The Board of Pensions of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has received a $1 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc., enabling the expansion of Healthy Pastors, Healthy Congregations into a program of national scope and impact. Read more »
December 18, 2018
Board of Pensions receives Lilly grant to expand Healthy Pastors, Healthy Congregations
The Board of Pensions of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has received a $1 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc., enabling the expansion of Healthy Pastors, Healthy Congregations into a program of national scope and impact. Read more »
Monday was the Moving Forward Implementation Commission’s moment to begin moving forward.
The 12-member, two-year commission, created by the 2018 General Assembly to carry out recommendations of the Way Forward Commission and those of other groups regarding such goals as transparency and cost-sharing, met for nearly an hour by video conference Monday evening to, among other tasks, talk about what the commission hopes to accomplish. 
Presbyterians view immigrants more favorably than they did in 2011 and are more involved in immigrant ministries than they were in the past. These are the key findings of the May 2017 Presbyterian Panel survey on Immigration, Refugees, and Immigrant Ministries. The results were released earlier this month. 
While a summertime academic emphasis is not unusual for high-achieving high school students, Lucianna (Luci) Astorga’s educational focus between school years has been much different than that of other scholastically-minded peers. 
It’s been a long four months for Marleny and her family. Since Aug. 28, she, her daughter, son-in-law and nine-year-old grandson have been on the road from El Salvador to the U.S. border. They’ve been at the Mexico-U.S. border for two weeks and are still waiting to talk with border officials. 
As people from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador continue to make their way to the Mexico-U.S. border, a delegation of Presbyterian ministers and leaders headed to McAllen, Texas this weekend as part of the Interfaith Caravan of Hope. 
It’s been 15 months, but the mere mention of the devastation causes Lourdes Perez’s chin to tremble. Tears fill her eyes. 
Day 2 of the A Corporation’s meetings Friday included the kinds of tasks you’d expect of the corporate body of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) — approving committee charters and recommendations, electing corporate officers to one-year terms and scheduling dates and places for the board’s 2019 meetings.
It also included a plea from one of those officers, Mike Miller, the PC(USA)’s chief financial officer: err on the side of over-communicating, and work to allay anxiety over what the “new day” that the A Corporation will mean for the operation of the Presbyterian Mission Agency, and, to a lesser degree, the Office of the General Assembly. 
What does peace sound like to the prisoner who writes about it? For the prisoner whose time stretches from months into years, one wonders if there are words of peace in thoughts, prayers and words exchanged between fellow prisoners and few visitors. 
Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga., has announced that author, scholar and renowned preacher Dr. Frank A. Thomas, the Nettie Sweeney and Hugh Th. Miller Professor of Homiletics at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, will be the 2019 Smyth lecturer.