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Mission Yearbook
In the fall of 2015, mission co-worker Nadia Ayoub was attending a conference with colleagues in Budapest when the city’s Keleti train station became the epicenter of the refugee crisis overwhelming Europe. She could not forget the images of children sleeping on cardboard, families with not enough to eat and the pervasive fear of what would happen next.
Before coronavirus took over our thoughts in South Sudan, I joined a meeting of women to talk about community development. Women gathered in a circle after the church service, many of them holding young children on their laps. I started the discussion by reflecting on John 10:10, where Jesus expressed his intention to give us “life, and have it abundantly.”
The Rev. Morgan Schmidt serves First Presbyterian Church in Bend, Oregon, as the associate pastor of teens and 20-somethings. When she launched the Facebook site Pandemic Partners on March 12, little did she know the extraordinary impact that using crowdsourcing to help fill some of the needs brought on by the coronavirus would have on her Central Oregon community of about 98,000.
As churches, worshiping communities and their leaders continue to grapple with the spread of COVID-19, some are finding ways to live into their commitment to the Matthew 25 invitation.
G.W. Rolle, pastor of justice ministries at The Missio Dei, a new worshiping community in the Presbytery of Tampa Bay, was in his second week of a self-imposed quarantine.
Remembering “the least of these” takes on greater significance during the coronavirus pandemic.
With many Americans losing the ability to work, school being canceled for millions of children, and child-care centers being shuttered in many places, the challenges of people already living on or near the edge of society become magnified.
“I have faith that God will dry up the Rio Grande so that I may safely cross,” he said. He had been on the journey from Honduras to the U.S. for a month and a half when we met him in a migrant shelter in Arriaga, Mexico. His teenage son was traveling with him. He told us about the pressure on his son to join a gang and the lack of lawful means to support oneself in his nation. He talked of seeing people murdered in the street.
Online worship that’s intimate, meaningful, inclusive — and, at the same time, can be touching and even humorous?
It can be done, according to a panel assembled for a webinar hosted by 1001 New Worshiping Communities Coordinator the Rev. Nikki Collins.
A few months ago, during our Strong Kids/Strong Emotions program for refugee kids, Hadil (not her actual name) was sitting across from me, stringing beads to make a bracelet.
Since the Office of the General Assembly issued an advisory opinion from the Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II, the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), saying that churches can hold online or virtual communion during an emergency/pandemic, the church’s Office of Theology and Worship released the statement “Celebrating the Sacraments in a Time of Emergency/Pandemic.”
