From the Pope to the Southern Baptist Convention, faith leaders across the globe have issued urgent calls to care for God’s creation, our global neighbors and future generations by conserving energy. Hoosier congregations are answering these calls. Last year First Presbyterian Church joined five other faith communities from Gary to Jeffersonville in applying for state grant funds to install solar panels on their church roofs. These five congregations—a community church, a Baptist church, a Friends Community, a Disciples of Christ church and First Presbyterian—installed more than 58 kW of solar panels, enough to supply one-third to one-half of each church’s electrical power. Read more »
October 25, 2016
Using Energy Prudently: A Workshop on Saving Green by Being Green
From the Pope to the Southern Baptist Convention, faith leaders across the globe have issued urgent calls to care for God’s creation, our global neighbors and future generations by conserving energy. Hoosier congregations are answering these calls. Last year First Presbyterian Church joined five other faith communities from Gary to Jeffersonville in applying for state grant funds to install solar panels on their church roofs. These five congregations—a community church, a Baptist church, a Friends Community, a Disciples of Christ church and First Presbyterian—installed more than 58 kW of solar panels, enough to supply one-third to one-half of each church’s electrical power. Read more »
Sa-wing! Bam! Whoosh! When you hit it just right, you know. Through years, decades, nearly two centuries of trial and error in the mission field, I think we Presbyterians may have found the sweet spot on this one. The way we are moving forward in mission involvement in Honduras is feeling like a step in the right direction, bringing a concrete, engaged way to be partners in mission. 
With the publication of “Covenant Living in a Contractual World”—the latest paper in the Presbyterian Mission Agency’s ‘Theological Conversations’ series—the Rev. Wes Avram offers a way for Presbyterians to talk not only civilly but also theologically around the issues that the ongoing election rhetoric has aroused. 
The gravel road is mostly abandoned now. With only small spots of fallen snow and flurries along the way, one would not believe this was the same road that led masses of people to the world’s highest lift-served ski area at 17,785 feet. After navigating hairpin turns and watching the houses and farmland of the Bolivian “altiplano” (high plateau) become smaller and smaller (if one dared look over the narrow road’s edge), the Chacaltaya glacier, in all its nakedness, soon would be revealed. Today’s view of the glacier, however, is much different from that of years past. Now only a few small remnants of ice and snow remain. 
As our society continues to age we hear more and more about the challenges of dementia. There are now about 5 million people living with Alzheimer’s in the United States today, and that number will grow. It has been called the Dementia Tsunami. Alzheimer’s disease is the most feared medical condition and there is still no cure. What starts as forgetfulness becomes increasing disability, disconnection, dependence and death. 
Hope for reconciliation between the United States and Cuba reached a peak when Barack Obama became the first sitting president in 88 years to visit the island nation. People lined the streets of Havana, chanting for the American president—an act that could have sent them to jail in another era. 
As you are reading this, over 200 Presbyterian teaching elders are scattered throughout our nation and the world in service to church and country. These teaching elders serve in federal chaplaincy positions with the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs or the Federal Bureau of Prisons. 
Archbishop Dietrich Brauer of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Russia and Other States (ELCROS) visited the U.S. September 9–18. Brauer visited Presbyterian and Lutheran churches in Topeka, St. Louis, Louisville, Chicago and Asheboro, North Carolina. 
Members of Third Presbyterian Church of Rochester, New York believe more needs to be done to improve education in their city and they’ve launched an initiative to do just that. 
For more than a century, the manse next to First Presbyterian Church in tiny Baird, Texas (population 1,600) served many functions: as the church’s first sanctuary, as a home for a string of pastors, and as space for vacation Bible School and adult Sunday school classes. In recent years, however, it had become an albatross, a dilapidated structure that was too expensive to repair and too expensive to demolish.