• Help congregations with pastoral transitions
• Train and support interim ministers
• Resolve congregational conflicts
• Care for ministers and Christian Educators and their families
• Help prepare people for service as ordained ministers

You can share the 2012 Chicago Presbytery Per Capita Brochure with your congregation or read more about per capita from GA. 

LEAD 2012 – Saturday, March 3 2012

Event information and schedule now available. 

To Register Online, go to http://mccormick.edu/LEAD

January 29-31, 2012 – Sunday, 4 pm to Tuesday, Noon

Featuring Rev Dr Margaret Aymer

St Mary of the Lake, Mundelein – 1000 East Maple Avenue

Speaker info and Registration

You will soon be receiving a letter from us with your congregation’s password and directions.

All forms should be completed online at the links below:

OGA Annual Statistical Report: http://ogasys2.pcusa.org
Workbook for Annual Report: www.chicagopresbytery.org/annual-statistical-reports
Elder Memorial and Session Clerk: www.chicagopresbytery.org/annual-statistical-reports
Session Clerk’s Questionnaire: www.pcusa.org/clerks2011

The Annual Statistical Report must be filled out no later than midnight, Wednesday, February 22, 2012. Do not ask for an extension of the deadline. Receiving computers will shut down at midnight, February 22nd, and no more information will be received.

Be sure you complete this report. Your per capita assessment in 2013 will be based on the figures you submit this year. The OGA will not retroactively change your membership figures if you fail to report them within the OGA’s time limits.

East Bay Camp – 24248 Ron Smith Memorial Hwy, Hudson, IL

Cost: $90, scholarships are available

This retreat is open to all middle School youth (grades 6-8) and their friends in Chicago and Blackhawk Presbyteries. Your time will be spent having fun, enjoying music, making new friends and hearing inspiring messages on the topic of “Surrendering to God.” There’s lots of great free time options too, like basketball, outdoor games, and an indoor pool. Click for more information and registration.

After hearing a summary of the Resource Center’s strengths (great materials on a breadth of topics, cataloged in a database that syncs with the presbytery website) and weaknesses (outdated materials crowd out the good ones, low circulation), the educators decided to go through new acquisitions and the Christian Education section and pull out materials in three ways:

• to trash – those that contain inaccuracies due to new developments
• to keep – those that are new or classic and need to be centrally available for check-out
• to give away to churches at the November 19th Assembly – materials that are quality, but do not need to be available for high circulation

Volunteer-In-Mission, Terry Jackson, who wrote the database and checkout program, removed materials from the catalog, “declassifying” them so those materials could be laid to rest or prepared to be distributed to churches or individuals.

Having educators look through materials that are from their field of knowledge allowed work to go quickly, and people left with a sense of satisfaction, saying that the work felt cathartic and useful. Others will reap the benefits of the couple hours spent on the Resource Center – new materials that haven’t been entered into the catalog were identified, outdated materials were sent to be recycled, and approximately 200 books were marked to be given away – materials that are still valuable, but that don’t need to be kept in the Resource Center for high circulation.

Overall, a couple hundred books were boxed to give away at Assembly, and 3 entire bookcarts of new acquisitions ordered in the last year or donated from Wabash Valley Presbytery’s Resource Center were emptied and sorted, and dozens of unnecessary duplicates were removed from the catalog.

We broke for lunch together. It is so valuable to have the skills of members of our presbytery applied to areas that cannot be handled by one person working alone. In addition to the good work done, the generosity of the time volunteered delighted presbytery staff.

We hope that relevant groups can continue to come into the Resource Center and make their mark. Bookshelves in the Resource Center are naturally divided into topical sections that correspond pretty clearly to existing groups and teams:

1. Bible and Bible Study
2. Christian Education
3. Church Leadership
4. Church Organizational Development
5. Stewardship
6. Church History
7. Evangelism
8. Multicultural Resources
9. Personal Development
10. Mission
11. Social Justice
12. Theology
13. Presbyterians
14. Worship

If your group is interested in helping to improve the Resource Center, please contact Laura Cathey at lcathey@chicagopresbytery.org. There are opportunities for guiding new acquisitions, culling unwanted materials, working with the database, promoting and marketing, improving signage, and ideas you dream up.

The Presbytery of Chicago’s Resource Center was founded in the 1980s to support congregations, elders, educators, worship leaders, and members of Presbytery looking to learn from the collected wisdom of other trailblazers and seekers of knowledge. The catalog is searchable online and checkouts can be made on location or by mail order.

Presbytery of Chicago Resource Center
100 S. Morgan St (Second Floor)
Chicago IL, 60607

The Worship Alive! workshops are for those individuals involved in or interested in becoming involved in planning and leading worship. The 2011/2012 series will examine new worship music resources on November 5 and 6, explore the scriptures through a focus on the verbs on January 28 and 29, and demonstrate ways to accentuate the impact of the worship space on March 10 and 11. The workshops are from 2 PM to 5 PM on Saturdays at the Presbyterian Church of Western Springs or at the United Church of Rogers Park on Sundays. The final event, titled Congregational Song in the 21^st Century, will be a combination of workshop at 3 PM and concert at 5:30 PM at the Presbyterian Church of Western Springs. Read more for a fuller description.

Scholarship applicants must be a non-clergy member of a church within the Presbytery of Chicago. Scholarships are limited to two people from each congregation, and are distributed first-come, first-served.  Download the scholarship application.

Those are the dry facts, but there is one more thing that everyone should know. These workshops are an awesome good time!