The COVID-19 pandemic has exploited wounds we never healed.
When the second grader Susan Byrne is assigned to tutor at Willow Brook Elementary School in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, goes through his reading lesson, he holds onto Byrne’s hand the whole time.
The Office of Vital Congregations will resume weekly Wednesday Zoom conversations at 3 p.m. Eastern Time on May 27.
Bintou Jalloh’s father was clear — education was a priority. “Your first husband is your degree,” he told her. “You get your degree first.” He wanted Bintou to have the educational opportunity of America, so she left her home in Bamako, Mali’s capital, to study accounting at Temple University, in Philadelphia.
On May 27, 1970, fasting commissioners at the 182nd General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., meeting in Chicago, assigned their meal money —$5,178.60 — to the newly-created Presbyterian Committee on the Self-Development of People.
Nebraska Presbyterian Foundation’s Board of Directors awarded grants totaling $137,211 to nine Nebraska churches or organizations in April to partially fund projects which support outreach activities to enhance or expand some aspect of their ministry.
Saying he’d been dreading preaching as part of the Festival of Homiletics, the Rev. Lenny Duncan nonetheless did just that with precision and panache during a sermon broadcast Thursday — even though “I wasn’t sure what God wanted from me this time,” as he put it.
These ideas are offered for congregations as they navigate the return to public worship and seek to bridge online and in-person gatherings. These suggestions may need to be adapted for a particular context of ministry. They should be undertaken only insofar as local resources and current conditions allow.
Recognizing the limited time available at the 224th General Assembly (2020) next month, the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly (COGA) is working to keep commissioners engaged after the online assembly concludes.
The Rev. John Yor, General Secretary of the Presbyterian Church of South Sudan (PCOSS), is asking U.S. Presbyterians for prayers as violence escalates in the Jonglei State in the northeastern part of the country between the Nuer and Murle ethnic groups.