Guests:
Rev. John Borthwick (St. Andrews, Guelph)
Laurie McGugan (St. John’s, Toronto)

Links:
Knox Crieff Search Blog
St. Andrew’s, Guelph
St. John’s, Toronto

theme music for the BeingPresbyterian Podcast written and performed by Derek K. Miller

PCConnect-TV is Coming!
The Communications team has been busily preparing for the launch of PCConnect-TV, the new weekly video series being produced by the Communications Office to showcase the life and work of The PCC across Canada and around the world. The first episode is scheduled to air on Youtube and at Presbyterian.ca on April 10th.

An Innovative Church Blog
Rev. John Borthwick of St. Andrew’s, Guelph is the interim moderator for Knox Crieff and has taken an interesting approach to documenting the search process – he’s blogging it! I haven’t had a chance to talk to John about the hows and whys yet, but I hope to get an episode of the BeingPresbyterian Podcast out of it.

More Innovation – Write your own Job Description!
The folks at St. John’s, Toronto have taken an interesting approach to their search for a new Family Outreach and Christian Education Worker. As was reported in PCConnect-Daily today, the congregation is inviting applicants to write their own job descriptions within the parameters of stated goals and objectives. The chair of the search committee, Laurie McGugan, said that this unique approach was inspired by her committee’s reading of Christianity for the Rest of Us.

More to come soon!

I’m a cradle Catholic which, for those of you not in the know, means I was born and raised in a Catholic family. Unfortunately, I am now a lapsed Catholic and yes, I feel guilty about it.

Fast forward to 2007. I’d just moved to Toronto from Houston, Texas and was surprised at how few churches there were in the downtown core. Because of their lack of proximity to my house, and much to my parents’ chagrin, I had never quite connected with any local Catholic churches. After a while of not attending, I very much began to miss the ritual and community of attending church each week. More so, however, I missed my connection with God.

I began toying with the idea of trying a different faith. Initially, I felt like a traitor for even thinking about that and seriously questioned what it would mean as a Catholic, albeit lapsed. What would my friends think? More importantly, what would my family think? As much as everyone likes to joke about “Catholics versus Protestants”, I was truly hesitant about stepping outside my comfort zone and into a completely new one – a Protestant faith.

I’d passed St. Andrew’s Presbyterian hundreds of times. The church itself is a stunning Romanesque style built in 1876 and its beauty alone makes it hard to miss. I started doing some research. I googled “Presbyterian” and scoured the internet to find out everything I could about the faith. I felt like I could identify with the foundations of the church and my desire to return to church quickly began to outweigh my guilty feelings about not going to a Catholic-proper church. I decided I’d try St. Andrew’s.

As I walked to church that first Sunday morning, I got the familiar adrenaline rush knowing that I was walking into a completely new situation. Would they somehow know I wasn’t Protestant? Would they point and laugh? I reassured myself – I mean, we all believe in God after all – and headed inside. I found a seat, the service began and it felt very familiar, without the kneeling of course. “Maybe Protestants weren’t that bad after all”, I thought! It just so happened that the sermon that day was focused around things society considers taboos or sins – very apropos. The first three words out of the reverend’s mouth were “Money. Sex. Demonic Possession.”, and I knew I was home.

My decision to seek another faith wasn’t something I took lightly. It wasn’t some kind of social experiment and it certainly wasn’t meant to poke a finger in the eye of the Church I grew up in. It was the right fit at the right time. I’ve continued to attend St. Andrew’s each Sunday, as well as the recent LOVE event they hosted on Valentine’s Day. I simply love it. St. Andrew’s, and the larger community of the Presbyterian Church of Canada has embraced me in a way, and at a time, when I needed it most. I haven’t looked back since.

In this “inaugural” episode, I chat with Rev. Matt Brough. Matt is the minister at one of The Presbyterian Church in Canada’s newest congregations, Trinity Winnipeg. Matt, a recovering web developer like me, talks with me about the impact of social media (Facebook, blogging, Twitter, etc.) on his ministry.

Update: I forgot to mention that Matt and I also chatted about how ‘cool’ the Presbyterian polity is. Really.

Matt also does a great job of pitching CanadaYouth09 at the end, so be sure to listen all the way through!

If you’d like to be a guest on the BeingPresbyterian Podcast, please feel free to contact me at ccarmichael[at]presbyterian[dot]ca.

theme music for the BeingPresbyterian Podcast written and performed by Derek K. Miller

A few minutes ago, Rev. Matt Brough, minister and blogger at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Winnipeg, had this to say on Twitter:

When we talk about communications in the Church, we usually think about bulletin inserts, the website, the projector screen, and the monthly newsletter. But what does your parking lot communicate to prospective pew-dweller about your priorities as a congregation?

We’re all familiar with the notion that non-verbal communication is far more telling than verbal. So what other “non-verbal” messages is your church sending besides who gets priority parking?

There are currently at least 25 close to 50 groups on Facebook related to the Canadian Presbyterian community – and I’m sure there are many I haven’t found. Here are just a few:

• The Presbyterian Church in Canada (unofficial)
• Canada Youth 2009
• Knox College
• Knox, Waterloo
• PCC Webmasters
• Valleyview, Calgary
• National Presbyterian Museum
• The Elders’ Institute
• CNOB PYPS
• St. Andrew’s, Ottawa
• Friends of St. Andrew’s, Stirling
• Trintity-Oro
• Camp D’Action Biblique

If you don’t spend much time on Facebook, you might think that we must have had an explosion of university students in The PCC. As much as we would welcome such a blessing, the demographics of Facebook now are much different than they were just eighteen months ago and conventional wisdom hasn’t yet caught up. In fact, most Canadian adults on Facebook are over 25.

What is even more surprising is the sheer number of Canadians that spend some of their time connecting with friends and family on Facebook. About 11 million Canadians now have Facebook accounts – that represents well over a third of Canadian adults. Using demographic information extracted from Facebook’s advertising system, I was able to determine the size of each age group on Facebook for Canada. The results are:

While it’s clear that the university crowd is the largest single age group on Facebook, Canadians over the age of 25 represent about half of the entire Canadian Facebook population. To me, these numbers represent a huge ministry opportunity for The Presbyterian Church in Canada.

What do you think? In what ways could we, as a denomination, reach out to the Presbyterian community that already exists on Facebook?

In February, I’ll be speaking at an unconference called PodCampToronto where I’ll be leading a discussion called “First Church of Facebook: an Exploration of Faith and Social Media.” We’ll be talking about the ways that Canada’s faith community are (or could be) using social media (like Facebook) to engage and minister to their constituents. If you have a story about how social media played a part in ministry, please share it with me either in the comments below or by email: ccarmichael@presbyterian.ca.

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?

In a post on Friday about building effective church websites, Kevin said this:

Tell Stories You can’t just write copy and hope to connect with people. Try telling stories about real people. It’s likely a few folks in your congregation have weathered the greatest economic collapse this country has ever faced. What’s their story?

This was one of three excellent suggestions to create connections through your website rather than just push content.

If you are at all responsible for your congregation’s website – or even if you’re not, go read Kevin’s series on effective church websites. Your congregation will thank you a year from now.

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.