There has never been a more important time for the church to be the church and live out the transforming love of Christ Jesus. Climate change is now impacting our local communities, congregations, and their ministries in a myriad of ways including financially, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Yet, throughout the Bible, we are told that the earth is the Lord’s and therefore holy, and we are called to care for and learn from creation (Genesis 2.15, Ps. 24.1, Job 12.7-10), and to care for “the least of these among us” (Matthew 25) which includes the earth.
In these times, we need to remind ourselves and each other of the power and impact of the local church. Churches play an enormous role in supporting community needs, particularly for the most vulnerable. Close community connections mean that we know the critical needs of our communities and we respond.
With the challenges of our times come incredible opportunities to be the church in new and innovative ways, living out the gospel in our local communities. New churches are called to find unique ways to care for the earth and all who depend on it as dictated by the location and context. Creation care, which is as ancient as our faith and important to many people’s spirituality, is a way for churches to be renewed and strengthened to each other, the local community, and God.
Green Chalice is honored and blessed to partner with New Church Ministry to support and resource new churches to connect our faith, spiritual practices, and creation consciousness to demonstrate the fullness of God’s shalom. In honor of Earth Month, lead your church in becoming a Green Chalice Congregation!
~ Rev. Carol Devine, Co-Minister of Green Chalice
Rev. Carol Devine is the national faith and climate director for ecoAmerica’s Blessed Tomorrow program. She is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and founder of the denomination’s creation care ministry, Green Chalice. Carol served as a congregational pastor for 14 years in Kentucky where ecumenical and interfaith work was a priority. Before being called to ministry, Carol was a teacher and a Peace Corps Volunteer. She is a graduate of Transylvania University (BA), University of Kentucky (MS), and Lexington Theological Seminary (MDiv). She is the mother of three adult children and loves to travel, hike, kayak, cycle, garden, and read.
When you cross the Ambassador Bridge from Detroit, MI to Windsor, ON, you may think that you’re leaving behind the Motor City and entering a quaint Canadian town.
But as residents of Windsor know, that assumption couldn’t be farther from the truth.
While its American neighbor to the south garners more of the attention for its musical, architectural, and of course, industrial legacy, Windsor is a major contributor to Canada’s automotive industry and the site of the busiest Canada-U.S. border crossing. But like Detroit, Windsor has also experienced its fair share of economic decline. Residents have been hit hard by poverty and unemployment, which in turn has allowed the opioid crisis to flourish.
It is in this hub that Freedom Church of Windsor is meeting the needs of residents struggling with addiction, as well as adults with intellectual disabilities. It’s also a testament to the power of church as a place of generosity and justice – one that you can support on Sundays, May 12 and May 19 by making a gift to the 2024 Pentecost Offering.
After a failed merger with another congregation, Rev. Jonathan P. Nantais re-started Freedom Church in January 2020 to provide a faith community that welcomed everybody to God’s table, from members of the LGBTQ+ community, to blended families, to folks with a myriad of religious backgrounds. In 2022, it affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Canada.
Pastor Bradley Williams appears in the top left photo
“I’ve gone to a lot of different places of worship, but I never felt like I belonged until I came to Freedom Church,” recalls Student Senior Pastor Bradley Williams, who assumed leadership of Freedom Church with Minister of Administration Katie Burgos and Supervising Pastor Rev. Dr. Jen Garbin last summer after Rev. Jonathan answered a call to pastor a church in Houston, TX.
This theology of radical acceptance can be seen on Sunday mornings, whether it’s at Bible study, which folks can attend in-person or online, or afterwards at the worship services, where all are welcome to receive communion and children are encouraged to express themselves during worship.
Lisa Metivier appears in the bottom left photo
As for those struggling with drug misuse, the church helps them on their journey to sobriety by providing addiction resources, such as recovery meetings at the church and access to a clean-living house for clients to stay at who have detoxed and gone through a treatment program. With the high cost of living, the facility, which is managed by Pastor Brad, provides an opportunity for its inhabitants to both get off the streets and re-learn how to live clean again.
“My mother is a retired ordained minister, addictions counselor, and 45 years sober,” shares Lisa Metivier, who is the treasurer and interim vice-president of the church’s board. “I grew up with my mom being very actively involved in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). I’ve seen firsthand how these programs allow us to be there for our brothers and sisters facing active addiction.”
On Sunday mornings, a church van picks up the residents, as well as elderly members who can’t drive, for worship services. Church attendance isn’t mandatory for the clients – rather, Freedom Church wants to ensure that their community can find God if they need to.
“Many of our members struggle with addiction or are in recovery,” relays Pastor Brad. “At Freedom Church, we provide them with a safe atmosphere in which to learn about God and participate in the body of Christ without the judgment or stigma around addiction.”
In addition to the clean-living accommodations, folks can seek counseling from him during his office hours and/or attend Narcotics Anonymous or AA meetings held twice a week in the church building.
Freedom Church is always open for folks struggling with their addictions to drop in. The congregation did close their doors during the early days of the pandemic – until someone came to their building seeking help and overdosed. Since then, its doors have remained open.
Despite these many opportunities for support, the insidious nature of the opioid crisis leaves many people with substance abuse issues struggling with food insecurity as well. To address that, the congregation runs a food pantry and a community meal program. The latter takes place periodically throughout the month, when Freedom Church invites its neighbors in to eat breakfast or dinner and engage in conversation with their fellow diners. On Good Friday, its members broke bread and fried fish.
God’s presence also imbues itself into the church’s Freedom Respite Program, which provides art and music therapy, exercise classes, community outings, and more to adults with intellectual disabilities. Initially opened as a subsidiary of the church in 2022, the program is now a non-profit organization with its own roster of clients. From Monday to Friday, 7:30 AM to 4:00 PM, it provides daily programming to relieve parents or guardians who are not able to care for their families during the day due to work or other professional commitments. Freedom Respite currently has eight clients, all of whom are 21+, the age at which clients “age out” of the school system.
“Our church is about hope,” explains Lisa, who joined Freedom Church in 2019. “When we help people with food or transportation, these are the actions that we are taking to show them that God loves them.”
And these actions are practical, too. Windsor has an average temperature of -3 degrees Celsius (27 degrees Fahrenheit) during the winter season, so offering folks shelter and transportation gets them out of the cold.
“A lot of our members have come to our church to rebuild a faith they felt they weren’t worthy of having,” concludes Lisa. “So, every week we make sure to remind everyone that God wants everyone at the table. No one will be excluded.”
To ensure that communities of faith like Freedom Church of Windsor can continue to serve their communities, participate in this year’s Pentecost Offering. Half of the gifts made to this Special Day Offering stay in the regional ministry in which they are collected to support local new church development. The other half goes to New Church Ministry, which trains, equips, assists, and multiplies emerging and affiliating congregations and their leaders across the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the United States and Canada.
When it comes to church, we have a lot of negative tapes playing in our heads:
“Church is judgmental.” “Church is hypocritical.” “They think they’re better than everyone else.”
It’s time for restoration. Time to rewind the tape.
New Church Ministry is dedicated to fostering faithful communities marked by deep Christian spirituality and a passion for God’s love and justice.
Like our ancestors, we’re going back to the beginning, when new Christian communities gathered together and shared all they had, organizing everything around the Spirit’s dreams for their lives and their communities.
Yesterday, today, and tomorrow, God is singing a new song: not a song of judgment, but of welcome and forgiveness; not a song of superiority, but of humility and grace; not a song of hoarding, but of sharing everything we have!
God’s movement for wholeness is already underway. Our job is to listen, and learn, and follow – supporting leaders and communities as the Spirit calls them into being, laying down a new song for a new generation.
Church as a place of generosity and justice. Church as a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world.
Your gifts to the 2024 Pentecost Offering, received in most congregations on Sunday, May 12, and Sunday, May 19, are divided equally between your regional ministry, which supports local new churches, and New Church Ministry, which trains, equips, and assists emerging leaders to be “movement initiators.”
Music Disclaimer: The song One Heart, One Mind in all its material forms is being provided to you free of charge through the end of 2024. If you utilize these resources beyond 2024, additional permission and compensation may be needed. Connect with the creators Wesley King (wesleykingmusic@gmail.com) and Andra Moran (andra@andramoran.com) to seek out these approvals. After 2024, Disciples Church Extension Fund is not to be held liable for usage of materials freely provided to the public.
We are at the end of another year. We have accomplished many things in 2023, and New Church Ministry could not have done it without you. Our first major event this year was an in-person Coaching Academy. This is significant because it was the first in-person Coaching Academy since the end of COVID-19 restrictions. Additionally, it was a massive success because of our budding relationship with the ELCA coaching ministry of the Lutheran Church. We look forward to making our coaching program more robust to better serve the emerging and affiliating leaders who come through Leadership Academy.
This was also a General Assembly year. Many of you came to visit us in our booth and helped us with the rollout of the DisciplesNEXT framework. We had a nearly full capacity at our seminar during GA. Again, we cannot do our work without you. Many of you have supported us by being there and giving us so much financially. If you’re not aware, Disciples Church Extension Fund is in the midst of an endowment campaign called New Ways into the World. Every last dollar counts, so we want to thank you for all the work you’ve put in to help us train, equip, assist, and multiply emerging and affiliating leaders.
With all that being said, you can look for new things to happen in the future. We look to bolster our coaching program, recruit new coaches for the new leaders, and make our coaches available to congregations wanting to do new ministry. We’re also focusing more on content creation to resource all congregations for us to really lean into the “share the Good News” portion of our denominational mission statement. Lastly, we will continue to focus evermore on our partnerships within our denomination and on our ecumenical partners so that we may fully live into our identity as being “a movement for wholeness and a fragmented world.”
~ Rev. Dr. Jose Martinez, Minister of New Church Strategies
KANSAS CITY, MO – Iconic North American architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s “church of the future” proved a fitting setting to introduce DisciplesNEXT, a new framework for church growth in a pandemic-informed ministry context.
Victor Perez shares his thoughts about Leadership Academy on Instagram.
Clergy and laity gathered online and in person to explore DisciplesNEXT’s core competencies: contemplative action, prophetic advocacy, and faith-rooted organizing to expand the Disciples witness. The new framework claims the best of the Disciples’ identity and history as a “movement for wholeness” even as it seeks to counter the church’s historic tendency to colonize as a means of growth.
“I’m taking a lot of tools with me, including not only how to be a leader inside my congregation, but in my community,” said Victor Perez, a member of Casa de Refugio Christian Church in Covina, CA. “Leadership Academy is taking us outside of our comfort zone, outside of the four walls of our church.”
In his opening remarks to the gathering, Rev. Dr. Jose Martinez, Minister of New Church Strategies, made the point that “we are all new church” as we learn anew to be the church in a pandemic-informed context. DisciplesNEXT is a framework that supports congregations, regardless of their stage in the church lifecycle.
Rev. Dr. Jose Martinez discusses DisciplesNEXT.
Rev. Chad Delaney, Senior Minister of Mantua Center Christian Church in Mantua, OH, introduced participants to NCM’s coaching service. As an NCM coach, Rev. Chad shared what role he and his colleagues play in the first few years of a new church leader’s ministry. Coaches can be confused as consultants or therapists, but he pointed to the distinction.
“Therapists are like archeologists; they dig deep into the history of how we understand ourselves. Coaches are like architects – present- and future-focused,” he explained.
For Rev. Jose the success of emerging congregations depends on coaching — and coaching depends on trusting relationships. Having coaches on-site to meet participants provided a deeper familiarity with the value of this service, he said.
Rev. Brian Frederick-Gray delivers his keynote address.
Participants also heard from keynote speaker Rev. Brian Frederick-Gray, Director for Justice and Advocacy Ministry with Disciples Home Missions, who delved into the meaning of embodied and resilient faith. Workshops by Disciples Church Extension Fund staff covered topics ranging from marketing to building needs and opportunities.
Rev. Wesley King, NCM’s Program Coordinator, plays the organ at IBCC.
On the third day of the event, Independence Boulevard Christian Church (IBCC), welcomed a site visit to share their journey as a church transformation in an urban setting. The small faith community uses its aging facilities for multiple outreach ministries addressing issues affecting the neighborhood, including food insecurity, lack of access to medical care, and homelessness.
Between Rev. Chad’s presentation and the tour of IBCC, participants found fellowship amongst their peers in various cohorts, which were designed for core teams and their leaders at different stages of the church launch process.
Leadership Academy participants gather outside of IBCC.
“It’s always energizing to be with people who share similar vision and call into a church community’s setting,” shared returning participant Rev. Tiffany DeTienne, Community Engagement Specialist at Church World Service.
In concluding the event, Rev. Dr. Jose reminded participants that the model for Jesus’ ministry “was never meant to be just pastors leading congregations.”
Rev. Bill Rose-Heim, Regional Minister for the Kansas City region, sings at the opening worship service.
“Christ is our pastor. We are the laity. We are helping each other become empowered to lead for the common good,” he said. “The Spirit moves us forward in this.”
DisciplesNEXT is scheduled to be the topic of discussion in the December 6 IMPACT episode.
