Tom’s Synopsis for Who We Are

 

I know that I am a pain in the (pick your part) about this individual thinking business, but thinking was my business for a while, and there are dividends to be earned from individual thinking. That said, here are my thoughts. I don’t expect you to agree, and I am not asking you to.  This is input. You are the synthesizers. The objective is to state concisely in the CIF and expound with potential pastors about who we are.  Do NOT read this if you have not done your individual thinking.

The Burns Flat Cumberland Presbyterian Church is a small, family church that has been on the verge of growing for two decades. We have had some surges, but the losses continue to outnumber the gains. This body is known for its love. We are involved in our community, and people know it. Some don’t want to pronounce or spell Presbyterian, so they just call us the love church.

We are known as Christ’s disciples by our love! Service is the predominant gift in this congregation. Giving is good for the number of adults who attend.

Our evangelism—taking the good news to our neighbors and discipling them when they respond—is often stuck in neutral. It is a challenge not unique to this area, but our challenge nonetheless. We have not given up, but we need reminders that making disciples and resting in our comfort zones are at odds with each other.

About 5% of the town’s population attends services here, and the mission harvest fields sit just across the street from the church building. We can do more. That said, we are one of two congregations in the Presbytery that have experienced any growth over the past few decades. Apathy and ambivalence among the adults we reach are often the most significant obstacles to connecting many adults in the community with worship and fellowship in this body.

We do reach many children and youth!

We are blessed to have a rotating session with elders who are both young and old, male and female, and dedicated to bringing glory to God.

The congregation loves each other—a bunch. Over a decade ago, our passing of the peace was moved to the end of the service because we enjoy each other so much. The fellowship of believers continues well after Sunday morning's last amen.

This is a church body that purchased a building it could not afford and made it a place of worship and fellowship while without a pastor.

This church body paid off the loan for this building in record time.

This church body purchased an additional three acres of land during the worst part of the recession of the first decade of this century.

 

Trends and tendencies.

·         We like to sing (Y2K Survey)

·         We like to eat (Food with almost everything—early 2000s). Backed off some a few years later.

·         We help with physical needs (Food for the hungry, school supplies, help with some bills, host for addiction recovery meetings, host many drug court community service people, help via MA, other help—last 17 years).

·         We don’t like to sign up but will often show up for events and ministries.

Our biggest outreach ministries are VBS and the Backpack Ministry.

For a time, our SEO for the church website attracted a higher ranking on most search engines than our denomination’s placement. We received calls from all over the country with CPC questions.

I would characterize the last three decades of pastoral care like this:

Jim – Coffee Shop Ministry, venturing into established circles. Letting people know we were here. Coffee Shop.

Duawn—Youth and Fellowship, to include more food in more of our activities. Walmart ministry for ambulatory elderly for a time. F4 Feasts.

Tom – Missions and Evangelism, to include ongoing challenges to fulfill our commissions and make disciples. Walk A Block and Walking Ministry. First overseas mission for this body (X2).

 

Other turnover notes not related to the CIF.

 

Domains owned by Tom. See separate page. I expect to retain the Burnsflat.org domain for a while. The cumberlandpresbyterianchurch.net domain is scheduled to renew in July of this year, but I plan to release this domain. I have never transferred a domain to anyone before, but if you want it, let me know as soon as possible so I can figure out the how part.

The other Cumberland domains don’t expire until 2026, but if you are interested, let me know. My initial plan is to retain .com and release .org.

Another option if you have not worked with domain ownership before is to start from scratch. I’m sure that there wouldn’t be much competition for BurnsFlatCPC.