As the team tore down the last of the vines covering the garden gates, Young Adult Volunteer Regi Jones realized they had just helped to unwrap the gift of Okra Abbey for the Pigeon Town neighborhood in New Orleans.
Heritage Presbyterian Church in Muskego, Wis. has a resurrection story to tell.At the beginning it might sound familiar to many Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregations. The membership was graying and in decline. Of the 100 members on the rolls, between 30-40 came to worship.In 2015, the Rev. Michelle Henrichs joined them, providing pulpit supply for five months. Ordained, and trained as a new worshiping community leader, she began asking members of the congregation, “When were you were most energetic and excited about church?”Their most common answer: “When we were raising our children.”
New Creation Presbyterian Church, a 1001 New Worshiping Community in Hendersonville, Tenn. that became an official PC(USA) chartered congregation last year, has been a named as a winner of a $50,000 2019 Sam and Helen R. Walton award.
As an actively anti-racist church organizer of The Open Table KC, Nick Pickrell says it’s important for the 1001 new worship community he founded to bring in “more people of color than white folks” to speak during their twice-per -month Sunday night gatherings.
Members of the Moving Forward Implementation Commission learned Monday why they’d been selected by the women who picked them for service — the co-moderators of the 223rd General Assembly, Ruling Elder Vilmarie Cintrón-Olivieri and the Rev. Cindy Kohlmann.
When Jeff Eddings, a coaching associate with 1001 New Worshiping Communities, talks about its coaching network, he begins by referencing Scripture from Philippians 1:3-5, where the apostle Paul writes to the church in Philippi, “ I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now.”
Looking around the Linda Vista neighborhood in San Diego, one might see poverty and deficits. But what Noel Musicha sees — what gets him out of bed every morning — is the potential that is there among the neighborhood’s young people and the homeless friends he’s made who are beginning to get jobs.
At the Church of Amazing Grace International in Anaheim, Calif., the Bible that the Rev. Kinyua Johnson preaches from is in the ethnic language he grew up with — Bantu Kikuyu, a language spoken by about 17 percent of Kenyans.
