#8: Jennifer de Combe: Staying Rooted in Community and Practices

In today's episode, Nick Warnes has a dialogue with Jennifer de Combe. Jen de Combe serves as the Associate Secretary of Canadian Ministries for The Presbyterian Church in Canada. During her time in this role the department has launched two congregational renewal programs and a church planting support initiative in partnership with Cyclical Inc. She is passionate about discipleship, evangelism and starting new churches. Jen holds a Master of Sacred Theology from McGill University in Montreal.

To find out more about Jennifer de Combe you can visit https://presbyterian.ca/canadian-ministries.

Here are some quotes from today's interview:

• ""You have to establish trust with the people you're reaching. And that doesn't happen overnight.""
• ""We really emphasize building care and trust over time.""
• ""You have to be building your relationships with your overhead church as well.""
• ""I really encourage [new church starters] to partner with a denomination. With a denomination you have history and resources...and a community that stands behind you.""
• ""We should innovate and try new forms, but there is something beautiful about having a tradition [behind you] that you can relate to in new ways.""
• ""God loves beauty, and we're gifted to worship in that way.""
• ""From the beginning, identify multiple sources of finance. Don't rely just on presbytery grants.""
• ""When you're looking for fundraising streams, look for other foundations and organizations with similar missions to yours, and find out who funds them.""
• ""Carve out time every day for spiritual practices.""

Please review this episode, subscribe to this podcast and share it with a friend! Make sure to visit our website, cyclicalchurches.com.

There's a lot more going on at Cyclical, including our upcoming conference. Virtually every church around the world has been impacted by COVID-19 and we are all now in various stages of it. It can be hard to trace the threads of how to understand the church and your role in it and what kind of priorities we should be paying attention to right now. We are gathering a group of ecclesial innovators from across our international network for a conference called Faithful Innovation: Beginning a Conversation for a Post-Covid Church. When you register, you'll get the book too: 12 chapters to help you reflect on this unique moment, and make sense of what it means to be church after COVID-19. Register today at cyclicalchurches.com/events.