Author: Gordon Govier

(RNS) — Even before the coronavirus pandemic, Sister Mary Bede was no stranger to quarantine life. Sister Bede and 22 other Cistercian nuns who live with her at Valley of Our Lady Monastery in Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin, are cloistered in silence according to the rule of their ancient monastic Catholic religious order.

Think of it as driving around to see Christmas lights, but based on the Christmas story.Think of it as a way to honor Christmas traditions in the time of a pandemic.Think of it as a venture in cooperation among seven congregations that could be the groundwork of future collaboration.Seven Lutheran churches that stretch from McFarland, across the east side of Madison and touching the city’s south side have come up with what they are calling an Advent Adventure. Starting Dec. 6 and running through Jan. 6, each congregation will have an outdoor lighted display that tells a part of the…

When Jon Anderson was a pastor working on community outreach in Madison, he found a lot of overlap in how churches tried to work with nonprofits to help the city. “What I started to see in those jobs was a lot of redundancy happening in the county, especially in church efforts,” he said. “And an ongoing need for resources of all kinds (with) direct service providers doing amazing work, but not seeing that the church was a part of the solution to reaching the community.” Helping church leaders better collaborate, understand and serve Dane County is now at the heart…

The Thanksgiving meal drive is more than two decades old, launched by Pastor David Smith of Door Creek Church and Tracy Smith, his wife, in partnership with the South Madison Neighborhood Center and the Boys & Girls Club of Dane County, but the method of preparing, organizing and delivering the dinners is new to this year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

For the past several months, Upper House has been working behind the scenes with the Wisconsin Council of Churches, Collaboration Project, and the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary to apply for a grant from the Lilly Endowment Thriving Congregations Initiative. We were thrilled to recently learn that the endowment awarded the partnership a $1 million grant for the Awaken Dane initiative. We look forward to working with initiative leader, Rev. Kerri Parker of the Wisconsin Council of Churches, the collaborating partners, and local churches and congregations, on this five-year effort.

Is there such a thing as “cosmopolitan evangelicalism,” and is it worth talking about? As a historian of American evangelicalism, I can only recall reading the term a few times—in D. Michael Lindsay’s Faith in the Halls of Power (2008), where he gives it some sociological heft; in Lydia Bean’s The Politics of Evangelical Identity (2014) comparing Canadian and U.S. evangelicals; in the epilogue to David Swartz’s Facing West (2020); and in Charlie Cotherman’s recent history of the Christian study center movement, To Think Christianly (2020). I work at a Christian study center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, so Cotherman’s…

As the days keep clicking away on the calendar and the prospects of the pandemic settling down by December diminish, a number of pastors and worship leaders are pondering how to make the seasons of Advent and Christmas meaningful when all the traditional ways of gathering may be off the table. Here’s one idea that could allow congregations to collaborate in bringing a bit of light to a season that more than ever could feel very dark. The beginnings of the idea come from a Methodist pastor in the area. Some congregations have a special service on the evening of…

The story of Doxa’s partnership with Lincoln Elementary School offers a blueprint of how a church can engage with a community institution and adapt its engagement when a pandemic hits. Doxa is a two-year-old Madison church plant, but this young church is serious about its mission: “To share the gospel and our lives for the glory of God and the good of Madison,” says Sam Roberts, Doxa’s Local Missions Director. “Our bread and butter is being a church for the city and the campus.” But how does a church best serve its community?

MADISON — Rather than a St. James Church basement full of “holy rollers” this fall, only six people are working each of the three weekly shifts to produce the traditional pfeffernuesse cookies sold at the annual fall festival. For the first time in the 44 years of producing pfeffernuesse, the cookies are being “spit” out of a machine onto the large cookie sheets. No hand rolling this year.

2020 has not been what we had expected to say the very least, but there is hope. Over the past few months, the Collaboration Project staff have felt called to pursue hope in the midst of discouragement. The very pursuit of collaboration is an act of hope. This year, collaboration provided an opportunity to connect with and serve the African American Council of Churches (AACC).