The PC(USA)’s Office of Vital Congregations will hold a conference in April in Austin to help congregations and presbyteries learn to have a more vital life together in Christ and reach out in service to their communities.
As Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) mission co-workers based in Japan over the past several years, my wife, Ann, and I have made numerous mission trips to Myanmar to further our partnership with the Presbyterian Church of Myanmar (PCM).
In general, smaller- and medium-sized congregations in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), together with their counterparts in the Episcopal Church, assigned themselves higher scores as part of a vital congregations survey than larger congregations.
When church leaders at Westminster Presbyterian Church in West Chester, Pennsylvania, began discussing the idea to livestream its traditional Sunday morning worship service, one of the reactions was, “Why in the world would we do that?” Some members were afraid it would be an excuse for people to stay home.
Imagine attending the 224th General Assembly in Baltimore and seeing the speaker’s slides appear on separate screens simultaneously in English, Spanish and Korean.
If Kanda Fletcher’s late father — a former prisoner of war during the Korean War— had been a military officer, he would have received full military honors when he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery last June.
Subtly and quietly, Wednesday’s worship service in the Chapel at the Presbyterian Center took shape from a resource designed to allow Presbyterians to spend a year with Matthew’s Gospel.
Racism, the Rev. Dr. Mark Lomax told staff and guests at the Presbyterian Center on Wednesday, the actual birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., is a spirit fueled by hatred and fear, a spirit born of a lie “that you and I, fellow Christians, refuse to address. You and I live into the lie to this very day.”
Visual Parables’ Top Ten Film list is usually different from most lists because ethical and spiritual values in the films carry more weight than aesthetics. That the latter is important, however, is shown each year by the fact that faith-based films seldom show up on the list, most of these being dramatized sermons rather than open-ended works of art.
According to the Rev. Billy Song of St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church in Lomita, California, Los Angeles County has about 60,000 people experiencing homelessness. About two-thirds are living on the streets or in tents.
