When the Rev. Dr. Jeri Parris Perkins became pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Clinton, South Carolina, she knew the congregation needed to revitalize. It’s what the Pastor Nominating Committee was looking for when the church called her in 2014. Read more »
April 29, 2020
South Carolina church grateful for ‘the gift’ of the Vital Congregations initiative
When the Rev. Dr. Jeri Parris Perkins became pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Clinton, South Carolina, she knew the congregation needed to revitalize. It’s what the Pastor Nominating Committee was looking for when the church called her in 2014. Read more »
Disaster relief volunteers Richard and Susan Caldwell had been praying about their mission work and where God would lead them to when fate stepped in. 
“This is our stone-cold moment to be like Jesus, our rock and our redeemer,” Dr. Brian K. Blount told the recent NEXT Church national gathering at the close of a sermon. The president and professor of New Testament at Union Presbyterian Seminary called on worshipers to “stand on God’s promise … and rock out our world.” 
A formal apology by the Presbytery of Giddings-Lovejoy to African Americans for what the presbytery calls “the sin of slavery and its legacy” recently occurred following a “Journey of Reconciliation” last fall to two institutions in Montgomery, Alabama, dedicated to telling the stories of enslaved black people and those terrorized by lynching and humiliated by Jim Crow. 
In the fall of 2015, mission co-worker Nadia Ayoub was attending a conference with colleagues in Budapest when the city’s Keleti train station became the epicenter of the refugee crisis overwhelming Europe. She could not forget the images of children sleeping on cardboard, families with not enough to eat and the pervasive fear of what would happen next.
At that moment she felt a strong call to work with refugees. 
It’s a universal theme among mission co-workers that they often learn more from the people in the cultures they serve than they could ever hope to give. That’s exactly the lesson mission co-workers Richard and Debbie Welch, serving in Guatemala, learned from their longtime partner in ministry, Julian. 
The Governing Board of the National Council of Churches, meeting during the Easter season 2020, sends greetings to all with the eternal message, “Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen!”
These joyful words are a balm, especially during these difficult days when the COVID-19 pandemic is sweeping over the country, and indeed the entire world, causing illness, death, and the disruption of lives and livelihoods. At the time of our meeting on Tuesday, 3,090,844 people worldwide have tested positive for the virus, and 213,273 have died. 
Last November, when they gathered in a park near downtown Detroit, folks from the Dexter-Linwood Cordon neighborhood could see spring. They could see a butterfly garden, kids getting lost in a black-eyed Susan maze, people relaxing in a gazebo and gathering fresh vegetables in a garden. They could see a new season filled with hope for a Detroit block that had seen better days. 
“Returning to Church,” a thoughtful and thorough resource for ministry during the pandemic and published by the Wisconsin Council of Churches, may be the best thing to come out of the Badger State since bratwurst. 
As president of the Presbyterian Older Adult Ministries Network, Michele Hendrix has long been an advocate for the PC(USA)’s Older Adult Week Sunday, which falls on May 3 this year.