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June 24, 2009

A little help from their friends

‘Re-forming ministry’ program helps build strong relationships

by Toya Richards Hill
Special to Presbyterian News Service

LOUISVILLE — Friends — the people we form long-lasting bonds with through shared experiences — don’t just come overnight.

They are people with whom we build deep, personal relationships who help us sort out our lives and the things we are called to do.

So it only seems natural from a ministerial standpoint that strong theological friendships also need special nurture and care, intentional actions designed to build and maintain connections.

Re-Forming Ministry — an initiative of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Office of Theology and Worship begun in 2004 — has facilitated the development of such friendships. The program, funded through the Lilly Endowment, has been the catalyst not only for forming ongoing relationships, but also the mechanism for exploring how ministry and the work of the church can be transformed.

“One of the greatest blessings of being a part of this project was the community that was formed and the relationships that were built,” said the Rev. Sarah Marsh, associate pastor of Calvin Presbyterian Church here. “We built friendships across the theological spectrum in our group.”

The program unites pastors, professors and church officials in clusters that meet several times a year “to do theological work together in and for the church, exploring new ways of doing theology,” according to information about the program.

Pastoral initiative, church official initiative and faculty initiative clusters examine issues such as strengthening the ordered ministries of elders and deacons, identifying and developing candidates for ministry and utilizing faculty as continuing pastoral-theological mentors. A core cluster also helps shape individual research, thinking and writing to serve the shared purposes of the program.

Program participants who have taken part thus far and others will gather together June 29-July 1 for an all-program conference in Colorado Springs, Colo. The event will allow people to share their individual and cluster experiences, and to look at how what they have learned can be communicated to the larger church.

“There’s no place we know of where the teachers of the church … sit as peers around the table to engage in what the future of the church is,” the Rev. Dr. Charles A. Wiley III, coordinator of the Office of Theology and Worship for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), said of the Re-Forming Ministry program.

“We believe this is a unique place for church leaders to theologically engage on the substantive issues that the church is facing,” he said.

Marsh said her cluster focused on issues around preparation for and transition into ministry, areas she was familiar with as a newly ordained pastor.

“Being new in ministry, that was such an amazing gift,” she said. Many of the concerns addressed “were things that definitely related to my own experience.”

Ultimately Marsh’s cluster helped facilitate a conference held earlier this year for those tasked with preparing and shaping leaders, such as committees on preparation for ministry, field education supervisors, and seminary professors

The Rev. Dr. David S. Oyler III, general presbyter of the Presbytery of Lake Erie and a Re-Forming Ministry participant, said the program has helped him keep in mind the larger view of the church and the issues affecting it.
 
Oyler’s group wrestled with the question of how we reform ourselves, building on the “wonderful” traditions of the past, yet at the same time thinking reflectively, philosophically and theologically about what the church is becoming, he said.

Re-Forming Ministry looks at how approach this “re-forming,” guided by the scriptures while realizing the world is changing, Oyler said. “This (program) very much pushed me to do that.”

The hope is that “participants in the program will have nurtured a deeper sense of pastoral vocation in this particular moment, in this particular context,” said the Rev. Barry Ensign-George, associate for theology in the Office of Theology and Worship and program director for the Re-Forming Ministry program.

That deepened sense of pastoral calling comes, in part, through the “nurturing of significant theological friendship with a community of those who are also practicing ministry,” he said.

Ensign-George said the upcoming conference will enable program participants “to tell their story and to begin to offer beyond their group something that has grown out of the reflection that they have done together.”

There will be an opportunity “for community and interaction across the groups,” he said. Ultimately, the hope is that what the groups have to offer “can be shared beyond the Re-Forming Ministry program.”