When she sat for an interview this week, the Rev. Sarah Hegar, who directs congregational ministries at First Presbyterian Church in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, was still basking in the glow of having welcomed six confirmands into membership the previous weekend. Read more »
May 5, 2023
Iowa congregation sees its Matthew 25 future as remaining ‘faithful to the covenant’
When she sat for an interview this week, the Rev. Sarah Hegar, who directs congregational ministries at First Presbyterian Church in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, was still basking in the glow of having welcomed six confirmands into membership the previous weekend. Read more »
How to help veterans who are affected by poverty and intersectional issues will be the focus of the next webinar in “The Struggle is Real” series hosted by the Presbyterian Committee on the Self-Development of People. 
“Our church’s commitment to Matthew 25 is important to us,” says Ashlynn Beauchamp, a 15-year-old member of First Presbyterian Church in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. “It gives us the opportunity not just to better ourselves and follow Jesus, but to branch out and work in the world to improve others’ lives, not just our own.” 
Asked Wednesday about the work that’s making her come alive, the Rev. Gini Norris-Lane, executive director of UKirk Campus Ministries in the Presbyterian Mission Agency, said it’s that “there are college students on campuses around the country that are craving community.” 
“Theology is a trustworthy, yet incomplete enterprise. The revelation of God is ongoing in communities marked by diversity and alterity,” says Dr. Keri Day, who delivered the 112th Sprunt Lecture series at Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, this week. “God desires to be experienced and loved by us in the material worlds, not intellectually mastered by us, as our ideas can never exhaust divine reality,” said Day, who is the associate professor of Constructive Theology and African American Religion at Princeton Theological Seminary. Day is the author of four books and numerous articles and a fourth-generation preacher in the Church of God in Christ tradition. 
Each year as May 5 approaches, which is the National Day of Awareness & Action for Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls & Two-Spirit People, Madison McKinney feels what she called on Wednesday “a heavy burden in my heart.” 
Marcy Stroud, the warden at the minimum-security Mt. Pleasant Correctional Facility, remembers very well the day she received a cold call from the Rev. Trey Hegar, pastor of First Presbyterian Church. 
The Presbyterian Mission Agency’s Militarism Working Group is conducting its second Connecting the Dots webinar in 2023 at Noon Eastern Time on Wednesday, May 17. 
Henry County, the home of First Presbyterian Church in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, lacks an animal shelter — but not for long. 
The “What’s the Secret Sauce?” conference wrapped up at North Avenue Presbyterian Church in Atlanta on April 27 with a multilingual worship led by leaders of new worshiping communities from around the country.