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WESLEY LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE
Holston Conference of the United Methodist Church |
September - 2015
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IN THIS ISSUE:
Featured Events
Clergy Notes
Monthly Message
Upcoming Events
Book Corner
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FEATURED EVENTS:
Grief Recovery Retreat for Pastors
September 21 - 24 Whitestone Inn, Kingston, TN 1.9 CEUs
Grief is an individual process but Spark of Life, a national grief recovery ministry has been helping folks find strength and comfort after the loss of a close loved one. This will be the first workshop hosted at Whitestone specifically for Pastors and their spouses.
Expect acceptance, understanding and hope. It is what you will find at a Spark of Life Retreat. Expect dynamic group interaction, a proven action plan for grief recovery that inspires hope, and time to reflect in solitude by resting, walking, praying or reading.
A Digital Church Conference Run by People That Run Digital for Churches Get practical training from actual practitioners working for some of the most influential churches and ministries in America. Each session will cover practical training from church practitioners, people just like you, working toward the same goals, who have dealt with the same obstacles. Each of the 9 speakers has unique experience in digital communications, and is eager to share what they've learned to help equip you and grow your church. October 26 - 29 St. Simon's Island 1.2 CEUs  Ministry can be wild, wonderful, life-giving...and draining. At times, it's a sieve through which the water of our baptism slowly drips, leaving our souls parched, cracked, and creaky. It's time to plug the drain. Join your United Methodist clergy sisters from across the southeast as we
gather, worship, pray, sing, play, rest, ponder, create, connect, and laugh - a lot. Whether you feel like you're running on empty or walking on water, there's a place for you at the well.
Register now! (Registration ends October 5th.)
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Scroll down to see additional coming events that qualify for continuing ed credit. You can also go to the Holston web calendar to see the full list of upcoming events.
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CLERGY NOTES: We are entering charge conference season. Be sure to log in to your online profile to check your CEU record and verify that you have reported all events attended between July 1, 2014 and June 30, 2015 (appointment year). If not, you can do so through the online reporting system or just send me an email with relevant event attachments (hopefully including a schedule or certificate).
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The New Church Family
by Ann A. Mitchel
In the book, Attract Families to Your Church, Linda Ranson Jacobs documents the shifting landscape of American family life with statistics such as these:
- Nationwide, 35 percent of children live in single-parent families. In 2009, 21.8 million children under the age of 21 were being raised by a single parent.
- In 2010, 2.7 million grandparents served as primary caregivers to one or more grandchild living in their household.
- Over one million children a year experience the divorce of their parents. Twenty-five percent of adults in their twenties and thirties spent at least part of their childhood in a divorced home.
- Forty percent of married couples with children in the United States are step families. There will soon be more step families than traditional families.
Underlying these trends is an "exodus from marriage," particularly among middle-class Americans, once the bastion of solid marriages and two-parent families. Increasingly, the relationship patterns of Middle America are characterized by cohabitation, serial partnerships, divorce, and single parenting, while stable, "traditional" family life tends to be a characteristic of those with higher incomes and education. Among the 60 percent of Americans who are high-school educated but not college educated, the rate of out-of-wedlock births has skyrocketed to 44 percent.
While this diversity of lifestyle patterns proliferates in American society, it is generally under-represented in the church. Single and divorced parents often feel unwelcome in church, citing fear and shame as the reason. Many congregations continue to operate with the tacit assumption that "married with children" is the normative pattern of family life - in part because it still is within their churches. Missing is a wide array of families who desperately need spiritual guidance and supportive relationships - a "dechurched" population that becomes more remote from the church with each new generation.
Attract Families to Your Church opens with a telling vignette. It describes a congregation that had dwindled to just 12 members while a vibrant weekday childcare program leasing its space serves over a hundred neighborhood children from a wide range of family backgrounds. Mitchel offers several strategies and advice on how to minister to single parents, divorced families, step families, grandparents who are primary caregivers, singles, boomers, and the boomerang generations. But more significant is the theme that undergirds all this strategic advice: the importance of ministering to modern families in ways that acknowledge the realities of their lives, their unique emotional burdens, and their daily challenges.
Ann A. Michel is associate director of the Lewis Center for Church Leadership. Attract Families to Your Church (Abingdon, 2014) by Linda Ranson Jacobs is available through Amazon and Cokesbury. (see review below)
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UPCOMING EVENTS:
Be sure to visit the Holston online calendar for a complete list of upcoming events throughout the Conference and beyond.
September:
September 16 - 18 Franklin, TN 1.5 CEUs
September 16 Online Course 0.15 CEUs
September 17 - 19 1.4 CEUs
September 21 - 24 Kingston, TN 1.9 CEUs
September 23 Online Course 0.15 CEUs
September 23 Atlanta, GA 0.8 CEUs
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.THIS MONTH'S FEATURED BOOK/VIDEO
(Remember, each book related to ministry qualifies for 0.3 CEUs, and
3 books = 1 full CEU. Submit name, author, publisher and date, and a brief review for continuing ed credit.)
Be the kind of church that families want to attend, where the church's dynamic faith invites families who will then bring their friends. Vital churches need all kinds of families: two-parent families, blended families, boomerang families, adult children of divorce and their families or lack of families, single adults whose family is the church, grandparents parenting again, childless families, and children with three legal parents. With practical helps and suggestions for ministries, worship, small groups, and even facilities, author and family expert Linda Ranson Jacobs will help you create a welcoming place for everyone.
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Grace and Peace,
Rev. Daniel Taylor, Director
Sue Weber, Editor & Admin. Asst.
Wesley Leadership Institute
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