Summer of 2022, my son Ben recorded seven worship sets for Illinois Ministries of the Church of God. They were produced with the words at the bottom of the screen. This would be a great resource for some of the smaller churches in your state that may not have a worship leader.
How many times in the last 15 months did you hear the word unprecedented? It seems like it was used so much that it became a joke. The reality is the last 15 months of our lives have been unprecedented, no matter how cliche that might sound. We have experienced things that none of us could have imagined.
We have lost loved ones, worshiped from living rooms on cell phones, distanced ourselves from our family to keep them safe, and delayed weddings and funerals. Church, school, and work were moved to online and our homes became sanctuaries, classrooms, and offices. On top of all of this we had a very difficult and dividing election cycle. All of this has taken a toll on our mental health.
As we start to come back together and restrictions are being lifted, we will continue to see the ripple effects of this unprecedented year on our mental health and the mental health of our congregants.
The Church Health Ministry team created video resources for you and your congregation to use, as you navigate the effects of the last 15 months. We prayerfully considered how to approach these difficult but important topics. We understand that it is often daunting to speak with someone about their mental health, let alone as a pastor considering caring for oneself during this difficult season.
Pastor Jaime Cervantes, First Church of God Benton Heights Campus Pastor, sat down with Dr. Marcia K. Wiinamaki, PhD, and Richard Watson, LPC to discuss the impact of the last 15 months on our mental health. Both Dr. Wiinamaki and Mr. Watson are Christians who work as professional counselors.
The extensive conversation between Pastor Jaime and Dr. Wiinamaki and Mr. Watson has been edited into three videos to serve as a resource for you and your congregation.
The first video covers the topics of depression, loneliness, and fear. The second video is a conversation about social media and politics. The final video is a discussion on pastoral care and self-care for pastors.
As we begin to heal and recover from the unprecedented nature of the last 15 months let us not neglect the healing and restoration of our mental health. The Church Health Ministry team hopes these videos will serve as a tool to help with that healing and restoration.
Missional Communities (MCs) are designed to be a flexible, local expression of church, not dependent on typical church buildings or church services. MCs have been described as “small enough to care but large enough to dare.” Missional Communities may be called by other names, such as Clusters, Go Communities, Incarnational Communities, or Mission Shaped Communities. MCs are primarily led by laity and are “lightweight and low maintenance” and most often meet 3-4 times a month in their missional context. Missional Communities place a strong value on life together, with the expressed intention of seeing those they impact choose to start following Jesus. With this focus, a Missional Community will often grow and multiply into other MCs. Missional Communities are most often networked within a larger church community, often with many other Missional Communities.
An MC has leaders who, through a process of discernment, decide their mission vision and then invite people to join them in reaching that particular context. The leaders of the MC are held accountable by the leadership of the greater church community, both for what they do and for the way in which they do it (i.e., character as well as task). “Low control, high accountability” is one way to describe relationships between the Missional Community and the church body and leadership.
Since Missional Communities are meant to be led by laity, running the community can be spread throughout the group so that it doesn't make a few leaders do all of the work. This sharing of the work is a key ingredient and one of the main benefits of these mid-sized groups. People don’t approach it as consumers but as participants. While some MCs meet in homes, it is not uncommon for many of them to meet in the particular mission context they are reaching into. (For instance, a MC reaching out to the homeless would meet on the streets with the homeless rather than trying to bus them to another location.)
The Church of God In Michigan currently have seven pilot Missional Communities located throughout the state and is committed to resourcing one hundred by the year 2017 in an effort to extend the Kingdom of God.
More information about the Missional Community can be obtained from 3dm and Verge Network. Two organizations committed to advancing the kingdom in missional ways.
General Assembly of the Church of God in Michigan
4212 Alpha Street, Lansing, Michigan 48910-0711 | 517-393-7020 | micog@micog.org
