Listen!
When Jesus wanted to teach his followers a truth, he often preceded his teaching with an imperative to listen. For example, in Matthew’s account of the parable of the sower (13:3), Jesus starts by saying “Listen!” He finishes his teaching by challenging them, saying (13:9) “Let anyone with ears, listen!”.
Reverend Russ Kane challenged us to “see” in our last report. In this report, I want to challenge us to “hear”, and not just hear in a passive way, but to hear by listening.
Bright Spotting at the March Assembly
The Vision Construction Team was overwhelmed and energized by the way attendees in the March Assembly embraced the bright spotting exercise. We compiled your input and are now into the analysis of this rich data. This was a great opportunity for the Vision Construction Team to listen to people in the Denver Presbytery. This was also an opportunity for members of the Presbytery to listen to each other in the 17 different breakout groups. Thank you to the facilitators, scribes, and most of all to you who highlighted so many bright spots.
The Vision Construction Team
I believe we are really coming together as a Vision Construction Team. This cannot happen without listening to each other. The love each member of the team has for our Presbytery, the passion about completing our work, the respect we have for each other, and our desire to unite in a common purpose becomes clearer each week as we meet every Saturday morning and listen to each other. We are in the Curate and Generate stage, which requires a lot of data collecting and a whole bunch of listening.
Listening to the Holy Spirit
Please pray for your Vision Construction Team to listen to the Holy Spirit so that the vision for the Denver Presbytery will become clear. Please also pray for all people in the Denver Presbytery, that we might unite in ideas we share, and respond with love and listening when we disagree. Jesus promised in Matthew 18:20 that “where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” Consider the wisdom and power that can be unleashed as together we listen to the Holy Spirit and to each other.
Together in service to Christ,
Ruling Elder Rob Habiger
Vision Construction Team
March 19, 2021 Vision Update from Rev. Russ Kane "What do you see?"
"What do you see?”
That’s the question Jesus asked the man in Mark 8. He had been healed of blindness, but the process wasn’t complete. The question was part of the healing.
"What do you see?”
The Vision Construction Team in particular, and the Presbytery of Denver in general, are being asked the same question. Vision is about learning to see. It’s a process as well as a practice.
The Bible is full of stories of people learning to see, and I’ve found myself going back to them. One person had great vision, but it was incomplete. He accurately saw the armies against him but needed prayer to see what he was missing (2 Kings 6). I get that. I’m aware of the problems and perils surrounding our Presbytery; I’m not blind. But Vision is more than seeing accurately what is apparent, it’s also learning to see what isn’t. It takes prayer- and practice.
Elijah’s servant was told to go up the hill and report what he saw- and keep going up. There was a drought, and he was to watch for God’s deliverance (1 Kings 18). After the seventh trip, he finally reported seeing one small cloud on the horizon. He was told to tell others it was time to invest in heavy rain gear, and good luck trying to outrun what was coming. The practice of persistent looking helped his capacity to see- and respond.
We are practicing persistent watching, too. I’m reminded that Vision it is less about what we create and more about sharpening our capacities to perceive. We don’t create our vision any more than we create our mission. Christ has a mission and that mission creates us.*(1) Our task is not so much to construct a vision for ourselves as be constructed by Christ’s vision for us.
"What do you see?”
Vision is a corporate practice. On the Vision Construction Team, I’m surrounded by creative people, faithful to what God has done, and anticipating what God might yet do. What is true for one group, is true for the whole Denver Presbytery. At our March 23 Assembly, we will practice sharpening our vision, together. Have you heard of “Bright-Spotting?” (2) It’s a practice that will expand our capacity to see, and attune us for what may be coming. It’s helped me in the process and practice of Vision. Perhaps it will help all of us do the same.
Sometimes vision is about catching a glimpse of what God is yet to do. Sometimes it is correcting our capacity to perceive what is right in front of us.
What do YOU see?
With Gratitude,
Rev. Russ Kane
Vision Construction Team
_________________________________
1. Jurgen Moltmann, The Spirit and the Kingdom
2. This is a practice described in Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip Heath & Dan Heath
Check out the latest information from the Vision Construction Team (VCT). Click here to read our report to the March Assembly on some things we see so far. A link to that report along with the “Two Loops Life Cycle” and bright spotting chapter from Switch (2010) are here.
March 9, 2021 Vision Update from Rev. Paula Steinbacher
Dear Beloved Community,
Over the past couple of months, you've been receiving updates on our vision process from Council members. Today I'm excited to share with you as a Council member and as the Vice Moderator of Denver Presbytery, but perhaps most importantly as a member of our recently formed Vision Construction Team (VCT). Our hope is that you will recognize that Council, Presbytery Leadership, and the VCT are openly communicating about the process and sharing details about how to become part of the conversation. Our updates from this point on will be written by members of the VCT so that we can keep you posted of the progress.
Our consultant, Corey Schlosser-Hall, leads excellent meetings during which we learn much about one another and have begun to get a grasp of the momentous work ahead of us. We have chosen to embrace Corey’s definition of vision as, “the capacity to ‘taste and see’ what God is doing at the intersections between God’s people and the world God loves so that other can ‘taste and see’ it, participate in it, pray for it, be transformed by it.”
Corey has helped us establish a timeline, and Council has approved it. Our goal is to move ever forward, checking in with the goals for each “Chapter” of our work. Currently we are in the “Curate and Generate” chapter which will help us cull the best of what our previous team learned; review the input the body of our Presbytery has offered; listen to the thoughts and questions being offered now; and begin to generate dialogue to help us into the next chapter of “Tangibilitate.” We tangibilitate when we put words and language to the ideas and thoughts that are taking shape.
My teammates highlight what they would like for you to know about our work together:
We will be meeting weekly to keep our momentum going and to hold one another accountable for the reading and tasks we are to do outside of meeting time.
We recognize together that vision is not driven by one person, but best discerned in a group (this is the Presbyterian way of doing most discernment); this means we need your input as well to say we are doing the work of Presbytery. Please pay attention to the ways you can make your voice heard and be assured that the VCT would love to hear from you via email or a call.
Following through with a new vision leads us to recognize we need to become a Presbytery that is constantly seeking God’s vision, always listening and responding, and remembering that we are participating in God’s vision – not our own.
I have already been touched by the breadth of experience and wisdom that is exhibited by my fellow Vision Construction Team. One member offered us a reminder that Vision typically does not come like a lightening strike or a mountain top moment; vision comes often through small discussions, attentive listening, and paying attention to how God has already begun that work in and among us.
I pray you have the same hope I hold: we can move together into these unknown times holding the most important thing in focus: our God has made an invitation to “taste and see” – will you come? You can share with us in this process by praying a simple, "May your vision for the DP be clear and may we be faithful to taste and see." You can also email the VCT at VCT@denpres.org. I promise you that we are engaging with all input that our DP family share, and that we want to be truly open to how God is moving here and now.
Thankful to serve you,
Rev. Paula M. Daniel Steinbacher
Vice Moderator
Denver Presbytery Council
Vision Construction Team
March 4, 2021 Vision Update from Ruling Elder Pat Queen
At the urging of my pastor at Green Mountain Presbyterian I started working with the presbytery and council in 2019. Not knowing any better, I agreed to be the co-moderator of Finance and Property. With a background in finance for almost 35 years with the US Postal Service, I carried over a lot of the goals from there: balanced books, achievable budget, policies in place, competent people in all positions and short finance meetings. In the first year we had a new treasurer, had gone through 3 accountants, had a new firm handling our investments, had a new bank and had a new software package to do the accounting. And then COVID-19 hit. Welcome to Denver Presbytery!
Only my faith from childhood and a few well-placed remarks from presbytery staff and my pastor kept me going. I quickly realized we had churches in trouble and no real way to help them. We had the funds but not the path or policy for their use. The last two years we have concentrated on getting this done and with the January assembly when the motion for allocation of funds from the sale of property was approved, we now have a policy and a path and can do more to help. The Shared Funding Ministry is a part of this assistance.
The Vision Construction Team is now in the "curate and generate" process. Once they complete their work, Finance and Property will continue to move with the team’s vision and strive to make sound decisions going forward, especially in the areas of property and church assistance.
Our goal is to see no church fail. We want to work with them any way we can to ensure their congregations continue to function, even if in another format. The document, Reimagining Congregations, is a tool now on the website to help with this. LEARN MORE→ If you or your session have questions or concerns, let us know. We can help with data gathering and interpretation as well as reviews of your financial reports. Don't wait until there are no other options.
Denver Presbytery has a long tradition of serving, meeting the needs, ministering and sharing the gospel in our part of Colorado. Working together and managing our resources, we can see this continue for many years to come.
And by the way, we still haven't had a short finance meeting!
In the service we share,
Ruling Elder Pat Queen
Denver Presbytery Council
Finance & Property Workgroup Chair
2021 Vision Update February 22, 2021 from Ruling Elder Peter Hulac
Psalms and music were both important parts of my growing up. I appreciate early memories of my parents praying before meals, my father’s including psalms in bedtime conversations, and also my mother’s love of music, which she shared with all of us. Over the years, spurred on by the joy of singing hymns and anthems, my heart’s love of psalms and music have merged into something which is continually life-changing. In mysterious ways, the musical notes and phrases have operated on those wonderful Biblical texts, driving them deeper into my soul. The wedding of music with psalms has been further coupled, of course, during my almost fifty-years of marriage to my church musician spouse Barbara. In recent months I have especially valued those psalms as they must have been sung in the years during and after the Babylonian Exile. The words “I will lift up my eyes” now resonate deeply in me with the creative art of Felix Mendelssohn, Zoltan Kodaly, John Rutter, and others. We can be certain that the composers of the future will be stirred to imagine further works of art, enriching these ancient words with new genius.
I am Peter Hulac, a ruling elder at Montview and, for this year, moderator of Denver Presbytery and Council. I am delighted to bring you a progress report about how your presbytery is working through our current transitions. In recent weeks you have heard from other leaders about our work. They have written about our consultant, Dr. Corey Schlosser-Hall, and about the progress we are making with his leadership. You can read about the “chapters” of our transition by clicking here. The Vision Creation Team is currently working to create and generate the vision which will guide us through our next steps.
It is presumptuous, of course, to equate our current situation to the experiences of the generations-long Captivity in Babylon. These current presbytery transitions, as significant as they are, are far less wrenching than the ones of 25 centuries ago in the Holy Land. A pastor friend has noted another difference: that during these days we are exiled to our homes, not away from them. On the other hand, the Church of today and our entire culture are experiencing so many concurrent challenges. We also share many of the laments, yearnings and hopes which our ancestors in faith experienced all those centuries ago. You might appreciate reading Ezra, chapters 1 and 3, for a historical account of their return to Jerusalem. Then turn to some psalms, which bless us with more poetic gifts. At one point, as in Psalm 80, God’s people prayed that God would restore life to the way it was before the exile. God’s people must have sung different psalms, though, as they returned to Jerusalem, saw the destruction, and realized that life would never be restored to “just the way it used to be.” Many of those psalms are among the “Psalms of Ascent,” pleading that God will lead the people in a much different kind of way. (See especially Psalms 121, 122, 124, 125, and 130.)
Over recent months our own yearnings and hopes have evolved in similar ways. Early in the pandemic we anticipated a time when “it” would be all over, when the habits of life would be restored to their previous ways. As the months have passed, though, we have come to recognize that the next chapters in our lives and in our life together will be different from life before the coronavirus. Knowing that to be so, we appeal for your prayers, and we also yearn and hope for your own individual wisdom. We ask you to write to us about your own wise discernment about where God is leading us, and your own hopes for our future life together as the Presbytery of Denver. CLICK HERE to share your hopes and dreams→
We are grateful for the challenges and joys we share in this time of change, and we thank God for the witness and the words of our ancestors in faith, the ones who have traveled this journey before us. Just as they sang psalms as they climbed their way up to Jerusalem, we look forward with joy and hope to the day when we, like them, will gather, worship, and sing together in new ways.
Psalm 122
I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’
Our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem.
Jerusalem—built as a city that is bound firmly together.
To it the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord,
as was decreed for Israel, to give thanks to the name of the Lord.
For there the thrones for judgment were set up, the thrones of the house of David.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: ‘May they prosper who love you.
Peace be within your walls, and security within your towers.’
For the sake of my relatives and friends I will say, ‘Peace be within you.’
For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good.
-Amen.
In the service we share,
Ruling Elder Peter Hulac
Presbytery Moderator
Denver Presbytery Council
Meet the Vision Construction Team
On January 19, 2021, the following individuals were appointed by Council to serve as the Vision Construction Team for the Presbytery of Denver:
RATIONALE
We were tasked with assembling a team slate which reflected the Presbytery of Denver as a whole, but within guidelines of prior participation in the visioning process and diversity in many categories. We believe that we have captured broad representation of gender, ordination status, geographical/congregational context, racial/ethnic identity, age, and tenure of experience in the work of the Presbytery of Denver. We also believe these nominees embody the qualities we set out to find as described in the position description for the Vision Construction Team.
With the many different issues and interests in the Presbytery, we have tried to pull together people who give voice to these and who listen well. Most have participated in supporting the Presbytery’s Matthew 25 Initiative and all understand the significance of this visioning work and its importance to the Presbytery, to our congregations and to the larger church.
We have prayed for each nominee and for the team as a whole, and we believe these individuals to be right for us at this time and in this Presbytery. We are pleased that each has said “yes” to the call to this work.
We thank Dr. Corey Schlosser-Hall and Rev. Olivia Hudson Smith for their wisdom and support in our deliberations.
Respectfully submitted,
Vision Construction Nominating Task Force
Rev. Evan Amo
Ruling Elder Anne Bond
Rev. Kim Graber
Ruling Elder Keith Moore