On Thursday, Lionel Derenoncourt and the Rev. Marissa Galván Valle of Beechmont Presbyterian Church (Iglesia Presbiteriana) in Louisville, Kentucky, used a monthly online town hall forum offered by the Presbyterian Association of Musicians to discuss a feature near and dear to the hearts of Beechmont and its neighbors: the Peace Garden the church constructed during the pandemic and dedicated last year.
Presbyterians and millions of other Christians left Ash Wednesday services looking and feeling different — and it wasn’t just the ashen crosses they were sporting on their foreheads, a reminder of the dust by which they were created and the dust to which they will return.
“I really felt it was a call upon my life to be a pollinator of God’s love,” says the Rev. Yena Hwang, the latest guest on Everyday God-talk, a video series from the Office of Theology and Worship of the Presbyterian Mission Agency.
At baptisms especially, Presbyterians love to talk about water. Some of the more adventurous baptizers even splash some of the water out of the font to remind those gathered to celebrate of their own baptism.
The idea for the new podcast “Forging Faith” being offered by First Presbyterian Church of Royal Oak, Michigan, was hatched two years ago when a church member told his pastor, the Rev. Emma Nickel, that the church should try it.
“The advent of a new liturgical year offers congregations and church leaders a fresh opportunity to engage the Matthew 25 vision of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.),” says the Rev. Dr. David Gambrell, associate for worship in the Office of Theology and Worship in the Presbyterian Mission Agency.
The Rev. Dr. Kathryn Threadgill, associate director for Theology, Formation & Evangelism, has accepted a call from Columbia Theological Seminary to become its vice president and dean of Student Formation and Campus Culture.
To the psalmist’s question “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” the Rev. Ron McKinney had a ready answer Wednesday during an online Chapel service for the national staff of the PC(USA): “How can we as Native Americans not sing our song? We are not in a foreign land. We are in our own land.”
For clergy and others called on to proclaim God’s word and organize meaningful worship during Advent and into Christmas Day — which falls on a Sunday this year — it may feel like Emmanuel can’t come soon enough.
Beginning with Advent, preachers, music leaders and the people who hear them each week will enter a year with Matthew’s gospel, thanks to the Revised Common Lectionary, which turns the focus to Year A beginning Nov. 27.
