We made it through the first week of Advent and now it’s just a slippery, fast slope to a Sunday morning Christmas celebration. As I reminded my congregation on Sunday, this is the church’s New Year. This is when we start over and much like the calendar New Year, I wonder if we as a Presbytery could begin to make our resolutions to one another.
- Can we resolve to pray for one another as we step into our next season of worship and work? Stop now and say a prayer for us as God uses our worship and work in central NJ.
- Can we resolve to work together, using the gifts that God has given us to strengthen the structure of the new Plan of Presbytery? Stop now – what committee is God calling you to serve on? What if you preempt the call from the Nominating committee and just let them know how best your gifts can serve us?
- Can we resolve to develop relationships with one another, clergy to clergy, elder to elder, session to session, disciple to disciple? Stop now and think of one way you can resolve to develop relationships with others in our Presbytery this year, Advent through Pentecost.
For the Christian, the New Year has just begun. This is the time then to listen to the voice of the Spirit guiding us and leading us into the next year. How is the Spirit directing your path for this new year as you work and worship within this body of the New Brunswick Presbytery?
Presbytery of New Brunswick BLOG 
The development of professional relationship in complex institutions, and the church is no exception, is a by product of two conditions, an atmosphere of trust in the process and the people, and a mutuality of either shared commitments or goals. NB is the 9th Presbytery I have served in or had dealings with in my career. Granted most have been in military centric communities in south east and west where there is high turnover of people moving in and out of the churches and presbyteries. But what has always struck me about NB is the very high degree of insularity about the institution and its clergy. Most are products of PTS,(not Pittsburgh), lived and worked for decades in the same settings, and all knows everybody else. When I used to attend the meetings I was taken by the who sat with who at the supper tables at the meals and it was always people sitting with the same folks time after time. Not exactly an inviting or friendly situation. A very hard crowd to crack if your connections were not what they shared, the fact that I wore my Uniform at a couple meetings also tended to set some on edge I think. Their issue, not mine. Be that as it may . I believe this reset of the table and chairs, the reboot is an excellent opportunity to reengage the process and system. All it takes for folks to say “yes”. I remember my old polity teacher who always said. “trust the process”. Well indeed,
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