You have read through the Vital Congregations details on the main page. You have navigated to the Discussion Room. And now you’re reading the first post of our effort in transformation, transition, revitalization, or whatever label you want to put on it.

If you’ve made it this far, you’re 90% ready to begin. To leave a comment and reply to a post you need a user ID and password. You will see a prompt to login below. Check it out. If you cannot login in please send me an email at [email protected] and we’ll figure out what’s wrong.

Going forward, this welcome post will serve two purposes:

• A place to comment on technical problems of access or navigation (although an email to me will probably be the more useful if not the only possibility);
• And, a place to comment or question basic understanding of what we are doing in the overall initiative. This is so those comments or questions don’t get lost in the specifics of the other posts as we proceed.

The first posts will begin soon as we begin a seven section bible study on Vital Congregation. We are using asynchronous, on-line, collaboration (I make a post about a topic and we carry on a conversation in the comment boxes) and so you may participate as you have time and from wherever you are. We will not have regular meetings but I’m not against having conversations has opportunity presents itself. Please try to look at the site every day for new comments and posts. Please make comments, no lurkers, and make your comments appropriate and on-point. I will post new topics regularly but not on a set schedule. I will judge when we are ready to move on based on the flow of new comments. That being said, no comments means this isn’t working and we need to rethink something.

I encourage you to go to the PC(USA) Vital Congregations website and read that material especially the PDF files that are available. Just press the Download Resources button. Do that and you’ll know as much as I do about this effort and we can discover the future together.

Blessings.