COVID-19 Church Check-In: La ViƱa Burnsville
Greetings! I would like to share with all of you what we have recently been doing at La ViƱa Burnsville. We could not have imagined all the changes that would take place as the pandemic struck. We thank God that for more than three years we have our services online, and because of this we […]
A COVID-19 Update From Phil Strout (English & EspaƱol)
A COVID-19 Update From Phil Novedades Sobre El COVID-19 De Phil (EspaƱol) :: For COVID-19-related articles and resources, click here.
No Lockdown For The Gospel | A Story From Alpha USA
When life goes differently than ever before, it gives us the chance to try things weāve never imagined were possible. This Spring was supposed to be a season of finish lines, finals and farewells for my 18-year-old son Luke who was graduating from high school. It turned out to be a season of starting lines, […]
Serving A Food Desert During COVID-19
La ViƱa Saint Paul was established to not only serve the spiritual needs of our communities in Saint Paul, Minnesota, but also the physical needs of our at-risk neighbors. In fact, we started a food shelf prior to opening our church plant! In 2017 our location had the highest poverty and lowest income levels in […]
Being The Church Without A Building
These last months have been a wild ride for all of us! We have had to wrestle with questions we never anticipated we would need to wrestle with. “Should we shut down? When do we open? How do we ābe the churchā without access to our building?” At the Syracuse Vineyard we made the decision […]
Being A Reconciling Community: One Church’s Story
When I think about what it means to be a reconciling community, a few things come to mind. There is so much good material available on the topic that I donāt want to just state the obvious, but hopefully can add a little context from our experience in this arena. First, as obvious as it […]
Making The Most Of An UN-Ideal Set Of Circumstances
If you are anything like me, you have been considering, contemplating, conversing and creating scenarios over and over and over again, trying to crack the COVID Era ministry challenge. The thing that has been super clear to me all along is that nothing about this moment feels ideal. In fact, everything feels un-ideal. As our […]
Responding To Racism From An Asian American Perspective
After 42 years on this earth, I have been asked many times in my life, āWhere are you from?ā Itās a very natural and common question that we ask each other as we meet and engage. When I am asked this question, my answer is, āIām from New Jersey.ā My answer is often met with […]
Five Discussions To Have Before Meeting In Person With Your Teens
Is it really possible? Could we actually have a meeting with our teens not on Zoom? Dare to dream! For many of us, things are changing rapidly again. New rules, loosened restrictions, articles (like this one) about how to best do this reopening thing. It can honestly feel even more overwhelming than when things began […]
Reopening Your Kids’ Ministries
We couldnāt have ever predicted that 2020 would hold huge changes for the Church. I never imagined that Iād be watching church on Sunday morning at home in my pjās! Did you ever dream that we would be given the opportunity to completely reimagine how we can structure a ministry to kids?Ā These have not […]
