Posts Tagged: pcusa

Wisdom journey

Grounded When suffering leads to hope By Graham Standish To truly be grounded in God, we often have to be ground down. It’s not that God wants to humiliate us. It’s that to truly be available to God we have to have humility, and the grinding down of life can cultivate us to become good… Read more »

I do?

Weddings vs. Marriages Why Christian marriage must provide subversive resistance to the capitalism of weddings By Jeffrey A Schooley $26,444. That’s the average cost of a wedding according to www.costofwedding.com. According to this CNN Money article, the average cost in 2015 was actually $32,641. Who’s actually correct is meaningless because we are all wrong for… Read more »

Unglued church

Writing my father’s obituary Can our churches learn from the process? By Mark Roth My father died in April. He was 94, and outlived my mother by just five weeks. When he learned he had chronic kidney failure, he chose not to go through dialysis, and agreed to use hospice services instead. As hard as… Read more »

Guest Commentary

War and Peace: A short reflection A veteran’s view of peacemaking By Charlie Pratt The deliberations in the 222nd General Assembly’s Peacemaking and International Issues Committee were long but exciting. As an observing student, I tried my best to keep quiet during the debate on overture 12-06, “Risking Peace in a Violent World: Five New Peacemaking Affirmations.”… Read more »

Reflections from GA 222

Behind the scenes at General Assembly Track humbly with your God by Jodi Craiglow If you’ve known me for even three seconds, you know that I’m a diehard polity wonk. I’m fascinated by what I like to call the “mathematics of human relationships” – the systems by which diverse people from diverse backgrounds and diverse… Read more »

Reflections from GA 222

Yes and… Telling a grace-first story at General Assembly By Sue Washburn As our denomination works its way through the new language for the Directory for Worship, I’m breathing a sigh of relief. As a pastor, I seek to follow the example of a grace-first God. This means I say yes to a lot of things… Read more »

TLC: Think like a Christian

Desired Distractions? How attention to national “issues” might just be an excuse to avoid local realities by Jeffrey Schooley A congregant recently talked to me – at length – about the bathroom bill in North Carolina. A friend was told by the clerk of his presbytery that he should be prepared for five to six… Read more »

Reflections from GA 222

Hope in the details of your calling The nitty-gritty work of General Assembly By Skip Noftzger Armed with the daily staples of coffee and phone, I venture off to the familiar convention center for another day of meetings, meetings and more meetings that we label the General Assembly. Wandering throughout the halls, I encounter pockets of… Read more »

The unglued church

  WWPS: What would Paul say? Breaking our clay jars to discover the treasure By Susan Rothenberg  But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us…So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature… Read more »

Reflections from GA 222

A sense of worship Encounters with the gospel by Sue Washburn   One of the great things for preachers attending General Assembly is the opportunity to get out of the pulpit and into the pew. As someone who loves worship in its many forms, I was exited to see the similarities and differences between the… Read more »