May 17, 2021
Colleagues in Ministry,
As an honorably retired member of the Presbytery of Western North Carolina you have some choices you can make about periodic training that is required of active ministers every four years.
· If you do not serve on one of the designated committees of presbytery, and you expect to undertake no ministry functions except on an occasional basis—for which you pledge to request permission for a “single event exception” from presbytery via either the Chair of COM, the General Presbyter, or the Stated Clerk—then by not registering for training in 2021 you will be presumed to have “opted out.”
· If, instead, you want to “opt in” because you serve on one of the designated committees of presbytery or because you wish to avoid the necessity of requesting “single event exceptions,” read on about the opportunities for training this year.
As you may have heard at the meeting of presbytery on April 27, 2021, the Sacred Boundaries planning team has arranged two options from which participants may choose. Both options are asynchronous online courses of approximately two hours to be scheduled individually at a time that works on each one’s schedule. The course you choose will then be followed at another time by a one-hour debriefing session with members of the planning team via Zoom.
The only constraint on when you schedule the selected online course is that it be completed prior to one of these debriefing sessions scheduled as follows:
· Thursday, June 10, 2021, 7-8 p.m. via Zoom
· Thursday, September 23, 2021, 2-3 p.m. via Zoom
· Thursday, October 28, 2021, 7-8 p.m. via Zoom
Here are the online courses from which you may choose:
· Clergy Ethics Course
o Clicking on this l
ink will give you full details of the course.
· Safe Gatherings Training Course is a comprehensive training empowering leaders to protect children, youth and vulnerable adults through greater awareness of:
o Sexual predators and their habits •
o Types of abuse •
o Signs of abuse •
o How to respond to disclosure of abuse •
o Mandatory reporting •
o and more!
Both courses are furnished through SafeGatherings.com. To begin the registration process for either course click
here This takes you to the home page.
If you want to register for the Safe Gatherings Training Course click the red button at the top of the page labelled “Get Started.”
If you want to register for the Clergy Ethics Course click on the green button at the top of the page labelled “Clergy Ethics Course.”
In either case the next page will ask you to establish your own account, working your way through several pull-down menus. After you choose “Presbyterian” as the denomination, you are asked to indicate your specific organization. Begin typing “western” and the option for the Presbytery of Western North Carolina will appear. Next you will enter your personal information to establish your account with a password. This will take you to the next screen where you enter additional details and agree to terms of service. On the following screen you are asked to pay for your course online with a credit card. If you would like to be reimbursed for the cost forward a copy of your electronic receipt to
lpressley@presbyterywnc.org when you have completed the course. When you take the final quiz for your course, presbytery will receive a notification that you have completed it.
If you encounter any difficulties in this process, please be in touch with Cam Murchison (
cmurc1@gmail.com; 404-556-8041) or with Tonya Williams (
twilliams@presbyterywnc.org; 828-438-4217). Thanks for joining us in exploring new ways to ensure healthy and sacred boundaries in PWNC.
