For the better part of the past decade, Carl and Rebecca Hart, and eventually their young son, lived at The Grove Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. The housing arrangement allowed them the time, energy, and relative financial freedom to serve the church and the surrounding community. This relationship flourished until, in the summer of 2022, an unexpected ruling from the fire inspector forced The Grove to evict the Harts. The Rev. Kate Murphy, pastor at The Grove, says this situation points to a bigger justice issue, and she wants the larger church to fight back.
To honor Africa Day celebrated on Thursday and Pentecost on Sunday, World Mission’s Africa team led the Chapel service on Wednesday. Nearly 50 of the PC(USA)’s national staff joined the team for an informative and thoughtful online worship service.
A woman with lived experience as a homeless veteran brought home the importance of ongoing support for veterans during a recent webinar that explored issues related to poverty among veterans and how churches can help.
Why are people poor in your area? How has poverty touched your life? Your community? Your faith community? More than 150 people joined the Matthew 25 webinar Tuesday on eradicating systemic poverty, which organizers called “Where Does Jesus Stand? Exploring Five Spiritual Practices to End Poverty.” The webinar explored these and more questions and invited participants to mull them further in small groups near the end of their time together.
It began, as so much seems to begin these days, with an email. “The mission committee of Mid Kentucky Presbytery is ready to again collect Hygiene Kits for Presbyterian Disaster Assistance,” wrote Ruth Welch, coordinator of the project for the presbytery. “We hope the Presbyterian Center will join in collecting, sorting, and assembling these kits.”
At the age of 104, Donald Fletcher has no plans to slow down. The son of Presbyterian medical missionaries, the Rev. Dr. Fletcher has managed to reinvent himself since he came into the world in 1919. He has lived a life that has taken him to the mission field, to higher education, to the church and his community.
“I grew up in Korea as part of a medical missionary family, along with my brother and sister,” he said. “My brother followed our dad into medical mission, while I was drawn naturally to spoken and written language.”
Throughout the year, the Presbyterian Mission Agency offers more than 20 grants and scholarships ranging from $100 to $50,000 awarded to individuals, communities and mid councils.
The Governing Board of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA (NCC) is pleased to announce that Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie has been elected to serve as President and General Secretary of the ecumenical organization. She is the first African American woman to serve as both President and General Secretary of the organization.
Declaring himself to be “a small product of a great tradition who believes we should never be surprised by evil or paralyzed by fear,” Dr. Cornel West joined Ifeoma Ike, an advocate, writer and policy advisor, at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis Saturday for Westminster Town Hall Forum’s Arc Toward Justice series.
The week before the Rev. Ruth Faith Santana-Grace received a 2023 Distinguished Alumnus Award from Princeton Theological Seminary, the Co-Moderator of the 225th General Assembly (2022) spoke to the news service about her first year leading the assembly alongside the Rev. Shavon Starling-Louis.