First Presbyterian Church Fort Dodge

While many were watching the first Presidential debate last night, I was returning home from a visit to First Presbyterian Church, Lakota. While there, Dave Feltman and I represented the Presbytery’s Committee on Ministry, discussing creative ways to function as the church in the years ahead. Dave and I have recently had similar conversations with the sessions of First Presbyterian Churches of Paton and Grand Junction.

All three of these churches (and many others in our Presbytery) have been discussing what ministry will look like in their contexts in the years ahead. Throughout these conversations, elders have a shared sense that God is at work in their ministries and in their towns. Meanwhile, they have also shared a conviction that their churches need to consider concrete ministry experiments to try. Some of these churches have tried different models of sharing resources with one another or changing their staffing structures. While the specifics of each church might be different, faithful Christians in all of these churches have recognized their need to following the leading of the Holy Spirit, however they are led forward.

Meanwhile, I’ve been working on my penultimate push for my doctoral thesis. October 1^st is a deadline for my first submission of my final project. If all goes according to plan, I can submit a final draft of the whole project by April 1^st, 2017, and graduate in June of 2017. In this first submission, I’m writing about the theological background for my project. So I leave you with a few key thoughts I’ve been considering in the writing of this project:

• We don’t think ourselves into a new way of being, but we act ourselves into a new way of being. As followers of Jesus, we are continually invited to submit ourselves to Christ. More than transforming our minds, faithful discipleship calls us to transform our actions. What is one tangible, specific way that following Jesus calls you to action today?
• Confident of God’s steadfast love, the church should be a place where we are open to experiment, and even fail, in the name of seeking to following Christ more faithfully. Consider your own life; when is a time when you took a risk or tried something new as a result of your faith in Jesus? What new thing could you try out this week?

Blessings,

Austin D. Hill