Friday, March 14, 2008

Good News About Barnabus Ministry in Houston

Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church in Houston (full disclosure: this is the church where we are members) has an innovative mission and ministry program called Barnabus Ministry. The goal of Barnabus is to create one new congregation each year. MDPC funds the research into appropriate areas of growth, funds the start-up costs and calls an organizing pastor to the staff of MDPC to begin the new ministry.

News about the progress of the latest effort--a new congregation in a Hispanic area of Houston close to MDPC--is detailed in this very nice article on the PCUSA website.

This Sunday family friends who are also members of MDPC are donating a baby grand piano to this new congregation. The piano belonged to their late wife and mother who was a dedicated church musician and music teacher. I'm sure she would be very pleased to see her piano at home with this new growing congregation and it will be a fitting memorial to her.

I wish good news like this got the same amount of attention that the negative news about the denomination gets in the media. Really, we are doing some things in the PCUSA besides arguing about property and ordination standards. Thanks to Presbyweb for linking this article to their website!

1 comment:

Becky Ardell Downs said...

I've been impressed by this congregation from a neighborhood perspective-- we live less than a mile from this church, and it's on the way to my children's schools, so I pass it every day. They have been very disciplined, committed, and persistent in getting the church started, from what I can tell. They've chosen a great location for a new church development, though I suspect they'll be needing a larger space soon! Their building is clean and welcoming-looking with a nice new sign, all in Spanish-- it's a vast improvement on the church that used to occupy the space and put mean-spirited signs up on their sign board. And they include the PCUSA logo on their signs, which I always appreciate as a connectional-type person. Some of our other ministries need to follow their lead on this (think camp and conference center.) Anyway, thank you to Fuente de Esperanza for a good start, from one of your Presbyterian neighbors!