Starters and Discerners

Starters are organizers of new worshiping initiatives that have begun a new thing. These projects often start with a steering team, an experiment, and a desire to create communities that are nurturing people on their journeys of faith in a creative way. Currently, Hudson River Presbytery has 6 new worshiping initiatives.

connect.faith Inc.: Where creativity, spirituality and justice meet. Primarily online, creativity labs on Wednesday nights, and midweek meditations delivered by email give people ways to be spiritually fed. We also produce a podcast, called The Courageous Voice, that introduces creatives working on justice issues in powerful ways. We continually look to inspire people who want to find new ways forward in faith, and attempt to nurture people in faith.

Transformations: This group is centered around music, meditation and healing. It is presented in an online format that also provides opportunities for people to connect. Bi-monthly gatherings make space for anyone who is interested. We also have a focus area program for helping people who are processing grief.

Finding Our Way Home: Innovative, improvisational music and writing in-person group, organized around themes such as forgiveness, hope and gratitude. We are diverse in race, age, gender, sexuality, and finances - and we are connected by a desire to let the spirit move in and through us.

Songbird: What is Songbird? Songbird at Amity Arts Center is a maker-space centered in creativity and community care as spiritual practice. The vision of Songbird is to be a gathering space for multi-cultural and interfaith communal art projects, critical conversations, performances and music; bringing together grassroots organizers, artists and spiritual seekers who want to take care of their neighbors and build a better world.

Compost Collective: The Compost Collective is a growing initiative of Freedom Farm Community which seeks to welcome youth and young adults, families of all formations, disillusioned adults, and hungry seekers who might not feel free to experience the sacred inside church buildings. We worship monthly outside in all weather, listening to God’s voices in creation, and periodically gather for other community-building events (art-making, shared meals, teach-ins). We aim to be a creative, open and affirming multi-cultural collective, welcoming folks from a diversity of experiences. Why the name ‘Compost Collective’? We are living in a time of breakdown, decay, deep uncertainty and also, we trust, a time of powerful Spirit movement as new life emerges from what looks like only death. We are listening together for that life.

The Kin-dom Collective is a spiritual community that gathers people who long to reconnect with the Sacred, one another, and the Earth through shared practice and conversation. Rooted in Circle practice, story, and land-based learning, the community hosts seasonal gatherings at a small family farm in Bashakill, Wurtsboro, where community members gather to rest, learn, and deepen kinship with plants, animals, and one another.

To find out more and connect with one of these groups, email debbiebronkema@hudrivpres.org.

Discerners are sensing a call from God to engage in ministry in some new way, and are beginning the process of considering what that way might be. They design experiments, participate in spiritual practices, and consider how they can reach out to help people’s lives be transformed by the grace and love of Jesus. We have had 15 discerners engage in the ministry of Cyclical Hudson River in some way in 2024.

We gather our starters and discerners together monthly, on zoom and/or in-person. If you want to talk about joining in contact debbiebronkema@hudrivpres.org.