On the 10th anniversary of the adoption of “Comfort My People: A Policy Paper on Serious Mental Health,” the 223rd General Assembly (2018) funded a two-year mental health initiative based in the Presbyterian Mission Agency (PMA). The mental health questions in the Research Services minister survey were designed in collaboration with PMA staff and are part of a larger study of mental health across the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). The questions focus on four areas: awareness, training, ministry and self-care.
Preachers, Brian McLaren told more than 1,400 people viewing the Festival of Homiletics online recently, must also be doubters. If they need role models, the author, speaker, activist and public theologian said, preachers have to look no further than Jesus and Paul.
“Thanks so much.”
“I am so overwhelmed with gratitude.”
“We are excited.”
“This is wonderful news for our congregation.”
These comments are from some of the leaders in more than 200 Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) churches and worshiping communities — each of them with 150 members or fewer — who recently received free book bundles (listed below) from the denomination.
One night when the Rev. Dr. Craig Barnes was a boy, his father woke him up and introduced him to his new brother, Roger.
Barnes’ father was the pastor of a church in a poor community, and Roger came to services with his mother. The pastor had talked to the family and tried to help the mother and father with their addictions, to no avail.
In the late 1980s, when I was serving as a youth group leader in my local congregation, my pastor invited me to attend a gathering that I recognize now as the early stages of a new movement for youth in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Even as I was being drawn headlong into the phenomenon that was — and still is — the Presbyterian Youth Triennium, I had no idea how the lens through which I viewed the PC(USA) was about to change.
A “peace movement” is taking place throughout Mid-Kentucky Presbytery. Its origins are found in Scripture for sure, but the movement has gained momentum largely in response to COVID-19.
World Food Day — celebrated on Oct. 16 every year — commemorates the founding in 1945 of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The FAO was created to respond to famines and the tragedy of hunger in a world of God’s abundance. Despite the abundance of land, water, nutrients, and sunlight on this precious planet, even in the 21st century, hundreds of millions of people go hungry on Oct. 16 and every day of the year.
Like great Black preachers from previous generations, including Dr. James Cone and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., modern-day prophetic preachers have two main jobs, Dr. Anthea Butler said during the first day of the online Festival of Homiletics: bringing solace to people in the pews in times of trouble and speaking truth to power.
