The vision for the Matthew 25 invitation is “admittedly audacious,” a new Matthew 25 resource acknowledges. The three Matthew 25 challenges — building congregational vitality, dismantling structural racism and eradicating systemic poverty — “are enormous.”
“And yet we affirm that God is always immeasurably greater,” states the Matthew 25 Bible Study for Prayer and Reflection, now available on the Matthew 25 invitation website. According to Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, God “is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.”
A congregation without a building but with a proven record of innovation for serving the Rochester, New York, community — especially those living in the city’s margins — has accepted the Matthew 25 invitation.
Jack Hemple grew up at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Toledo, Ohio. His parents were married there. He was baptized there.
“I remember being there a lot as a kid,” Hemple said, adding that back then his mother loved to knit.
“She was always knitting. She had a specific hat pattern that she used and she’d knit hats and give them to the church,” he remembered.
But in the late 1980s, a lack of support caused the church to close.
A free new booklet is proof Presbyterians can confess their sins, affirm their faith, pray, break bread and be dismissed — and start and end their day with prayer, all without leaving the 25th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew.
Three of the Compassion, Peace & Justice ministries of the Presbyterian Mission Agency will present webinars next week, giving Presbyterians and anyone else interested a chance to connect with the timely work of these offices.
Since 2012, Giving Tuesday has reminded people that the holiday season is more than a time for receiving gifts. Held on the Tuesday following Thanksgiving and “Cyber Monday,” Giving Tuesday reaffirms the joy of giving during a season of celebration.
The woman from Iraq was dressed completely in black.
It was the first time she had been to Refugee Family Literacy at Memorial Drive Ministries in Stone Mountain, Georgia in two weeks. When Jennifer Green, director of the program, asked what had happened, she learned the woman’s brother had been killed by a car bomb in Iraq.
Green gave the woman a hug, told her she was sad for her, and took her to class, explaining to her teacher what had happened. It was an English-as-a-second-language class for mothers of children in the program’s preschool.
Preachers, educators and worship planners who want to attend to the three themes of being a Matthew 25 church — building congregational vitality, eradicating systemic poverty and dismantling structural racism — have a new resource beginning with Dec. 1, the start of the new liturgical year, and carrying them through Pentecost on May 31, 2020.
I still visualize the words etched into a granite slab on a wall of Elmina, a stately castle on the coast of Ghana, constructed in 1482 by the Portuguese:
