Energize Your Spirit — Transform Your Life
Our Vision
We believe that everyone deserves to experience God’s love in relevant, accessible, and authentic ways, and that our faith in practice represents an amazing opportunity to make a positive difference in the lives of individuals, communities, and the world. Our thriving faith community puts God’s love into action to help make greater Cape May a better place. We welcome people of all ages to joyfully love and serve God and our neighbors in the name of Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. God loves Cape May, and we demonstrate that love every day of every year!
Our Mission
Cold Spring Presbyterian Church energizes spirits and transforms lives by delivering resources and experiences that are rooted in the Good News of Jesus Christ through inspiring worship, practical teaching, innovative programs, and community-focused events and ministries.
Established in 1714, Cold Spring Presbyterian Church is a congregation of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and a member of the Presbytery of West Jersey. We invite you to become a part of our hopeful future.
(Our vision and mission was drafted by our Transformation Pastor and was updated received by the session in September 2019. It emerged from the work of the Mission Study Team including Marty Bowne, Kevin Beare, Taylor Burkhardt, intentional transformation journey our congregation began in 2016, including community-directed worship and events, congregational surveys, feedback, and the Focus Your Vision day in 2018. The comprehensive Mission Study will be completed in November 2019.)
Who is the Mission Study Team: While the Mission Study Team (MST) was open to new folks joining in and helping out as we go along, the team to date included: John Stalford, Chuck McPherson, Melissa Arnott, Marty Bowne, Lenore Bowne, Larry Hume, Taylor Burkhardt, and Kevin Beare. Pastor Kevin led the team.
Why We Need A Mission Study: 305 years is a long time. And over three centuries, even since 2016, every community, everyone, experience change. More than you may at first recognize. Being in a community for a long time can so familiarize us to what we’re used to, that’s we cannot clearly see what has changed and who our neighbors have become. Cold Spring Church does many things, but the future belongs to ministries that can focus their resources to deliver amazing, life-transforming ministry the community really needs. We want to take best advantage of existing community resources, and convince our congregation and other friends that our story and program is worth supporting and investing in. In order to do that, we need to create as thorough and as balanced a profile of our community and our congregation as we can. . . . God is already at work in our community. Our task is to find out where Cold Spring Church can enter that picture moving forward.
A recent survey of people ages 18-24 revealed that “selfies” are their most popular genre of photography. The result of the survey is supported by evidence from Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and other media. What’s the difference with a Selfie? Who do you see when you take a selfie? Of course, yourself! The thing is, when you’re always focused looking at yourself you don’t see who? Others, right! When we are walking around all day, whether our phone is in front of our face or not, if we are constantly thinking about ourselves, what we want, we might be being selfish! Jesus wasn’t selfish. He freely gave himself for us so we would be forgiven and given an amazing life! And, Jesus doesn’t want us to be selfish either, but to be selfless!
Make America Great Again is , well, a great slogan! It stirs our imaginations to conjure images of America as Great! But what is our frame of reference to be Great? Back a few centuries ago, America was considered Great because it was the friend of all, welcoming of every religion, even the Puritans (who were kicked out of England because their faith was just weird), the Anabaptists (who fled Europe because their faith was non-conformist), the Roman Catholics (who were feared to be worshipping a prince in a tall white hat instead of the Prince of Peace), and welcoming of Italians, Germans, Scots, French, Asian, African, and South American countries, too. Being great means no one is left behind. There is room for you. One more. The ones no one else seems to want. The others who are forgotten. Being Great as in winning the Great War, enjoying the Greatest Show on Earth, hearing the Greatest story ever told, singing Great is Thy Faithfulness, and recalling Jesus tell his disciples, Greater things you will do, are all, as I said, really great. Aspiring to greatness can be a great thing to aspire to. But what is great? And how do we as individuals become truly great? How do our communities become great? How can Cold Spring Church become great?
The Gospel lesson (John 6:24-35) continues the image of Jesus as the bread of life. This is particularly fitting for communion Sunday when we gather at the table.