For as long as there have been Christians, believers have used a variety of media ― art, literature, music, architecture ― to articulate and communicate the spiritual rumblings of their inner lives.
But the Christian world has never seen someone quite like Greg Fromholz.
While churches in India are generally endorsing the campaign against government corruption led by activist Anna Hazare, they have joined Muslim and secular activists in expressing concern over whether political opponents of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Congress party are trying to politicize the protests.
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) adopted a new form of church government in 2011, providing new opportunities for mission and ministry.
Changes to the Book of Order permit flexibility for presbyteries, synods, and congregations to make decisions fit for their constituents, and define mission and language interpretation in the church.
“It also has a dimension of bringing us back to a truly constitutional document that contains broad governing and theological principles and emphasizes function over structure,” PC(USA) leaders wrote in a church-wide letter.
The Rev. Mienda Uriarte will begin duties this month as coordinator of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s mission work in Asia and the Pacific.
Uriarte is a Presbyterian minister and a clergy member of Pacific Presbytery, with more than 25 years of experience working in the PC(USA) and other religious organizations. Prior to joining the PC(USA)’s World Mission department, she was the case manager for the Refugees of the World program at Kentucky Refugee Ministries in Louisville, Kentucky, where she successfully resettled more than 1,000 Asian, south Asian and southwest Asian refugees. Uriarte had also previously worked as Coordinator for Youth and Young Adult Ministries at the PC(USA)’s national office.
The day jobs of deacons and ruling elders in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) range from CEO to waitress, doctors to clerical workers. But the profession of water dowsing — finding underground water with a forked branch — might be limited to one person.
Vernon Bandy is an 80-year-old deacon at First Presbyterian Church in Bozeman, MT, and a life-long water dowser.
In Fargo-Moorhead, a metropolitan area of about 200,000 separated by a river and a state line, there are plenty of traditional Christian congregations — Lutheran, Presbyterian and Methodist to name a few.
But some of those Lutheran congregations began to notice that there were also a surprising number — 45,000 in their estimation — of young adults who were not connected to any sort of faith community.
The U.S. State Department on Sept. 13 designated eight nations as the most serious violators of religious freedom, naming the same countries as the Bush administration.
The list of “Countries of Particular Concern” includes Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Uzbekistan. All but Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan also received sanctions.
Christian groups in Hong Kong are supporting migrant domestic workers seeking to change an immigration law that does not allow them to apply for permanent residency.
Picture it: A candidate for ordination as a teaching elder (minister of the Word and Sacrament) taking all of the standard ordination exams online on a flexible schedule and receiving the results in a matter of days.
That image is the vision of a plan announced by the Presbyteries’ Cooperative Committee on Examinations for Candidates (PCC) to move the administration and evaluation of the exams to an online management process.
The new process, to be implemented in phases over the next three years, will streamline the evaluation process and administration costs, while maintaining the integrity of the examination process.
The new Presbyterian hymnal, to be published in the fall of 2013, has a title.
“Glory to God: the Presbyterian Hymnal” will be the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s first new hymnal since 1990. The Presbyterian Committee on Congregational Song, formed in 2008, will submit a final list of hymns to the 220th General Assembly in 2012.