Nicholas Yoda, pastor of Pleasant Ridge Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati, credits his home church and seminary for preparing him for ministry as a “spiritual docent in a house full of wonder and a valley full of pain.”
The Rev. Edwin Gonzalez Gertz says Light of Hope Presbyterian Church in Marietta, Georgia, didn’t hesitate to become a Matthew 25 church. It provided them the language to articulate who they are.
San Francisco Theological Seminary was established in 1871. In August 1969 under the leadership of President Arnold Come, the trustees of SFTS called the Rev. Dr. Cornelius O. Berry Sr. to join the faculty as their first full-time African American professor. Dr. Berry was an associate professor of systematic theology. He was a faculty member of both SFTS and the Graduate Theological Union located in Berkeley, California. He was also chairman of the Advanced Pastoral Committee and of Area 111 in the GTU until his untimely death in July 1973.
Realizing that its closure was a real possibility, First Presbyterian Church in Winneconne, Wisconsin, called the Rev. Rose McCurdy as pastor to help the congregation find new life. One of its strengths was generosity toward local mission, but McCurdy sensed the congregation needed to extend its involvement beyond its community. When McCurdy picked up the Presbyterian Giving Catalog, she saw a resource that could help her struggling congregation in its quest for renewal. She saw the catalog as an avenue for increased mission participation, and the congregation’s mission committee agreed with her.
“When King David wrote Psalm 23, did he somehow know that it would help my dad help me become a prophet?” asked the guest “preacher.”
In a sermon that made you wonder whether you were at a retreat or a revival, the Rev. Dr. Alice Ridgill, founding pastor of New Faith Presbyterian Church, the first African American Presbyterian Church in Greenwood County, South Carolina, and a Presbyterian Mission Agency board member, reminded the women attending the African American Clergywomen Retreat sponsored by the Racial Equity & Women’s Ministries of the PMA, that they were phenomenal women.
Cameroon has been in turmoil since 2016, as a result of the Anglophone crisis. This discord followed complaints by English-speaking Cameroonians of their marginalization within the Republic of Cameroon.
This isn’t a story about how a small church runs a big program. It’s not a story about how a small church grows into a bigger church. It’s a story about the lessons a group of adults learned from a handful of children as God challenged the adults to try something new.
A travel study seminar to the Philippines and Hong Kong — May 1–15, 2020 — will focus on the root causes and current challenges of forced migration and labor trafficking. The trip includes two days of travel, seven days in the Philippines and five days in Hong Kong.
Politics are personal. As God’s people, we feel our politics. When we watch the news or read it on our iPad, we experience a potpourri of emotions. We get excited, angry, demoralized, indignant, frustrated and more. Some of us take a sabbath from Facebook, while others turn off Twitter.