
An invitation to ask When our son Johnny was small, “what if…?”...
By: Keith Hill
Anna’s Kent’s blog offered the big picture view of Pastoral Covenant Groups (PCGs). Now allow me to zoom in a bit.
This up-close perspective on PCGs comes from a meeting this week where Anna and I joined others in preparing to launch the new East Central Presbytery – or, as we in Richmond prefer to call it, the Presbytery of Virginia and Outlying Territories. (Ha!) Since I knew our discussion would include the state of Pastoral Covenant Groups, I decided to do a quick survey in preparation.
Here’s what I learned: about half of our pastors are already in groups, about a quarter are getting groups together, and the other quarter have hopes to get started, but no real plans. We also discovered that these groups have more flavors than the proverbial Baskin-Robbins:
Despite the obvious variety, there is one trait I believe to be common in all groups – change. This conclusion comes from another kind of survey, namely a review of my own group’s course over its six years:
Even with the same covenant and practices, we’re not really the same group. Add the additional changes in our own families, health, and ministries, and you’d have to say change has been a major factor in our lives.
Can it be any other way? I think not. Our covenant is with people in the midst of change. This makes our dependency on the Unchanging One in our midst all the more apparent.
What a privilege we have to be in covenant with Him and each other! May this facet of our ECO lives be used by God to enable His church to flourish in the midst of change.
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