Mother’s Day was always fine for me, until it wasn’t. My husband and I had been trying to have a child, and month after month stretched into year after year. Eventually, we grew to dread the annual double punch of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Our well-intentioned church tried to soften the blow on those special Sundays by giving every woman a rose on Mother’s Day and having a blowout barbecue for the all the men on Father’s Day. I still, though, found myself choking back tears and doing a lot of fake smiling. It already felt like God had grown deaf to our prayers, but not finding our experience acknowledged in our church community made it worse. Read more »
August 16, 2022
Hallmark holidays can hurt
Mother’s Day was always fine for me, until it wasn’t. My husband and I had been trying to have a child, and month after month stretched into year after year. Eventually, we grew to dread the annual double punch of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Our well-intentioned church tried to soften the blow on those special Sundays by giving every woman a rose on Mother’s Day and having a blowout barbecue for the all the men on Father’s Day. I still, though, found myself choking back tears and doing a lot of fake smiling. It already felt like God had grown deaf to our prayers, but not finding our experience acknowledged in our church community made it worse. Read more »
Ministries of the Presbyterian Mission Agency continue to keep a close watch on Cuba after lightning triggered a massive fire at an oil storage facility in Matanzas, Cuba, earlier this month. 
The 49 churches in Mid-Kentucky Presbytery are being offered grants on a sliding scale, depending on their membership, to help them install electric car charging stations.
The words of Isaiah 55 convey a profound message to us during A Season of Peace: For you shall go out in joy, and be led forth in peace. 
Even though it doesn’t appear in the Book of Order — I looked — perhaps there’s no phrase, for better or worse, that sums up Presbyterianism than “decently and in order.” If something exists in our life together, we Presbyterians have a committee and — if we’re really on our game — an acronym for it. However, there’s an important reason for our fascination with process and structure: We value shared governance. 
Thanks to the pandemic, tens of thousands of worship services are now posted online each week. For at least some stressed preachers who may be pressed for time, the temptation can be overwhelming to hear a well-crafted online sermon somewhere and pass all or part of it off as one’s own. 
“If we learn how to listen, we can hear in the voice of Creation a kind of dissonance. On the one hand, we can hear a sweet song in praise of our beloved Creator; on the other, an anguished plea, lamenting our mistreatment of this our common home.” 
During Jeff Arnold’s seven years as executive director of the Association of Presbyterian Colleges and Universities 52 of the APCU’s 54 member schools have replaced their president. On average, presidents leave APCU institutions every four and half years. 
Open Hand Ministries, a collaborative effort of four PC(USA) churches in Pittsburgh working to empower Black families living in the Steel City’s East End to build multi-generational wealth, was the featured organization last week on “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast.” Open Hand Ministries’ executive director, Wayne Younger, explained to hosts Simon Doong and the Rev. Lee Catoe how churches can help to empower the communities in which they’re situated. 
Now that Presbyterian Youth Triennium Beyond events are being scheduled, Presbyterian News Service visited with PYT director Gina Yeager-Buckley to learn how new free online resources help young people go deeper into the theme of PYT2022, which was cancelled because of Covid.