God’s story and ours are powerful resources

“Story is powerful. It does communicate across generations. It communicates across racial lines. It communicates across ancient times to modern times,” the Rev. Neema Cyrus-Franklin said Wednesday to a Community Circle for Small Churches gathering hosted by the Office of Christian Formation. Cyrus-Franklin is the director of the Around the Table Initiative, a Lilly Endowment Inc.-funded initiative through the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

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“We use this in everything that we do as faith formation leaders,” Cyrus-Franklin said as she introduced storytelling as a core practice for the initiative.

“We learned faith from the examples as we watched our parents or elders in the church or other people in the church,” said the Rev. Grace Kim, who discussed hearing the stories of how her elders came to faith, which touched her in a more profound way than instruction. Kim has served as a coach for one of the test cohorts for the Around the Table Initiative that began in October 2024.

Around the Table is launching two waves of cohort learning models in August 2025 and August 2026. Applications for the first wave are due May 2 and coaches will begin reaching out to their cohort members in June and July.

Cohorts will meet monthly and will explore Sabbath practices to be observed in the home or as a church community. Storytelling is one of these Sabbath practices explored in the Faith Practices Toolkit, and it’s also the central vehicle for learning. “We are working with using story as the vehicle to use these Sabbath practices of prayer, outreach, hospitality, service and of course, storytelling,” said Cyrus-Franklin. She made space to introduce the plan for the two cohorts and answer questions for interested churches and leaders.

Churches and leaders who sign up will be organized mostly according to region, but in some cases, in relation to a special ministry concern. Churches that already have connections with other churches in their region and want to encourage them to sign up together are welcome to join a regional cohort together. The model is inherently relational and connectional, so it encourages collaboration between churches and leaders who are discerning how best to support faith formation in their contexts.

The program is free to churches and offers a $1,500 grant toward a retreat for communities that attend most of the coaching cohorts over the 9-to-18-month period. Along with the $1,500, a retreat model template is offered.

“This experience will be content rich,” said Cyrus-Franklin, who emphasized that participants will have access to a huge database of resources maintained by the Office of Christian Formation.

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During the community circle gathering, Miatta Wilson, the PC(USA)’s associate for Christian Formation, shared a variety of resources developed or being developed to support the initiative. These resources are available online and include a conversation ball, Spanish and English conversation rings, and resources for Advent. Every month, Presbyterian Publishing Corporation will release downloadable conversation packets based on their children’s books on topics such as curbing plastic consumption and ocean conservancy, civil rights liberty tours, values for multiracial families, and the upcoming “Seeing and Being Jesus: How to Live God’s Radical Welcome as a Family.” The book, which is being published in collaboration with Around the Table, is organized into chapters dedicated to topics of social justice.

Wilson also directed participants to the wisdom offered in the Around the Table podcast, including a season dedicated to hard conversations to have with children and youth.

Cyrus-Franklin closed the session with a call to evangelism: “I submit that we have the greatest resource to share,” she said, “so let us go about the business of sharing what God has done through the life and witness of Jesus Christ.”