HELM assumes ownership of The Intersection

"We believe the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) needs a vital online presence," said HELM President Dennis Landon, "and we think The Intersection will provide an important venue for Disciples and others to share information, opinion, and best practices in relation to the Church's priorities - especially the call to renew and revitalize congregational life and mission."

Launched in July 2009 by DisciplesWorld magazine, The Intersection provides a centralized web site for discussion, information, and resource sharing among Disciples and their congregations. Since the magazine ceased publishing at the end of 2009, former news editor Rebecca Bowman Woods has maintained the site. In June, Woods announced she would hand the site off to volunteers, at which point HELM and Woods quickly negotiated the transition.

"HELM continues to hold DisciplesWorld and its staff in high esteem," Landon said. "While DisciplesWorld is remembered as an outstanding, award-winning magazine about faith and the Disciples, The Intersection is a living legacy of their creativity and vision."

HELM recognizes The Intersection's valuable assets and potential:

• A ready-to-use, recognized platform to support denominational efforts to revitalize 1,000 existing congregations and create 1,000 new congregations by 2020; to become a diverse, reconciling church; and to create leadership make these efforts reality.

  
  

• An outlet for a Disciples' brand of "citizen journalism" - Disciples volunteers collecting, reporting, analyzing, and distributing news about the denomination's work, from individuals to congregations to regions to the general church.

  
  

• An inexpensive, ready-to-use, already established communications tool, eliminating the need for months of labor-intensive planning, costly programming, or a pricy marketing campaign.

  
  

• 863 registered participants as of late August, people who have chosen to become part of an online community.

HELM, along with Church Extension and Disciples Home Missions, are working to develop tools to train and enable pastoral leaders to energize mission-driven Disciples congregations. A key element in this project is creating a deeper, more diverse network of leaders committed to working with and learning from one another in pursuit of transformed congregations.

"We approach this as an experiment," Landon said. "Other than implementing a new URL - www.disciplesintersection.org - we don't plan any immediate changes in how the site currently works, and we hope any changes will be additions, not replacements. The site may focus more on the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), but we don't plan to exclude participants from other faiths. We will actively seek advertisers who are consistent with our mission and can help The Intersection prosper and grow."

The site's day-to-day operations will be overseen by Landon and Brad Lyons, HELM's Communications Director, but volunteers who want to be involved in the site are still heartily welcomed - and needed.

"Volunteers fuel The Intersection. Without them, it goes nowhere," Landon said. "We appreciate the volunteers who work with the site and everyone who posts, whether regularly or sporadically.

HELM works to nurture transforming leadership for the church in partnership with Disciples congregations, higher education institutions, campus ministry programs, regions, general ministries, and other parts of the church.