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Acerca de la IP (EE. UU.)

The themes of the Matthew 25 invitation are grounded in the gospel. Jesus calls us to serve with and for “the least of these” — not as a group to be pitied, but as people who are deeply loved by Jesus. There are already PC(USA) congregations that identify themselves as Matthew 25 churches. We aim to help multiply this loving commitment to radical and fearless discipleship by partnering with mid councils and congregations to help them embrace one or more of these three focuses:

  • Building congregational vitality by challenging congregations and their members to deepen and energize their faith and grow as joyful leaders and disciples actively engaged with their community, seeing new disciples engaged in ministry and longstanding believers develop in faith as the gospel of Jesus Christ is shared in word and deed.
  • Dismantling structural racism by fearlessly applying our faith to advocate and break down the systems, practices, and thinking that underlie discrimination, bias, prejudice, and oppression of people of color.
  • Eradicating systemic poverty by acting on our beliefs and working to change laws, policies, plans, and structures in our society that perpetuate economic exploitation of people who are poor.

What is Congregational Vitality?

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The Rev. Sammie Evans and congregation members are getting to know one another at a deeper level thanks to their participation in the Vital Congregations Initiative.

A community’s vitality is primarily its spiritual strength and its capacity for purposeful mission. Congregational vitality is evident in a worshiping community when its structural systems, finances, and discipleship practices are aligned in such a way that the community is actively engaged in the mission of God in their local community and the world, and they are powerfully focused on growing as disciples in the way of Jesus Christ.

We propose that there are seven marks to help you determine your current level of vitality — and then various processes for self-assessment, discernment, and renewed commitment to the habits that foster an energetic engagement with the Spirit’s work in the world.

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Here are the seven marks:

  1. A commitment to forming disciples over every member’s lifetime. This leads first to personal transformation, as people put on the heart of Christ, and then to social transformation, as people joyfully go forth into the community and tackle the issues facing today’s culture.
  2. Embracing the call to evangelism. We show forth the love of Christ by our actions and our lives even more than by our words. Our relationships are genuine and caring. People know we are Christians by our love.
  3. An outward focus. Our church is not a place to escape from the world, but rather our gateway to our community where we may be the hands, feet, heart, and mouth of Jesus Christ for people who are suffering or marginalized.
  4. Empowering every member to discover their individual calling and the gifts God has given them so they can go forth and serve.
  5. Spirit-inspired worship that challenges, teaches, transforms, convicts, and energizes us so when we are sent out, we have experienced the wonder of God and are changed for the better from when we arrived.
  6. Caring relationships modeled on God’s love. We open our doors and hearts to all people, and we build relationships modeled on God’s love, which leads to genuine reconciliation and peace.
  7. Congregations with healthy systems. Our mission focuses are clear. There is fiscal responsibility and accountability. We have thoughtful decision-making structures. Our leaders and staff enjoy a sustainable balance of work/rest time.

In our worship, learning, relationships, actions, and sharing, we work to build congregational vitality. Some suggested resources are below:

Worship:

Learn:

Read or offer book studies on these suggested books:

Relate:

Learn about and form a relationship with one of the new worshiping communities in your area. Find a map of communities and resources to explore.

Host an Exploring Missional Leadership event with facilitation from 1001 New Worshiping Communities (or email facilitator michael.gerling@pcusa.org).

Connect with nonprofit organizations, other churches, ecumenical and interfaith organizations to build relationships and discern common ministries to pursue.

Act:

Use Mr. Rogers Day Resources to become involved in your community.

Connect to UKirk Collegiate Ministries.

Assess your neighborhood to discern your action and involvement in the community. Use the Starting New Worshiping Communities: A Comprehensive Guide.

Consider God’s call for your global involvement.

Share:

Consider a Collaboration Agreement to support an immigrant New Worshiping Community.

Ebenezer Church, New Creation Church, Hope Presbyterian Church, Light of Hope Presbyterian Church – Building Congregation Vitality.

Use your building space or grounds to partner with community groups.

Volunteer in the community with the skills and wisdom of your worshiping community members.

Share video stories and connect with other worshiping communities like the ones below:

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What is Structural Racism?

Race is a socially constructed concept that purports to use characteristics such as skin color, facial features, and body structure as a basis for classifying people. It has no scientific or biological basis. It was introduced during the period of European colonial expansion.

Prejudice is pre-judgment in the absence of evidence and held even when evidence contradicts it.

Social power is the capacity of individuals and groups to determine what happens in society. Their decisions and actions then shape society’s values, beliefs, institutions, and systems.

Racism = Racial hierarchy + Prejudice + Social power

Racism is the combination of social power and racial prejudice to create systems that treat people differently, based on their defined racial group. Privileges are provided for some while dehumanizing, excluding, or oppressing others.

What is structural racism? Structural racism is the normalizing of racism within institutions and structures. Once racism is structural and institutional (as it is in the United States), it creates ongoing, persistent inequality. Inequality occurs in accessing money, land, housing, education, health, information, and social power. Because inequality is a part of the structures and institutions that we interact with every day, it often goes unquestioned and unchallenged by most of society or the dominant culture. In the United States, structural racism particularly advantages white people while producing negative impacts for people of color.

Important notes:

  • Racism is measured not by intent, but by its impact on those who are oppressed.
  • Racism can be overt or covert, individual or systemic, intentional or unintentional.
  • Racism grants privilege to some and sustains the dominant group.
  • Racism exists everywhere in our society, and in all institutions, including our church.
     

(notes adapted from https://united-church.ca/social-action/justice-initiatives/anti-racism)


 

We work in our worship, learning, relationships, actions and sharing to dismantle structural racism. Some suggested resources are below.

Worship:

Incorporate components of the Confession of Belhar in your worship.

Host a Matthew 25 worship resource for Dismantling Structural Racism.

Learn:

Engage youth with the “When did we See You” resources from Presbyterian Youth & Triennium.

Use Bending the Moral Arc resources to dismantle structural racism through courageous conversations to promote a deeper understanding and awareness of the profound impact of racism in all our lives.

Educate youth with this quicksheet Exploring Justice on the Road: An Intergenerational Civil Rights Bus Tour.

On a personal level, read and examine your own experiences of race and privilege: Peggy Macintosh, “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”.

On a congregational level, we can study together what our faith says and how we are called to make a difference. A resource to use in church settings is: Facing Racism study guide.

For predominantly white congregations, use this assessment tool to ask questions and discern action steps, developed by Rev. Katie Crowe, Trinity Ave. Presbyterian Church, Durham, NC. Download here.

With children, use this Children’s Anti-Racism toolkit.

Explore racial justice issues through these film and video clips:

Host book studies on: No Innocent Bystanders: Becoming an Ally in the Struggle for Justice by Shannon Craigo-Snell and Christopher Doucot; Anxious to Talk About It: Helping White Christians Talk Faithfully about Racism by Carolyn B. Helsel; What Kind of Christianity: A History of Slavery and Anti-Black Racism in the Presbyterian Church by William Yoo.

Relate:

In order to prepare ourselves to form genuine and mutual relationships, we first examine our own cultural assumptions, privilege, and life encounters with racism through an anti-racism training such as one led by the PC(USA) Office of Gender and Racial Justice or Crossroads Anti-Racism Training.

Act:

Find ways in your community to support and welcome immigrants and refugees.

Invite your session and congregation to affirm Black Lives Matter and devise steps or initiatives that put the affirmation into action, always ensuring that there is accountability to Black groups with whom the congregation has developed relationships.

Join in rallies and marches for changes in public policy in your local area, standing against Asian-American, Pacific Islander hate, advocating for indigenous and Native American rights, and standing with Black and other activists or color.

Share:

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Communities build well-being and address poverty through activities such as teaching gardening and learning to grow local foods. Photo courtesy of Mark Hare.

What is “systemic” poverty?

Systemic poverty refers to the economic exploitation of people who are poor through laws, policies, practices and systems that perpetuate their impoverished status. We live in a world where not all have equal access to education, transportation, fresh food, financial resources, clean air, water, or healthy environments, employment with a living wage, healthcare, benefits, citizenship, and affordable housing. This lack of access creates generational cycles of poverty and a racial wealth gap that are systemic in nature. An individual cannot change their economic and social location easily by just “working harder.” Meanwhile the many, interlocking disadvantages often are compounded by choices to stay near family or a particular location or employment opportunity, or by gender and racial injustice, trauma, violence, immigration status, impacts from climate change and environmental degradation, and other complicating issues. Download the full FAQ (pdf).


How Do We Eradicate Systemic Poverty?

While the following is not an exhaustive list, a collaborative group of Presbyterians who studied Matthew Desmond’s book “Poverty by America” together have created this PDF hand-out that highlights some of Desmond’s proposed solutions and linked to PC(USA) policies and statements that agree with those proposals.

Find resources and action suggestions for each of the five spiritual practices:

  • Worship
  • Learn
  • Relate
  • Act
  • Share

Also available:

Poverty Resource Packet (pdf) containing information about the five spiritual practices, resources and action suggestions for each, core principles, assessment questions, faith assertions, information about strategic domestic and global partners, and an FAQ.
5 Spiritual Practices to End Poverty, a poster from the Presbyterian Hunger Program, shows examples of groups who are engaging issues of ending poverty and building community wholeness.

Worship

In our worship, prayers and faith life, we will incorporate confessional, biblical, theological, and ecclesial understandings of poverty.  

Worship Resources

Worship Action Suggestions

  • Begin to reach out, listen, build relationships and open conversations with other congregations and community partners to explore some possible shared worship times together around eradicating poverty and building communities of well-being.
  • Play short videos to explore the complexity of poverty, during sermon, prayers of the people, or minute for mission.
  • Include specific acts of dedication related to poverty eradication at set times (such as 5th Sundays, communion Sundays, etc).
    • Consider using assertions on what we believe about poverty eradication as affirmation of faith or other liturgical components
    • Include advocacy as part of worship through things such as Bread for the World’s “offering of letters
    • Collect items requested by local non-profits (such as food, diapers, school supplies, winter clothes)
    • After hearing from a local movement or organization through a minute for mission, continue to raise support and awareness of that group

Learn

To download PDFs of PC(USA) Resources list and Action Suggestions organized by the Five Spiritual Practices (worship, learn, relate, act, share), please click here.

In our Christian education and personal learning, we will seek to understand the intersectional, systemic, and root causes of poverty.  

Learn Resources

Learn Action Suggestions

  • Invite local partner organizations to speak to the congregation about the root causes of poverty that they seek to address, for Sunday School, Wednesday night suppers, etc. Be mindful that you might want to expand your circle of local partners working to end poverty, to include unexpected partners like the health department or a school of social work. Be mindful of which partners you can invest longer-term relationship building in, and which you are hosting simply to unpack some complexities around poverty in your region as a one-time educational event. Be clear what compensation or honorarium might be offered for speaking engagements versus what relationships/partnership work might grow out of connections.
  • Offer simulation activities and other active learning models. Be mindful to include “now what” or “next steps” to engage participants in some type of action that stems from the learning activity (i.e. a local organization to support, a local or national piece of legislation to call decision-makers about, etc.)
  • Attend visits/travel delegations to other communities (local or global) to raise understanding and build relationships, being mindful not to be in a tourist mindset but to enter into space as a learner willing to be transformed in order to act to end poverty

Relate

We will engage in genuine, humble, mutual and equitable relationships across divisions, social status, and groups as Jesus modeled.

Relate Resources

  • Use the Intergenerational Mission Tool Kit as you consider developing relationships and partnerships in mission, in your own community and abroad.
  • Explore how to relate well to people as partners, and prepare yourself for relationships and mission projects using the “Called as Partners: Serving Together in God’s Mission International Partnership Manual” and mission toolkits. 
  • Use Core Principles and Assessment Questions to help guide and evaluate relational efforts.
  • Pray for, learn about, and get connected to our highlighted Mt 25 domestic and global partners who are working to eradicate systemic poverty:
    • Domestic partners
      • Poor People’s Campaign
      • Coalition of Immokalee Workers
      • Jubilee USA
         
  • Global partners
    • Pacific Conference of Churches
    • CEDEPCA (Protestant Center for Pastoral Studies in Central America)
    • Middle East Council of Churches
    • RELUFA (Reseau De Lutte Contre La Faim, Cameroon)
    • PRODEK (Programme de Développement Est Kasaï, Congo)

Relate Action Suggestions

  • Study and then practice models of community-based development and community organizing. Some models that may be of interest to research and read about might be community health evangelism and asset-based community development.
  • Broaden your outreach to new partners to address poverty from a variety of angles/coalitions: consider the health department; schools of public health or schools of social work; mental health agencies; social service providers; social justice movement leaders.

Act

We will prioritize listening to, and responding alongside, communities as they identify needs, organize for solutions, and engage in advocacy for change.

Act Resources

Act Action Suggestions

  • Identify trusted, community-based, anti-poverty local organizations and leaders to join their campaigns and follow their lead on calls to actions and community meetings–not just politicians, but school social workers, healthcare providers, community organizers, pastors in different denominations and various sectors of the community.
  • Advocate for legislation that helps to end poverty locally, in your state, nationally or internationally. Be mindful not to assume we know what is best- let action arise from listening to and building relationships with impacted communities. Choose advocacy that best suits your congregation and set a goal to follow it for the length of time that makes sense. Reflect along the way.
  • Adopt a focused campaign to address root causes of poverty in your community and across the country:

Share

Recognizing that all gifts come from God and are to be shared, we will share financial, building, time and other resources to create fair access and to right historical harms.

Share Resources

  • Connect to and support directly one of our grantee partners working on eradicating systemic poverty in their own location through looking at the One Great Hour of Sharing map to find a group you may wish to learn more about and support.
  • Consider how you can practice Mission Responsibility Through Investment with your own congregation’s investments, and to see what kinds of social and sustainability screens are recommended when considering our investments.
  • Share your volunteer time and/or your building space with community organizations
  • Consider what reparations might look like in your area.

Share Action Suggestions

  • Plan and then host congregational asset-mapping to know what assets you have to share in the community
    • Use the Alban Institute worksheet for congregational asset-mapping.
    • Consider using a version of asset-mapping to map assets in the community as well, and to see what ways your congregation can companion, with cultural humility, for co-development (concepts in the book “Freeing Congregation Mission” by Farrell & Khyllep)
    • Take the IDI to help me mindful and reflective of issues of diversity, equity, and justice in relationships and plans https://idiinventory.com/
  • Volunteer in the community to address community needs: hunger, education, access to transportation, employment, hunger, tutoring, providing meals, offer space for community organizations and needs as appropriate
  • Give to restorative efforts, organizations, and movements to end poverty and build communities of well-being in your area or through PCUSA

Learn more about Vital Congregations ideas and support.

Visit Vital Congregations