Alex: Data for Disciples debuts in September | | Meet Alex! This new tool for congregations will replace the tedious process of filling out your yearbook form this winter. You can update your contact information and staff names in real-time as well as keep your attendance totals and weekly offerings with an easy-to-use interface accessed by desktop, tablet, or mobile devices. You can spot trends and patterns over time to make informed decisions about your congregation's future.
Regions have been, and are still, collecting contact information for congregations to get you the initial login information. The invitation e-mails will roll out to a few regions each week over the course of September.
This is just the first step in building out a robust database for use by the Church. General Minister and President Terri Hord Owens set this as an objective early in her tenure, knowing from her earlier experience in corporate settings that business intelligence (data) is key to making informed decisions. Alex will position Disciples to finally have a real-time directory and picture of churchwide trends that has been impossible with the current yearbook system.
Your congregation’s data will be rolled up into region-wide totals that your regional staff will be able to see for a real-time picture of activity. As your data accumulates, you will be able to easily see trends and patterns in the previous months and, eventually, for several years. The data will automatically be presented in graphs. Other congregations will not have access to your data until the year book “snapshot” but congregations and regional ministers will be able to download individual congregations’ data for study, profiles, and more. | | Tentative schedule for regions | | Week 1
Indiana Kentucky Michigan MidAmerica Virginia | | Week 2
Alabama/NW Florida Arizona Canada Capital Area Central Rocky Mountain Florioda Georgia Great River Illinois/Wisconsin Northern California/Nevada Ohio | | Week 3
Greater Kansas City Kansas Nebraska North Carolina Northern Lights South Carolina Tennessee Northeastern Pennsylvania West Virginia
(Remaining regions in Week 4) | | Other learning opportunities and resources | | Explore the Enneagram
The Enneagram, a theory that argues nine different personality types exist, has experienced a surge in popularity among Christians. It’s time to discover why the Enneagram is an effective tool to implement within organizations, ministries, and workplaces, and why using it within your church can improve the quality of communication among your team members.
- Apply the principles to your personal and spiritual growth
- Strengthen successful relationships at home, at church, and in the community
- Develop leaders, build teams, and enhance communication skills
- Integrate into your Bible studies, therapy sessions, retreats, and individual spiritual practice
| | National Benevolent Association offers online SENT seminar in September
NBA invites social entrepreneurs and Disciples who want to learn more about the world of Social Enterprise to our virtual SENT Seminar. Participants will experience online education on the importance of impactful work in our communities and lessons on how to plant and grow new faith-rooted social enterprises. Join us online for the Virtual SENT Seminar, Sept. 16–18, 2020. | | Church the new way
Leadership Academy gathers Disciples every fall to share experiences, wisdom, and training.
This year, they can still expect to learn together and for the first time, register core teams of up to five people for USD $500. (We encourage the lead pastor to register for every member of the team. Additionally, if the pastor is unable to attend, others can attend.)
From Sept. 29 to Oct. 1 (11AM to 6PM EST), New Church Ministry will host a virtual Academy featuring Start and Sustain Tracks to empower leaders, DOCTalks to address missional transformation at every stage of leadership and congregational vitality, and LEADLabs to help leaders with missional concepts.
Speakers include: - Terri Hord Owens, General Minister and President of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Terri is the first woman of color to head a mainline Christian denomination in North America. She is widely sought after as a preacher, speaker, and workshop facilitator.
- Lorenzo Lebrija, Founding Director of TryTank, a laboratory for church growth and innovation. In addition to designing and implementing experiments for the church, he speaks to groups about development, community involvement, the arts, business strategy, and marketing.
- Christiana Rice, Director of The Parish Collective. She is a trainer, writer and convener, helping to reorganize the church around God’s dreams in the neighborhood. Christiana is co-author of To Alter Your World: Partnering with God to Rebirth Our Communities with Michael Frost, and lives in San Diego with her husband Derek, their two daughters, and their neighborhood church community.
- Tim Soerens, pastor, social entrepreneur, and co-founding director of the Parish Collective. He is the author of Everywhere You Look: Discovering the Church, Right Where You Are, and the co-author of The New Parish. He lives in Seattle with his wife Maria-Jose and their two boys.
| | Advocacy toolkit from Disciples Justice Ministries
You've heard the call to contact your legislators but were never quite sure how to have an effective visit. COVID-19 makes this even more complicated since legislators are both campaigning and canceling town hall opportunities. Time for a virtual visit!
| | | | TurnOut Sunday: get out the vote!
On Aug. 13, the National African American Clergy Network in partnership with Lawyers and Collars presented a webinar especially for Disciples. You can find the link to the recording as well other resources to help you get out the vote. | | House Divided: Preaching a Politics of Compassion
Polls consistently show that we have far more in common than we’ve been led to believe by the media, which are driven by profit, and our political institutions, which are motivated by power. The result is that we have never before been so divided as a country and never more isolated, socially disconnected and lonely as individuals. The antidote to this politics of contempt is not a politics of compromise which seeks to end disagreement. These hyper-polarized times call us to transcend a politics of compromise in favor of a politics of compassion, which fosters a way of relating to others and responding to today’s issues with universal care, concern, and commitment for the sake of the flourishing of all human and non-human forms of life. By doing so, I believe we can re-order our everyday conversations and renew our commitment by practicing a kind of politics that embodies grace, reason, and humility, for our sake and the sake of the common good. | | Racism town halls continue
Reconciliation Ministry and the Office of General Minister and President are cooperating to present a series of town halls via Zoom (registration required). The Love is an Action Word series is continuing and are archived on the Disciples YouTube channel in a playlist.
These sessions could be good conversation starters for a meeting of your own members (virtual or in person) where you could process together what you heard.
Every two weeks from now until November, additional episodes will take place on Thursdays at 7 pm ET/6 pm CT and 4 pm PT. (schedule subject to change)
- Sept. 10 - Love is an Action Word: Latinx, Obra Hispana, and Just Borders - Disciples reflect on the policies, practices, and theology that shape our relations with the Latinx community, and their call to action.
- Sept. 24 - Love is an Action Word: National Convocation, the Black Lives Matter Movement - Disciples reflect on the policies, practices, and theology that shape our relations with National Convocation and the BLM movement, and their call to action.
- Oct. 8 - Love is an Action Word: Race, Gender, and Sexual Identity - Melissa Guthrie Loy, Luther Young
- Oct. 22 - Love is an Action Word: Puerto Rico, Imperialist ideology, and mission - Disciples reflect on the policies, practices, and theology that shape our relations with Puerto Rico, and their call to action.
- Nov. 5 - Love is an Action Word: Identity, Theology, and Faithful care for the community - A multi-racial, multi-cultural panel of Disciples talk about identity, theology, and how they live out the call to faithful care for the community.
(And don't forget the Reconciliation Ministry offering is received in most congregations Sept. 27 and Oct. 4.)
| | Rev. Terri Hord Owens will continue her Wednesday Facebook Live prayers @terrihordowens and the Friday prayers with pastors and chaplains via Zoom through the summer. Pastors and chaplains, please register for the Friday prayers by clicking below. | | Reflection on LGBTQ+ issues Rev. Terri Hord Owens and Rev. Melissa Guthrie Loy offer their reflections on the care we must take to exclude no one whether we agree or disagree.
Generosity resources
Sermon ideas Have you done a series on Disciples identity? If you're interested, there are sample sermons and worship resources available on disciples.org.
Disciples Mission Fund You can find resources for explaining the fund, special offerings, treasurers' work and more on disciplesmissionfund.org. | | Webinars are offered by:
Other resources:
- Disciples Alliance Q offers "Being an Inclusive Church" toolkit
| | General ministries of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the US and Canada:
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