“Churches don’t represent youth without a faith background.”
As a pastor dedicated to reaching young people, Rev. Dr. Tiffany DeTienne does not mince her words when it comes to serving young adults.
“Young people are looking for something familiar,” she explains. “For many of them who do have a background in the church, youth group was often the best community of their life.”
With The Fringe, a new place of worship in Lawrence, KS, Rev. Dr. Tiffany is hoping to provide an on ramp to church for those who have no faith community.
On June 1 and 8, Disciples across the United States and Canada can support emerging and affiliating faith communities that are going beyond what’s been done before – ones just like The Fringe – by participating in the Pentecost Offering.
In the early 2010s, Rev. Dr. Tiffany was working at a robust congregation, one that boasted more than 300 attendees. Its youth ministry was just as vibrant – it saw 100 unique students a month, with 60 attending every week. While some of them came from church families, most were local students.
Even after she left her job, former students who were looking for pastoral care – whether that came in the form of a listening ear or a driver with a big car – would still reach out to her.
“A lot of our students needed someone to help move them in and out of their apartment for college,” Rev. Dr. Tiffany recalls. “And so I would connect with my old youth sponsors, and rally that support for those students.”
More than a decade later, these students became young adults – navigating college, housing insecurity, and their sexual orientations – still in search of community.
At the same time, Rev. Dr. Tiffany was also finding her place in the world and how to best use her skills to serve people who had a desire to explore their faith for the first time. She had worked as a minister in established congregations – experiences marked by what she called the “shuffling of the sheep,” or the departure of congregants from one traditional church to another. What she wanted now in her life was to convey the Good News in a language and a medium that a new generation could hear and understand.
Rev. Dr. Tiffany speaks to those gathered at Leadership Academy 2023
“I’ve just always felt called to come back and finish the work I did with young adults, of creating a space that is welcoming and approachable,” she shares. “A space for people who don’t come from a religious background or who don’t feel like they’re represented at church.”
So Rev. Dr. Tiffany attended New Church Ministry’s Leadership Academy – an event that empowers pastors, core teams, students, and others on their journey to become movement initiators – not once, but three times. When she enrolled in the Discerners’ Track, which is designed for participants who are discerning what path God is taking them down, she did so with the intention of learning what it would take to launch a church. What she received was not only a road map for that process, but a sense of comradery with her peers.
“It was really good to be with people who shared such an outrageous dream,” she remembers. “When you have that passion and order your life around it, it can be lonely. It was so great to meet other people who were in the same boat as me.”
Finally, in Easter of last year, Rev. Dr. Tiffany launched The Fringe, so named to reflect Jesus’s ministry of serving people on the fringes of society. Its members meet every Tuesday – to accommodate the busy lives of its young adults – at a local open and affirming church. For three weeks out of the month, they gather in small groups, where Rev. Dr. Tiffany strives to take an invitational approach that is responsive to the “Rise of the Nones,” or the increasing number of religiously unaffiliated people in the United States.
Full worship gatherings use music you might hear on the radio, instead of traditional contemporary Christian songs.
“We call our sermons Text Talks, which is a play on words of TED Talks,” she says. “We always have someone tell a story after the talk that has to do with the theme of the week’s biblical text. That’s been a great way for people to get to know one another, to share their stories, to not feel alone.”
Rev. Dr. Tiffany and others will then break out into exploratory stations to engage in embodied actions or artistic expressions that corollate with the text. Prayer and communion stations are also made available.
“When communion was the only thing happening during worship, many folks at The Fringe felt it was very exclusive to our core team. That’s why we shifted to our exploratory break-out sessions,” she clarifies. “For these individuals, communion was awkward because they didn’t feel comfortable coming to the Table yet. And so that was a big discovery for me, as someone who was raised as a pastor’s kid.”
The first week of the month is reserved for “Taco ‘Bout It” Tuesdays, where people are invited to a taco place downtown. It’s an opportunity for The Fringe to create spaces for conversation that are a little freer flowing than in its small group settings.
This past year, Rev. Dr. Tiffany has also been regularly seeing Rev. Steven Smith – a New Church Ministry coach – who has provided an additional support system for her.
“You don’t run into a lot of new church folks in the denomination, so you end up not knowing a whole lot of people who share your experiences. It’s the opposite when you’re a traditional minister,” Rev. Dr. Tiffany says. “So, Rev. Steven has been a great bellwether for me and gives thoughtful advice.”
Due to its small size and lack of resources, The Fringe is currently on the lookout for ways to partner with local organizations to serve the community.
As Rev. Dr. Tiffany looks to the future, she encourages all churches – big and small, new and established – to ask themselves what it would feel like to walk into a church for the first time, and then use whatever answers come up to help expand the way that their church does ministry.
“We are in a time where people need hope, and I would love for us to get back to that in a broader way,” she concludes. “We have something of value to offer the communities that we live in.”
When you make a gift to the Pentecost Offering, half of your gift stays in the region in which it is received to support the local new church movement. The other half goes to New Church Ministry, which trains, equips, assists, and multiplies emerging and affiliating congregations and their leaders. Please give generously to this Special Day Offering.
For many mainline Protestants, theological education starts and ends with Sunday school. Some are lucky – their place of worship has enough youth to warrant a Vacation Bible School, but for others, there isn’t much else when it comes to theological learning.
But at Think+Pray+Act, a new congregation in St. Louis, MO, members are invited to discuss sermons, ask questions, and explore their curiosity about faith, theology, and vocation in community.
“The Bible didn’t fall pre-written from the sky. It was composed by many different people over many different cultures, times, and places,” founding pastor Rev. Rebecca Klemme Eliceiri explains. “When we gather, we think about what those traditions meant in their original time, and how we represent those things in meaningful ways today for 21st century people.”
On June 1 and 8, you can support emerging and affiliating communities of faith – like Think+Pray+Act – that are going beyond what’s been done before, by participating in the Pentecost Offering.
When Rev. Rebecca was growing up in the United Church of Christ (UCC), she never felt safe enough to ask questions, even if she experienced it as a loving place of faith.
“When I got my Bible in the third grade, I felt so happy to have the book of my faith tradition. I thought that it would answer so many questions, but it just left me feeling more confused than ever,” she recalls. “It is important that you can encounter a friendly face if you have a question about your faith, and that you don’t feel scared or ashamed for asking questions.”
Her childhood experiences, Jesus’s continued calls amid deep doubt, and her participation in another UCC congregation informed her decision to enroll at Eden Theological Seminary in 2003, which had a strong reputation for congregational ministry in the early 2000s. But while she loved learning and felt the Holy Spirit in the classroom, she had a hard time imagining how to start a non-traditional place of worship when she graduated three years later. This frustration led Rev. Rebecca to return to grad school in 2009, when she took up a Masters in Library Science.
“Spending time outside of church helped me to better understand the points of view of the ‘nones,’ agnostics, and atheists,” she reveals. “A lot of my friends fall into those categories.”
She kept her ties to her alma mater though, joining the staff at Eden’s Luhr Library. A year into her degree, she lost that job – the school was selling its library facility to Webster University.
Rev. Rebecca felt a shift.
If seminaries were selling their library buildings, then theological education was changing too.
“It solidified an idea that I’d had since 2003,” she says. “How the church educates lay people is too often not a very vibrant thing, which was different than what I had experienced as a seminarian. In seminary, I had the opportunity to dive deep into theology.”
What Rev. Rebecca wanted to do was create a resource library where lay people could easily access the best theological resources – the same ones that seminary students can find on campus. But her BiblioMinistry, as she referred to it at the time, wouldn’t just be a warehouse full of books. It would be a ‘third place,’ a concept that refers to a public space that is neither one’s home (the first place) nor one’s work (the second place), where people can come together and spend time with one another without the obligation of spending money.
“Librarians often understand the concept of ‘library’ differently than most people,” she points out. “We are information professionals, but we also know that libraries are ‘third places’ where folks can build and strengthen connections.”
Two years after her graduation from library school, she started the ordination process and began sharing her idea of the BiblioMinistry. But that working title didn’t seem to resonate with others, who thought it was a “very large and unwieldy” name and encouraged her to come up with one that better reflected what she wanted to do. So, she went back to the drawing board. She wanted the BiblioMinistry to be a place where participants could hold conversations with each other and theological scholars, study the historical Jesus, and live into God’s call in their lives, including acting for justice in the world.
“’Thoughts and prayers’ are great, but they’re ineffective without action,” Rev. Rebecca muses. “The words ‘think,’ ‘pray,’ and ‘act’ really encapsulated what I was interested in and what I felt the church should be like: a place where we not only do serious theological learning together, but also act on what we learn by individually and collectively living into what God has called us to.”
And yet, she still didn’t view Think+Pray+Act as a church. It wasn’t until the spring of 2023, when she met Minister of New Church Strategies Rev. Dr. Jose Martinez at Compton Heights Christian Church, that she began to become confident in her project. That fall she attended New Church Ministry’s Leadership Academy, an event that empowers pastors, core teams, students, and others on their journey to become movement initiators. It also provides her with continuing support in the form of a new church coach with whom to discuss questions and concerns.
“If you find yourself outside of what has already been done, it feels lonely and you don’t know where you fit in,” Rev. Rebecca confesses. “Going to Leadership Academy was an affirming experience of my call. It helped legitimize what I was doing in my own head.”
And so, after 14 years of trying to find a way to integrate her library and theological education, she finally saw her dream come to life last fall, when she started putting together a leadership team. The following month, the Mid-America region unanimously voted to recommend Think+Pray+Act as a congregation in formation. In February of this year, it started gathering in the library of Compton Heights – a symbiotic relationship that Rev. Rebecca feels is an integral part of the success for emerging congregations.
“It’s easier for new churches to be on the forefront of innovation,” she says. “At the same time, more established churches remember the importance of tradition and can help churches like mine consider the ways that we can live it out in vibrant ways.”
Today, Think+Pray+Act meets in person on the second and fourth Saturdays of each month. It partners with Metropolitan Congregations United, an interfaith organization dedicated to congregation-based community organizing, to work for social justice in St. Louis.
As for the future, Think+Pray+Act is in the process of building the People’s Theological Library, which will be available both in print and online. It’s both a lasting testament and a call to the church to view theology as a conversation – one that lay people aren’t too afraid to join.
When you make a gift to the Pentecost Offering, half of your gift stays in the region in which it is received to support the local new church movement. The other half goes to New Church Ministry, which trains, equips, assists, and multiplies emerging and affiliating congregations and their leaders. Please give generously.
The current religious landscape of Québec, Canada is one of duality, dominated by the historic Roman Catholic Church and the growing secularism that got its start in the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s.
Before this binary dynamic took hold, indigenous faiths were practiced first by the Kanien’kha:ka, Haudenosaunee, Anishinabeg, and Algonquin peoples living in what we now call Québec. Over time, other religions arrived in the province, including Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism. However, the majority of Québecois today either identify as Christian or with no adherence to any religion at all.
Against this religious backdrop, a small, informal community of faith exists, one that serves young adults and students who are seeking a meaningful connection with God – and it’s right in the heart of Québec’s largest city, Montréal.
Chapelle Ste-Marthe (St. Martha’s Chapel) is an emerging place of worship, one that is marked by deep Christian spirituality and a passion for God’s love and justice, that you can support this year during the Pentecost Offering.
St. Martha’s Chapel has its origins in the ecumenical chaplaincy at McGill University and regularly hosts events in partnership with the institution, such as interfaith text studies or the annual Discover Spiritual McGill Fair.
“The chapel’s name was inspired by an earlier iteration of the ministry called ‘St. Martha of the Basement,’ highlighting the centrality of hospitality and inclusivity to the mission,” says Rev. Jean-Daniel Ó Donnċada, the former director and chaplain now serving as the Canada region’s national pastor.
In 2020, the ministry changed its name from McGill Ecumenical Chaplaincy and evolved its direction to be a young adult-led organization open to working young adults and students attending other universities with most members being professionals in their 20s and 30s.
One such student turned professional is Sarah Wicks-Potter, who became the interim director and chaplain last summer.
“I moved to Montréal when I was 18 for university. My aunt and uncle set me up on a friend date with the one person they knew in the city, and she invited me to Bible study. She brought me to St. Martha’s and I’ve been there about every week since,” she recalls. “I met my roommates, some of my best friends, my husband, and a couple whose son I’m now a godmother to at the chapel.”
In addition to providing pastoral care in both English and French (with help from Rev. Jean-Daniel for the French speakers), Sarah is now the one leading Bible study for her community of faith. This weekly event is open to adults ages 18 to 40 and provides time to engage in spiritual practices and share a meal.
“It might be hard to see young people in the church without St. Martha’s,” she explains, “and you can really see that at Bible study.”
The chapel also provides evening worship services on the first and third Sundays of each month in cooperation with Cathédrale Christ Church (Christ Church Cathedral), which donates two rooms in its lower level for the ministry to use. St. Martha’s services are casual and are open to all who wish an evening time to pray.
“Wherever you are on your journey with Jesus, whether you’re doubting or angry, the people at St. Martha’s are always there to accompany you, not convert you,” clarifies Sarah. “Even when you graduate and move away, that doesn’t change.”
Sometimes this support can be joyous, too. When a member was baptized in February, all the people from St. Martha’s showed up. In June, they plan to attend a play written by one of their members and be that “obnoxious group of young people in the audience.”
The community even provides more “logical support,” as Sarah puts it. Last fall, one of its members was recovering from surgery, so they put together a meal train. Whatever way this support looks like, it ultimately depends on what people need and how they need it.
The chapel is also LGBTQ+ affirming and an incredibly vocal space for queer rights within Christianity. While Montréal is safe for the LGBQ+ community, not all churches in the city are.
“Part of my job is to figure out how to connect the puzzle pieces that keep our community strong,” Sarah finishes, “I like what I do a lot.”
To ensure that faith communities like St. Martha’s Chapel can continue to provide radically accepting places of worship in their neighbourhoods, make a gift to the 2024 Pentecost Offering. Received in most congregations on Sundays, May 12 and May 19, this Special Day Offering is equally divided between the region in which it’s collected to support local new church development and New Church Ministry, which trains, equips, assists, and multiplies emerging and affiliating leaders and their congregations. Thank you for your generous support.
There are open and affirming congregations as well as places of worship where most of the members are people of color (POC). But before 2017, if you were searching for a faith community of both, you would be hard-pressed to find one.
That was until Rev. Dr. Dionne T. Boyice created WHOSOEVER: Community of F.A.I.T.H. (Finding Answers in the HEALING), a Facebook group that provides a safe space for all LGBTQ+ people, especially POC, who want to worship God.
Today, Dionne and the 1,200+ members of WHOSOEVER: Community Of F.A.I.T.H. are active online, with those living in Kansas City, KS and MO gathering in person once a month to worship and provide outreach services. These efforts are made possible with the gifts made to the Pentecost Offering, which supports leaders and communities as the Spirit calls them into being.
Seven years ago, Dionne preached at the first Black PRIDE worship service in Kansas City, MO. Following her sermon, about 25 attendees inquired about her church, citing the lack of local congregations led by an LGBTQ+ POC. Back then, Dionne didn’t have a church nor was she a pastor. But after so many people approached her, she felt called to create a community of faith where Black LGBTQ+ folks, who were suffering from religious trauma, spiritual abuse, and/or moral injury, could praise God.
“I’ve been a Baptist for most of my life. In my experience, the Black church is so vocal when they describe homosexuality as ‘the work of the devil’ or a sin, that they push Black LGBTQ+ people out the door,” shares Dionne. “But these people are still searching for and desire a relationship with God.”
So, she created WHOSOEVER, taking inspiration for its name from the John 3:16 Bible verse “For God so loved the world, that God gave the only begotten Son, so that whosoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life.” For Dionne, there are no exceptions to the scripture the way it is written – we are all loved by Christ on the cross, whosoever we are.
“The word ‘whosoever’ means anybody, any person at all,” she explains. “If we teach scripture the way it was meant to be understood, then it’s a difficult argument to make that God sent the Son to be sacrificed for only a select group of people.”
Dionne does not describe WHOSOEVER as a “gay church” or a “Black church,” even though most of its members identify as such. She doesn’t want to exclude anyone who may not identify as LGBTQ+ or Black from attending, being a part of, or worshipping at WHOSOEVER.
“Believe it or not, many POC who are LGBTQ+ don’t want to be a part of an LGBTQ+ church because they were told they would go to hell if they did,” Dionne reveals. “The people who are comfortable in their own skin have no problem with coming right on in.”
In 2018, Dionne reached out to Greater Kansas City Regional Minister Rev. Bill Rose-Heim, who introduced her to National Convocation Administrative Secretary and Associate General Minister Rev. Dr. Delesslyn Kennebrew, the Regional Minister for New and Transforming Churches at the time. This connection saw Dionne be a part of the new church cohort for the next two years.
In the meantime, her congregation connected with other marginalized communities, as well as organizations like PFLAG. WHOSOEVER participated in Kansas City’s PRIDEcelebrations and conducted worship services via Zoom. Members joined virtually from Canada, the United Kingdom, Liberia, and Kenya – in fact, most of WHOSOEVER’s virtual members are located outside of Kansas City.
“We are a global ministry,” Dionne points out, “because there are so many cultures that still teach an embedded theology learned hundreds of years ago. Unfortunately, they’re not open to abroader context or theology.”
In 2020, she became ordained through the United Church of Christ and moved out east to serve a congregation in Havertown, PA. Despite the distance, Dionne maintained her Kansas City roots and built partnerships with local Disciples, including Minister of New Church Strategies Rev. Dr. Jose Martinez. For PRIDE of that year, he featured Dionne and her wife on his podcast StoryWagen, where they discussed the challenges in finding healing from a church that continues to hurt so many.
“LGBTQ+ people are growing in their faith, rejecting what they’ve been taught about their identity, and are feeling more accepted,” she says. “They’re learning that they are valued by God, no matter who they are or what they’ve done.”
Dionne returned from Pennsylvania in 2022 and the people of WHOSOEVER began to worship together in person once a month. They have gathered at other churches, Dionne’s house, a woodshop, coffee shops, and, even, a grocery store. The following year, she became a Disciple and took part in New Church Ministry’s first-ever hybrid Leadership Academy, which provides educational opportunities for faith leaders, students, and ecumenical partners, no matter their church’s life stage.
Dionne also started taking the first steps in affiliating her congregation with the denomination.
“I came up with ‘God Did Not Create You To Hate You’ as the tagline for WHOSOEVER because I myself used to associate the church’s practice of pushing us out, with what God wanted,” reflects Dionne. “When churchesdo that, peoplestay away from church. We must learn to disconnect the human institution from the body of Christ.”
Church members currently worship in person on the campus of the Kansas City Kansas Community College. In June, they will finally have their own space.
Outside of worship, the people of WHOSOEVER engage in community service. Once a month, they serve free hot soup to houseless neighbors, and they’ve even been able to assist others with their finances and rent.
As for the future and the well-being of LGBTQ+ POC, Dionne believes that the younger generation is “our saving grace.”
“They won’t attend churches that refuse to welcome their friends and family just because they are LGBTQ, or drink, or have children out of wedlock,” she concludes. “They are really trying to live out the answer to, ‘what would Jesus do?’”
To ensure that congregations such as WHOSOEVER can continue to provide its vital services to LGBTQ+ folks, POC, and other marginalized communities, participate in this year’s Pentecost Offering. Half of the gifts made on Sundays, May 12 and 19 stay in the region in which they’re collected to support local emerging and affiliating faith communities. The other half goes to New Church Ministry to support events like Leadership Academy, as well as coaching for new church leaders, educational webinars, and much more.
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.
