Four Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) new church developments have been named winners of the 2010 Sam and Helen R. Walton Awards. Each recipient church ministry will receive $50,000.
The four churches, located in Ohio, Virginia, South Carolina and Texas, are diverse, with congregations that are primarily White, Ghanaian, Arabic and Vietnamese. The 2010 Walton Award recipients are:
Ramseyer Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio (Synod of the Covenant), the first African immigrant new church development in Scioto Valley Presbytery.
The Christian Arabic Church, Richmond, Va. (Synod of the Mid-Atlantic), the only Arabic-speaking congregation in the Presbytery of the James.
Palmetto Presbyterian Church, Mt. Pleasant, S.C. (Synod of South Atlantic), a thriving, growing, mission-minded church in the Charleston-Atlantic Presbytery.
Thien An Presbyterian Church, Houston, Texas (Synod of the Sun), which started in May 2001 in New Covenant Presbytery with a vision "to become a new congregation serving 150,000 people of the Vietnamese community in Southwest Houston."
(For more detail on the award-winning churches, please see the fact sheet.)
Each congregation was selected for their work in creatively "Growing Christ's Church Deep and Wide" in their local communities by the Mission Development Resources Committee. The General Assembly Mission Council executive committee endorsed the committee's recommendations.
The Walton Awards were established in 1991 as part of a $6 million gift from the late Sam and Helen Walton through the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Foundation. This gift included an endowment of $3 million dollars. The earned interest is to be used by outstanding new church developments for site acquisition and capital improvement.
Since 1993, there have been 96 Walton Awards totaling $3,910,000 presented to exemplary new church developments across 59 presbyteries in all 16 Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) synods.
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) comprises 2.2 million members in more than 10,000 congregations, answering Christ’s call to mission and ministry throughout the United States and the world.