Commission calls for initiatives...
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Reyes-Chow and Merritt hit Internet with radio broadcast, “God Complex”
Written by Leslie Scanlon, OUTLOOK national reporter   
Tuesday, 12 May 2009 14:43
During its second broadcast, the new “God Complex”  radio show, a brand-new, bicoastal Internet radio venture featuring General Assembly moderator Bruce Reyes-Chow and blogger Carol Howard Merritt, took on the question of whether small churches can continue to afford an educated clergy.

            The show is another effort to draw people in to conversation and to build community through technology — in this case, through Internet radio. People can listen live at noon EDT each week or check out the archives, and check out its chatroom, music, and commentators. Its tagline, “Where fully divine runs smack dab into fully human,” was chosen through online voting)

            True, there have been a few technological glitches so far. The second show featured two dropped connections (aka “Are you there?”).

            But nearly 700 people listened to the first episode; people Twittered their way through it all; and cross-fertilization is developing between it and blogs focusing on the life of the church.

            Reyes-Chow, a newly-minted 40-year-old, is pastor of Mission Bay Community Church in San Francisco and moderator of the 218th General Assembly. Merritt, a pastor at Western Church in Washington D.C., writes the TribalChuch.org blog and is author of “Tribal Church: Ministering to the Missing Generation.”

            In the second show, they took on questions of the indebtedness of those graduating from seminary.

            Many small congregations can’t afford a full-time, seminary-educated pastor, and increasingly are relying on lay leadership, Merritt said during the second show.

            But those with formal theological training can help people “look through and understand what is happening in this very complex, rapidly-changing world,” said Lee Hinson-Hasty, a guest on the show and coordinator for theological education and seminary relations for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). He’s suggesting that even small congregations can’t afford not to have leaders who have been seminary-educated.
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