlike 2007, there was no warning to the congregation so errors occurred in exiting the building. However, under the circumstances , the exit was excellent, quick, orderly. The Choir did not wait for directions from the Ushers, who check the church, so were burned. …

It served as a good reminder that fire safety is an important thing to consider – do you know how to get out of the sanctuary safely in an emergency?

: Events,General
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Church Retreat or Haunted House?

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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
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The Presbyterian Record – Our National Magazine

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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
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PCC Website Gets a Makeover

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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
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Traffic Patterns at Presbyterian.ca

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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
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