The Rev. Jessica Derise has served as a mission co-worker for more than a year, but for the first time is able to do so in person.
Derise is serving in an interim capacity as chaplain for the Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy (MPC), an international congregation founded in the 1960s as a Protestant worshiping community for the U.S. Embassy. From the beginning, five denominations have worked together to ensure that the congregation has had pastoral leadership — the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the United Methodist Church, the American Baptist Church and the Reformed Church of America. Read more »
January 28, 2022
Mission co-worker serving as pastor for Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy
The Rev. Jessica Derise has served as a mission co-worker for more than a year, but for the first time is able to do so in person.
Derise is serving in an interim capacity as chaplain for the Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy (MPC), an international congregation founded in the 1960s as a Protestant worshiping community for the U.S. Embassy. From the beginning, five denominations have worked together to ensure that the congregation has had pastoral leadership — the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the United Methodist Church, the American Baptist Church and the Reformed Church of America. Read more »
The Welcome Table is the feeding ministry at Briargate Presbyterian Church on the southwest side of Louisville. Since April 2019, this small but mighty church of approximately 50 members is following the Matthew 25:31–46 call to actively engage in the world around us. 
The COVID-19 pandemic continued to disrupt or postpone the releases of some films during 2021. With theaters closed during part of the year, some new releases were viewed on various platforms via streaming video. Although this has meant that I have not been able to catch all the new films, I have seen enough to compile a long enough list of candidates that still make paring down the list to 10 a pleasantly painful process. 
Presbyterians and other people of faith are being encouraged to begin making plans to participate in a march and assembly of poor people and low-wage workers that the Poor People’s Campaign will hold this summer in Washington, D.C. 
Email is the preferred way to communicate with your congregation, but are your messages being opened and read? 
Each Sunday, the Rev. Robert Felix has been giving parishioners at Chandler Presbyterian Church in Chandler, Arizona, real answers to honest questions. The way he goes about providing those answers — producing a short film each week based on a top faith question identified on Google Trends, then discussing the film and the question together — has proven to be an effective and innovative platform for, as he says, “figuring out how we share the gospel in Chandler and the world.” 
Natalie Pisarcik, a member of First Presbyterian Church of Boonton, New Jersey, has already bravely shared her story of deep depression and the intention she once had to end her life before asking God to forgive her for what she called “a terrible mistake,” forgiveness Pisarcik said she did receive. 
For seven years, Nick Pickrell, organizer of The Open Table in Kansas City, Missouri, has been hustling to keep the new worshiping community afloat. There was a lot of grant writing and developing — not to mention the community’s antiracism training business. Finally, last summer, Pickrell was able to take a break, thanks to Sabbath & Sabbatical Grants from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s 1001 New Worshiping Communities movement. 
In the final episode of Lydia’s Listening Session, hosted by the offices of Women’s Leadership Development and Leadership Development for Leaders of Color of the Racial Equity & Women’s Intercultural Ministries, women of color who are in faith leadership roles gathered to share their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic and how it has impacted their lives and ministries. 
Any recounting of the journey of the children of Israel must include the story of the golden calf. It’s an important story because it reminds us of our own ways of traveling the journeys God has set before us. We want to claim our place among God’s chosen, and yet we cannot do so without owning our own failures as followers of a leader. We, too, have often found our spiritual leaders “up on the mountain” awaiting a word from God and, like Moses’ followers, have tired of waiting for epiphany that will provide us the answers we desire. We know what happens next.