Our pastor, Ron Tippens, was granted a sabbatical from February through May of 2009. A significant portion of his study focused on the Presbyterian Global Fellowship and its efforts to transform congregations into missional churches. His hopes are that this dynamic new movement within the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. will greatly influence the Albemarle Road Presbyterian Church. The following is a synopsis of the ministry of the Presbyterian Global Fellowship:

How it Began

Congregations within the Presbyterian Church (USA) are now doing ministry in a radically different culture…but they are not doing radically different ministry. In an age when the church must once again speak from the margins of society, these congregations are on the front lines of mission – and they are in desperate search of a fresh outlet that will empower them anew to live out the call to be faithful witnesses to Jesus Christ.

That is because it is no longer enough to be an “attractional” church whose mantra is “if you build it, they will come.” Today's world asks for more than flashy bulletins, well-kept pews and dynamite sermons. Today's world cries out for a body of believers knee-deep in the trenches of real lives “out there”: a committed crew of “ordinary radicals,” whose mission is not to bring new people to church on Sunday mornings, but to be the church every day in ministering the love of God in Jesus' name.

The same old denominational approaches to mission have failed to meet this challenge. An ethos of institutional self-preservation, rather than creative openness to fostering new relationships and sharing ideas and best practices, clouds our global vision for mission, limits access to the resources we demand, and restricts our ability to network effectively with other like-minded congregations. An institutional, “top-down” approach, one that assumes financial support is “owed” to denominational structures without the need for accountability, still dictates how money drives mission. And, the production and circulation of one piece of curriculum still takes years of committee work when today it could take minutes, thanks to developments in online technology.

The urgent reality is that congregations within the PCUSA are in critical need of a network of relationships, ideas and best practices that will help them reconnect with the global body of Christ and equip them to become “missional,” as subversive, contextual, counter-cultural incarnational, globally minded, and messianically hopeful witnesses to Jesus Christ in a broken world.

The Remedy

As a fellowship whose mission is to transform our mainline congregations into missional communities following Jesus Christ, Presbyterian Global Fellowship (PGF) signifies a constructive effort to address this problem. In January 2006, a handful of PCUSA pastors and church leaders from across the nation began to pray to a great God and dream together about that great God's mission to the world and their part in it. Their talks resulted in PGF's first annual conference in Atlanta, Georgia, attended by over 800 participants. They came to learn more about how to be “internally strong and externally focused,” and they left with a renewed vision for mission and tools for putting that commitment into practice. Since then, PGF has blossomed into a growing fellowship of similarly called congregations within the Presbyterian Church who share the goal of becoming more contextually missional in today's post-Christian culture.