Look at What People Are Doing June 25, 2009
Posted by mgilm in General News, SPE.add a comment
Click over to the “Grant Recipients and Experiences” tab for updated lists of the activities Covenant pastors, missionaries, and chaplains have been able to participate in through the benefit of Sustaining Pastoral Excellence grants. SPE continues to award individual grants along with coordinating re-visioning retreats and new study cohorts around the pastoral arts of leadership, teaching, and preaching.
More information about SPE grants can be found at www.covchurch.org/spe.
Reclaiming the Town Center June 18, 2009
Posted by mgilm in Interesting Articles.add a comment
Reclaiming the Town Center
Drive through the old town center in Anywhere, USA, and you will find two buildings encircled by the main road: the courthouse and the church. Historically, the church has been the locus, or central focus, of the community. For better or worse, it was where people congregated to share life’s stories.
Once the center of connection, the church has become an ancillary part of the greater community. It has lost its status as a “third place.”
Sociologist Ray Oldenburg coined the term “third place.” The concept of a third place involves a gathering place for people separate from home (the first place) and work (the second place). These informal meeting places have existed throughout history, but they have increased in importance in the last decade. As the lines between home and work blur, and as people travel farther distances from home to work, the third place has become an important gathering point for people wanting a break between the first and second place. That’s why high-end coffee shops are on every street corner. They charge $1 for a cup of coffee combined with a $3 experience of communal gathering.
