Main Event

by Liz Ellaby

More than 340 clergy and lay leaders from Alabama and beyond attended development classes Aug. 10-11 at the third annual Main Event training conference in Birmingham.

Before they did, the members of two Alabama hosting presbyteries gathered in the 19th Century sanctuary of Birmingham's First Presbyterian Church to sing choruses of Hank Williams and Willie Nelson songs with the guitar-plucking senior pastor, Rev. Shannon Webster. Webster drew from his course on country song theology to ease into a keynote address on how the church must offer “radical hospitality” to draw in young members.

About the songs, Webster said, “You don't want to argue with St. Hank when he sings 'Straight is the gate and narrow the way.' It's a line straight out of scripture. But Sara Carter may have been reading Luke when she wrote 'Fifty Miles of Elbow Room,'” about heaven's gates being wide open.

Later he said, “I'll go with Carter. I think Hank missed it.”

The Main Event was a joint effort of the Presbytery of North Alabama and Presbytery of Sheppards and Lapsley, in central Alabama, which together represent 124 congregations. The conferences were started in 2005 to improve stewardship, worship, youth ministries and education, said PSL Executive Tom Evans. “We do it because working together is part of our identity as Presbyterians, not just because it's useful.”

Keynote speaker Rev. Michelle Thomas-Bush, associate pastor for youth and young adults at the Riverside Presbyterian Church in Jacksonville, Fla., said nearly 3,000 members had vanished from the PSL in 10 years. The number, spread over a decade and roughly 100 churches, is not a death knell, but a wake-up call to do church “differently.”

Thomas-Bush cited 14,000 youth who attended a building mission in Appalachia this year. She praised Philadelphia congregations for creating a nonprofit street ministry offering a 24-hour café for homeless that had transformed into a venue for weekly concerts.

“We are in a post-denominational age where not many people care about what type of church they belong to,” she said. These congregations found a way to do church differently “yet they are boldly claiming their Presbyterian heritage.”

Organizers planned workshops after last year's event showed people wanted more workshops on youth and older adult ministries. PSL Associate Executive for Nurture Robert Hay said three workshops on youth ministries filled up this year, with one of them packing in 50 people. The other leading topics were ministries for older adults and a session on Presbyterian Identity.

Besides classes, eight people withstood 102-degree temperatures on a canoe outing to the site of PSL's 440-acre Living River Retreat and Conference Center planned on the Cahaba River in central Alabama. Twenty-four attended the most popular of six off-campus workshops, a spirituality course held at the nearby, and air conditioned, Birmingham Museum of Art.

Attendance this year was up by 40 people over last year. “This conference was unquestionably a success,” Hay said.