VJN Lab Day at 2024 Better Together Conference
VJN Lab Day at 2024 Better Together: Practicing Beloved Community
Join VJN leaders for a 1-day “laboratory” following our Better Together conference. We’ll digest, put into practice, and debrief what we’ve learned from the conference (April 15-18, http://vineyardusa.org/event/better-together/).
We will help each other to understand our roles as pastors and leaders to foster the beloved community within a world of racial bias, violence, systemic and institutional conflict. Our goal is to equip each person with an implementation and action plan so that we can each go home with concrete next steps for our churches and communities to pursue the way of nonviolence, racial reconciliation and ethnic diversity.
Our schedule will include immersion experiences that will cultivate our public discipleship. Issues include gun violence, sexual exploitation, immigration, and homelessness.
Public Discipleship practices will include the following:
- A Liturgy for Homicide. When violence happens in our communities, Vineyard churches can respond with calls for peace. During our VJN Lab Day, we will do a liturgy for homicide. This is a short interactive service you can replicate in your own community that grieves the slain, involves the families impacted, and offers hope to communities. We will join a family in Columbus as we grieve a homicide from several months ago as a broader church family.
- Prayer Walk and Acts of Service. Sanctuary Night is a sacred space serving vulnerable women who are at risk for sexual exploitation. We will have an opportunity to serve this ministry with prayer and serving at their drop-in center.
- Faith-Rooted Immigration Advocacy. Rev. Dr. Alexia Salvatierra, one of our Better Together speakers, will equip us by deeply diving into how our churches can drink from our own wells and contribute all of our gifts to the broader movements for justice in our communities.
Where: LIFE Vineyard Church, Columbus OH
When: 9am-6pm
Cost: $25, lunch and dinner provided.