While the world tries to rush us into Christmas, decorating the day after Halloween and packing it all up once the gifts are opened on December 25, Advent is a season of preparation that — like our holiday gatherings themselves — takes time and care.
The Unification Commission had two main items for discussion during its Sunday meeting: what commissioners have learned after 17 consultations with various groups, boards and committees; and preliminary talks about what needs to happen ahead of the unification of the Office of the General Assembly and the Presbyterian Mission Agency on July 1, 2025.
Just ahead of the Dallas Cowboys’ opening season shutout against the New York Giants on NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” on Sept. 10, Cowboys’ linebacker Micah Parsons, scored another decisive win.
Presbyterian hymnwriter the Rev. Dr. John A. Dalles has completed several new anniversary hymns for congregations marking special milestones — some of them going back centuries.
Lori Erickson has long searched for the sacred in locations and cultures far from home as well as in her beloved Iowa. But when the pandemic put both air travel and in-person worship off-limits, Erickson and her husband hit the road with a camper in tow to discover spiritual sites and experiences in their own home country.
Just as Christians divide history according to the birth of Christ, so we might divide modern history by another birth, July 16, 1945 —BAB and AAB, Before the Atom Bomb and After the Atom Bomb. The test, named “Trinity” by Robert Oppenheimer because he loved the poetry of John Donne, produced a new world, one in which humanity could possibly destroy itself. A dangerous era was born, one that could not be revoked. Christopher Nolan’s massive film, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography “American Prometheus” by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, shows how the scientist that presided over Trinity clearly understood this. His obsession with how the A-bomb would be used after the war even led to his professional undoing. In some ways, this scientific thriller can be viewed as a cautionary film.
The lines of 164 years of Czech history at First Presbyterian Church Near Ely, Iowa blurred with current day Ukraine and the result was unexpectedly amazing.
Meeting via Zoom on Thursday, the Presbyterian Church, A Corporation Board of Directors made short work of its agenda, taking a few actions and providing a handful of updates before voting to enter into closed session to discuss personnel, property, litigation and security matters.
Dividing its time almost evenly between closed and open sessions on Sunday, the Unification Commission — which is working to unify the Office of the General Assembly and the Presbyterian Mission Agency — voted to approve a timeline to complete its work by the 227th General Assembly in 2026.
The Rev. Dr. John Robert Goodman, a pastor and mid council executive appreciated and respected for his polity knowledge proffered at the many General Assemblies he served as a volunteer, died Aug. 8 in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He was 81.