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Evangelism & Discipleship
The Rev. Elmer Zavala of the Presbyterian Hispanic Latino Ministry of Preston south of Louisville knows about unusual and difficult challenges immigrants face with COVID-19.
Nick Pickrell, organizer of The Open Table KC, has never set foot in a seminary. But after five years co-leading this new worshiping community in Kansas City, he’s going through the process of becoming a commissioned ruling elder. “I wanted to be more connected to the PC(USA) denomination,” he says in the new 1001 Worshiping Communities video, “Becoming Presbyterian.”
The Rev. Nikki Collins has been aware of the concept of empowering servant leadership since her high school days, when a teacher brought in a prominent community leader to speak to Collins and her classmates about what it means to be a servant leader.
Before COVID-19 forced him to work from home, the Rev. Dr. Alonzo Johnson, coordinator of the Presbyterian Committee on the Self-Development of People, was walking in downtown Louisville one day when he came across a man holding a “I’m homeless and I’m hungry” sign. Johnson made eye contact and asked how the man was doing. The man clutched Johnson’s arms and told him, with tears streaming down his face, “Thank you for recognizing that I am a human being.”
In the latest installments of Everyday God-Talk, So Jung Kim, the associate for Theology in the Presbyterian Mission Agency, hosts a two-part video conversation about what the late Presbyterian minister and television host Fred Rogers might say and do during the current pandemic.
An April survey by Research Services of nearly 1,100 Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregations and mid councils revealed some surprising responses on how they’re dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic:
Proposed budgets for the Presbyterian Mission Agency — about $61.2 million in 2021 and about $62.9 million for 2022 — will allow the agency two more years to continue the Matthew 25 focus and to carry out no small number of other worthy ministries, too.
Using Ezekiel’s stark vision of the Valley of Dry Bones, the Rev. Dr. David Gambrell elicited any number of innovative ideas from about 70 pastors and other church leaders during Wednesday’s videoconference on Spirit-inspired worship, one of the Seven Marks of Vital Congregations.
The following is revised and updated from a Presbyterian News Service article published March 11:
As the COVID-19/coronavirus outbreak advances, congregations are responding in creative and highly effective ways. Given strong guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and federal, state, and local governments against gathering in person, many have chosen live-streaming or pre-recorded modified services as a way to glorify God together, stay connected as the body of Christ, and seek the healing work of the Spirit.
For a Zoom gathering of about 65 people ready to hear Wednesday about doing intentional, authentic evangelism in the time of a pandemic, the director of Theology, Formation & Evangelism, the Rev. Dr. Ray Jones III, looked to one of his favorite biblical texts in Paul’s second letter to the church at Corinth: “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.”
