Ham and Eggs – Breakfast with Moderator Bruce Reyes-Chow
(I forgot to bring my camera, but Sara didn’t. Pictures as soon as I get them from her.)
Today Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow – the Moderator of the 218th General Assembly of the PC(USA) – came to Lawrenceville, NJ. The Presbyterian Church of Lawrenceville hosted him for the 2nd time for breakfast and conversation.
I’m not going to go into details on any issue in particular for several reasons. One – I don’t remember the details so well. Two – this post is about both national issues and my local congregation, and I’m reticent to be controversial locally. Three – at one point Bruce said “Let me get my words right – you never know who is blogging about this” and a number of folks from my church reportedly looked at me. Hmmm.
The group of about 50-60 that attended was made up primarily of ministers serving in a congregational capacity – mostly from the Presbytery of New Brunswick but also from quite far away in some cases. There was a smaller contingent of seminarians, another group of non-congregational ministers, and some others who aren’t ministers from our congregation and other places (like me).
The food was excellent – egg strada, homebaked breads, and lots of fruit. The tables were particularly well-decorated.
The conversation took the form of about 90 minutes of question and answer. The topics varied broadly but included:
- Multi-cultural churches – how they succeed and when they might fail
- New Church Developments, including tips from Bruce based on his experiences at Mission Bay Community Church
- The use of web 1.0 and web 2.0 technology in ministry, including the upcoming re-design of the PC(USA) website
- Bringing even the smallest PC(USA) churches onto the Internet through the use of single-page websites for the church (at a cost that Bruce estimated to be about $100 per church)
- Preserving mission in an era when church budgets may be shrinking
- Shrinking congregations – when is it appropriate to talk about the end of a congregation’s life? How do we talk about leaving a legacy through the church’s property and other assets?
- Supporting small congregations that are not New Church Developments, do not believe they are at the end of their life, and want to redevelop.
- Providing a living wage for pastors in small churches
- Campus ministry and keeping young adults engaged with the church
- Seminaries realizing that not all graduates will be able to go into full-time ministry, and potentially helping them get ready for 1/2-time ministry, 1/2-time something else
- Information on how many appointments the Moderator makes after General Assembly (a very high 100+ this time around), and how little impact the Moderator has on the work of those task forces after making the appointments
- Praise for New Brunswick presbytery for having enough interest to need a waiting list for the Social Witness Committee
- an off-hand reference to “Friends Are Friends Forever” that went over the heads of anybody who wasn’t in the 30-45 age group
- a reminder that Bruce and Vice-Moderator Byron Wade are willing to send video greetings to any group that requests such far enough in advance
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I know that I’m missing some of the topics, but that’s most of them.
As always Bruce was engaging, funny, very authentic and willing to tackle the tough questions. I’m impressed that while he is clearly more comfortable addressing groups of strangers now that he has 6 months of Moderator experience under his belt, he still speaks very openly and authentically and humbly. His content and delivery are surprisingly consistent between his in-person appearances, his blog writings, and his blog videos (and his tweets on Twitter for that matter).
In short – a good time was had by all, and it was worth getting up early to be there.
Thanks, Bruce, for including Lawrenceville in your NYC/NJ trip.
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