Monday, May 19, 2003

Wilmington, NC – Transforming churches, rebuilding trust after sexual scandals, reaching young people, reinvigorating worship – these are just a few of the topics to be addressed at the Pastoral Summit in Indianapolis June 17-19.

The groundbreaking, Lilly Endowment-funded national conference in Indianapolis will bring together Catholics and Protestants from across the country to concentrate on local churches – how to make them better and how to deal with the inevitable issues they contend with. Pastoral Summit Indianapolis will provide answers and solutions for universal issues such as how to increase lay involvement, reach into and transform entire communities, attract new members, reinvigorate worship, reach young people and Gen Xers -and much more.

But this conference will also tackle current, crucial issues facing churches today. How to deal with brokenness after a sexual, financial or emotional crisis. How to respond to congregants in the face of war and a depleting economy. How ancient contemplative and mystical spirituality is inspiring modern lives. How new grassroots lay initiatives are transforming both individual churches and church structures.

Just as participants are diverse, so too are the workshop leaders. In Indianapolis, the speakers range from Donald Cozzens, best-selling author of The Changing Face of the Priesthood, and today’s foremost expert on Catholicism, to Tommy Kyllonen, also known in the Christian hip-hop world as Urban D, whose Assembly of God church in Tampa, Florida is drawing hip-hop congregants by the hundreds and whose sanctuary is comprised of a break-dance floor, graffiti art, gel and intelligent lighting, and rap mixes of popular praise and worship music.

The Pastoral Summit, by one definition, is perhaps one of the most diverse groups of Christian pastors, staff and lay leaders ever assembled in America. The summit is a lay-inspired national movement that joins Catholics and Protestants together by their common quest to make their churches a powerful force in their members’ lives, to open their doors to the spiritually hungry seeker, and to be a transforming presence within their communities.

Pastoral Summit Indianapolis is one of three national gatherings that will build upon the initial 2001 conference in New Orleans that drew some 700 participants. In addition to Indianapolis, the first of this year’s conferences was held April 28-30 in San Antonio and drew participants from throughout the United States. The other conference will be held October 6-8, 2003 in Boston.

“The Pastoral Summit’s aim is simple and straightforward—to make churches the best they can possibly be,” said Paul Wilkes, writer and Catholic layman who is founder and project director of the Pastoral Summit. “Through our workshops, worship, keynote addresses, and the sheer power of committed pastors, staff and lay leaders who see the power of the local church, the Pastoral Summit offers what is best in churches across the country. And, what our participants take home is not just theoretical, but actually reproducible. You could call the Pastoral Summit ‘one-stop shopping’ for models of local church excellence.”

Working in conjunction with the Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and based at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, where Wilkes teaches, the Pastoral Summit has been funded by various grants from the Lilly Endowment. The conferences grew out of another Lilly Endowment-funded project—a study of church excellence that led to the publication of two books written by Wilkes: Excellent Protestant Congregations: The Guide to Best Places and Practices and Excellent Catholic Parishes: The Guide to Best Places and Practices.

"It was quickly apparent, as our team was doing research, that Protestant and Catholic churches can learn from each other’s excellence, even when their approaches are so different,” Wilkes said. “Good ideas work across the traditions. Churches want to sense a mission and feel an excitement in what they do. As churches look for new ways to serve their people and to reach into the world, the Pastoral Summit was created to provide a meeting ground for ideas that should be shared.”

The size of a church, finances, and location are not the determining factors for excellence, Wilkes said. “Rather, it’s an attitude of ‘yes we can, with God’s help,’ and that is what our workshops help people see and what they can take back to their home churches,” he said. “As one woman told me at the end of Pastoral Summit. ‘Now I know what the early church felt like—the power, the potential’.”

Wilkes has written and spoken extensively about the role of religion in personal lives and public life for more than three decades. He is the author of 18 books, the director and host of television documentaries, and has written for the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine and many other publications. Marty Minchin, Wilkes’s co-editor on the newly-released book Best Practices from America’s Best Churches (April 2003: Paulist Press), and Miles Christian Daniels, journalist, columnist and documentary filmmaker, are Pastoral Summit project associates. Minchin is the worship leader for a nondenominational, citywide young adult ministry and Daniels is a former Assemblies of God youth minister and regional youth director.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Contact: J. Brent Bill

bbill@centerforcongregations.org

317-237-7799

FAX 317-237-7795

303 N. Alabama Street

Suite 100

Indianapolis, IN 46204

or

Contact: Miles Christian Daniels

staff@pastoralsummit.org

910-962-7225

FAX 910-962-7491

Pastoral Summit

UNC Wilmington

601 South College Road

2064 Randall Library

Wilmington, NC 28403-5616

www.pastoralsummit.org

Photos are available by contacting Miles Daniels.