“We all have accents, and really, an accent is nothing to be ashamed of but to be proud of because accents are beautiful,” the the Rev. Rafael Viana said during his plenary presentation for the “What’s the Secret Sauce?” conference in Atlanta last week. Read more »
May 2, 2023
Secret Sauce conference offers a recipe for partnerships with immigrant communities and a ‘cookbook’ to download
“We all have accents, and really, an accent is nothing to be ashamed of but to be proud of because accents are beautiful,” the the Rev. Rafael Viana said during his plenary presentation for the “What’s the Secret Sauce?” conference in Atlanta last week. Read more »
Everywhere he looked, the Rev. Allen Shelton saw tremendous gaps — gaps that were keeping high school-aged young people of color like Tariq Mayo from succeeding in life.
Shelton, a veteran educator, community advocate and pastor, was determined not to watch Tariq — and so many other promising youth — fall through the cracks of an increasingly broken educational system. 
Yuriy Lifanse has been named as a 2023 International Peacemaker for the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program. He is a leader in the Community of Sant’Egidio, an international lay Catholic association committed to social service, which was founded in 1968 and has about 50,000 members worldwide. 
First Presbyterian Church in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, gathered Sunday first to worship God and celebrate the many ways the congregation is following Jesus in the Matthew 25 movement. Afterward — following a thrilling Bach postlude on the church’s pipe organ by high schooler Ethan Sexauer — worshipers continued the celebration with a mission fair in fellowship hall. 
A day ahead of celebrating the varied facets of its Matthew 25 work, First Presbyterian Church of Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, on Saturday shared some of the key people in both the congregation and the community to discuss their work and future plans with Presbyterian News Service. 
As participants in Ecumenical Advocacy Days prepared to head off to meet with their congressional representatives on Thursday, a minister from the Poor People’s Campaign provided a virtual pep talk with a one-word takeaway: “Surely.” 
As they prepared to lobby Capitol Hill solons Thursday about the climate crisis, food insecurity and other significant ills, Ecumenical Advocacy Days participants took in an online session on the role that climate finance can play in securing enough food for everyone. 
While serving as pastor of Pleasant Hope Baptist Church in Baltimore, the Rev. Dr. Heber Brown III became concerned about the nutrition and health of some of his members.
“I pastored there for 14 years and during my time, I saw many members of my church being hospitalized repeatedly for diet-related issues,” said Brown, a speaker at an Ecumenical Advocacy Days plenary on Wednesday. 
Blessed by insightful and prophetic preaching by the Rev. Jermaine Ross-Allam, the director of the PC(USA)’s Center for the Repair of Historic Harms, more than 100 people joined in a joyous worship service recently celebrating the first 125 years of service in the Louisville community by Grace Hope Presbyterian Church. 
“I didn’t know how to be where I was,” award-winning poet and essayist Dr. Tim Lilburn said in a public Zoom lecture recently held by Union Theological Seminary in New York City. The lecture was the fifth public forum of The Insight Project, which is described on its website as “a multi-year program series that seeks to put theology in conversation with a wide range of partners in the humanities, social sciences and the natural sciences.”