The Present initiative

This year’s General Assembly saw the launch of a new denominational initiative designed to encourage the Church in this season of life and witness.

PCI’s new ‘Present’ initiative will roll out over the next three years, inviting and encouraging congregations and their members to make themselves fully present to God who is ever present to us.

Rev David Thompson, Secretary of the Council for Congregational Life and Witness, explains that the initiative has been prompted and shaped by paying careful attention to the current conversation and mood of the moment and seeking to respond appropriately.

“Over the past year, a number of common themes keep cropping up in this particular season of life and witness. These have included: a sense of needing to re-establish among members the value of spending intentional time before God; the priority of rebuilding the community life of the people of God after the scattering caused by pandemic restrictions; and the urgency of refreshing the outward witness of the Church after a period of understandable focus on getting the internal life of congregations back on the rails after Covid lockdowns.

“These aspects of who we are as the people of God together are the very bedrock of the life and witness of the local church. In many ways there is nothing new here, but there is no shame in acknowledging the need to get back to doing the basics well.”

The Present initiative intentionally aims for simplicity, but significance by offering a single word – present – as an invitation to congregations on which to hang the focus of activity so as to re-centre their life and witness.

The encouragement to be present plays out in four particular ways:

• Being present in this season of life and witness;

• Being present to God as his people;

• Being present for one another in God’s family of the church;

  Being present where God has placed us to be his witnesses.

Rev Albin Rankin, minister of Stormont congregation and convener of the Council for Congregational Life and Witness, explains: “The context in which we find ourselves as a church is complex and challenging. Facing a changing landscape, there is a temptation to close our eyes and think back to how things were ‘then’ or to look ahead for ‘when’ – a partially imagined, aspirational future. The reality however, is not ‘then’ or ‘when’ but ‘now’. God calls us to be present for him right here and right now.

“We are present, as we engage with God privately and in gathered worship, encourage one another in community as we journey together following Jesus, living our faith in our everyday lives and expressing this faith in the very place where God has called us to be witnesses as congregations and disciples of Jesus.”

The Present initiative is not intended to be like anything seen before in the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. It will not take the form of a programme, planning exercise or prescription. Rather it will gather momentum as a story of what is happening across the denomination.

David Thompson says, “The aim in the sharing of that unfolding story will be to encourage celebration that God is at work in the ordinary, to enable creativity in approaching the spiritual rhythms of our life together in fresh ways and, in doing so, to express a renewed denominational connectedness among congregations across Ireland.”

The Present initiative is not intended to be like anything seen before in the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.

The promotional clip for the initiative sums up its heart: “There is nothing particularly complicated about how we make ourselves present to God and one another in the life and witness of the church. It happens in three simple but significant ways.

“First of all, in our life together as congregations, we can set ourselves to be present to God as his people. In a world of constant distraction and competing demands, this is as simple as committing ourselves to the rhythms and routines of reading the Bible and praying, worshipping with others every week. In re-committing ourselves to these practices of faith, we make ourselves present before God in ways and places in which he promises to meet with us and speak to us, shaping us into the people he wants us to be.

“Then, there is being present for one another in God’s family of the church. This begins by just turning up, but it doesn’t end there. By participating in the kind of relationships and activities that enable us to be part of the community of our church, we play our part in lovingly giving and receiving from one another in God’s family. As congregations, it’s good to pause to consider what shape of church life enables that sort of commitment to one another so that it can flourish among us today.

“Then being present where God has placed us to be his witnesses. Living in a changed and changing world as congregations, we may be finding that the things that really left an imprint for God in our local community in the past, may not be the things that continue to do so today. If so, it’s good to think again about new ways of connecting, communicating, sharing God’s invitation to know him – gaining new confidence in what it means to speak for him in every situation. And as individuals in our everyday lives, God has placed us to be his witnesses among family, friends, neighbours, colleagues, teammates. We bring something of his presence with us into each of those relationships as a living witness to him.”

The initiative is unfolding gradually over the next three years in order to give it time and space to become familiar and embed in the consciousness of congregations and their members and then to grow and take root in whatever way is most appropriate in local settings and circumstances.

In 2024/25, the first year of the initiative, members are encouraged to simply look and listen out for the Present theme as it appears in video, print, podcast and social media across PCI’s main mediums of communication.

In the second year, 2025/26, a series of stories from PCI congregations and their members and other simple resources will sharpen the focus of each aspect of being present, offering handles by which congregations can more actively take these themes and run with them in whatever ways are most suitable for them.

By year three, 2026/27, emerging stories of how congregations have grappled with the theme and found ways of being present will be gathered and shared to encourage and envision one another as we step into God’s unfolding future for us as his people across the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.

The clip introducing the initiative takes it cue from the familiar story of Exodus chapter 3, the marker of our shared identity as the Presbyterian Church in Ireland – the burning bush.

In God making himself present to Moses through a bush that was on fire and yet curiously did not burn up, and Moses making himself present to God, a whole future began to unfold for him, for the people of God and in a most astonishing act of witness, for all the world to see, as God led the Israelites out of captivity in Egypt.

As David Thompson concludes: “Being present to God, present for others, and present as a witness where God had placed Moses made a world of difference. It is hoped that the Present initiative will help us as Irish Presbyterians to regain a similar sense of identity in God and his calling for us as his people.”