Posts Categorized: Special Offerings

Celebrating 25 Years of Giving to the Pentecost Offering

The churches listed below have been faithful supporters of this Offering since its inception in 1998. Thank you!We are the Church. Together. Congregation City State Brooklyn Presbyterian Church Brooklyn Michigan Carmichael Presbyterian Church Carmichael California Central Presbyterian Church Eugene Oregon Community Presbyterian Church King Hill Idaho Community Presbyterian Church Waterford Michigan Crescent Hill Presbyterian Church Louisville… Read more »

Pentecost: Building a Life of Faith

“We plan and God laughs” is identified as a Yiddish proverb, the title of a book or two and the headline of multiple online articles meant to help people navigate periods in life when personal plans seem to disintegrate in front of our eyes. When we hear or read the proverb, it can be difficult… Read more »

Pentecost: Helping Immigrant Children Flourish

It’s one thing to watch the heartbreaking plight of new immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers unfold on the evening news. It’s a much greater thing to connect with people, like Lissy, in real life. Lissy, a young Honduran, arrived in the U.S. at the vulnerable age of 14, having dropped out of school to seek… Read more »

OGHS: ‘Unstable Connection …’

Those two words have taken on a deeper meaning in the past couple of years, haven’t they? For many, the words “unstable connection,” “weak connection” or worse, “lost connection,” are synonymous for an online meeting that has become frozen or dropped off. These dreaded words, popping up on a phone or computer, mean whatever is… Read more »

Celebrating the 2022 One Great Hour of Sharing with Our Youth

Engaging the children of your congregation with the four churchwide Special Offerings has never been easier or more important, whether you are engaging them in-person or virtually. There are numerous ways children can connect with One Great Hour of Sharing (OGHS) during the season of Lent, including the ever-popular fish coin banks that often arrive… Read more »

Becoming Flesh

By Rachel Yates We marked each Sunday in our Advent season with God’s promises for hope, peace, joy, and love.  We lit candles at church or in our homes as tangible signs of these promises fulfilled in Jesus Christ. For many of us in Southeast Wisconsin, however, these promises have felt hollow or distant.  Our… Read more »

Reaching for the Stars

For Sarah Valentina Hernandez Solache (SO-LA-CHAY), the colorful city of Zitácuaro (ZEE-TA-QUARO) in the highlands of Mexico — where millions of Monarch butterflies bathe the fields and forests in a sea of orange during their annual migration — was, and always will be, home. But, despite its beauty, Valentina readily admits that it simply wasn’t… Read more »

When Home is a World Away

At first, nothing about Stillman College reminded Johnykqua [Jon-e-kwa] Bevans and Rayondre [Ray-on-dray] (Ray) Roberts of their home on the tropical island of Grand Bahama: not Alabama, not the food, not their classmates and not the as-yet unfamiliar Presbyterian tradition in which the college is steeped. But then there was the choir. Stillman’s nationally-renowned concert… Read more »

A Little Extra Help to Keep the Home Fires Burning

Seems like in one way or another, Jack and Kate Eisel have always been busy putting out fires — unless they were building them. The couple met fireside in 2009 at Zephyr Point Presbyterian Conference Center, where Kate was the conference manager, and Jack, a recently retired pastor, was volunteering in the maintenance department. “Since… Read more »

A Gift Opens Doors — Proverbs 18:16

In the story of God, as we tell it, there is a barrier that exists between the Created world and its Creator. A wall. Sin, we say, separates us from God, and separation from God is unbearable. And our story goes on to say that God, seeing that we had no hope in ourselves of… Read more »