The most direct way to find out the church’s calling in World Mission is to ask Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) partners and constituents, the top World Mission strategist told a Presbyterian Mission Agency committee last week.
During the first of three U.S. partner consultations, more than 30 supporters of Presbyterian World Mission came together last week by invitation to discuss and discern God’s mission in a rapidly-changing world.
I began reforming my understanding of mission work when I participated in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Young Adult Volunteer program after I graduated from college in 2002. I served in England, where the PC(USA)’s church partner was running an after-school program for at-risk youth. I received the most profound impression that year from the YAV orientation and all that I learned from global partners in the community in which I was immersed — namely, that I had so much more to learn about the world around me.
Shivering together in 18-degree weather Friday morning, a dozen or so staff working at the Presbyterian Center helped draw the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity to a close on the Center’s steps by — no surprise — praying for their community, nation and world.
In 2011, Ruling Elder Anita Sue Wright Torres became the first woman to be elected moderator of the United Presbyterian Church of Brazil (IPU). In 2017, she became the first moderator in the IPU’s history to be elected twice.
While sitting in a committee meeting in 2004, Tom Neal asked, “How do we help all our churches get involved in mission?” Since no formal system was in place within the Presbytery of Detroit at that time, he and others worked to create the Hands-On Mission Work Group (HOMWG).
Global challenges can only be faced together, grounded in faith and prayer. That’s just one of the conclusions from the second World Mission global partner consultation in Berlin.
“The creation of God is not an historic fact but a continuous and permanent action,” the Rev. Jose Luis Casal, Director of Presbyterian World Mission (PWM), told representatives of the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s global partners in Africa at a two-day conference in Nairobi at the end of November. “God never tires of creating something new!”
