Ruth and I have just returned from the 2022 Via de Cristo Annual gathering. the theme of the weekend was “Love One Another”. After not having a real in-person gathering for several years it was good to renew old friendships.
1One common topic for discussion was “How do we come back after Covid”. It is surprising the number of communities that are languishing or about to fail just as the Utah VDC community is. Most surprising was the Minnesota community.
So what do we do? How can we revive the movement here in Utah? We talked with several people from different communities and here are some of the ideas we came away with.
- A Back to the Mountain weekend – this is a three-day weekend that starts on Friday and is specifically for the current 4th-day community. I have an outline and information about this type of weekend coming from Debbie Klatt of Texas Lutheran Via de Cristo.
- TEC Teens Encountering Christ – this is, as the name implies, a weekend for teens. I talked to Pastor Conda Lashley from North Carolina about their TEC programs. He will be sending me the manual for conducting a TEC weekend.
- Clergy only Weekend – Some communities have had some success conducting a “Clergy Only” weekend. this is usually a Friday-Saturday weekend with only a few Rollo’s presented by other clergy. The goal is to give the Pastors of other congregations an opportunity to experience the VDC experience. Communities such as Light in the Desert and Texas VDC have had some little success holding these types of weekends usually once a year. I have a brochure and information coming on these types of weekends.
- Team with other protestant movements such as Walk to Emmaus, or The Great Banquet
These are some broad-stroke ideas but there are some other things that we can do such as:
- Do a one-on-one face-to-face visit with the pastor in the valley. To do this we need to have one of the pastors accompany us or meet them at the weekly/monthly prayer breakfast. Light in the Desert has had some success with this.
- Get the 4th-day community involved again – we’ve talked about this in the past and we still haven’t hit the sweet spot to get this done. We need to brainstorm this some more. Perhaps some one-on-one meetings with past 4th day members to see why they have lost interest in the movement.