During the first week of COVID-19 quarantine and canceled in-person worship services, the Revs. Liz and Dexter Kearny performed a wedding via Zoom.
The Kearnys have served as co-pastors of Longview Presbyterian Church (LPC) in Longview, Washington, since 2016. It’s their first call following their studies at Princeton Theological Seminary and definitely their first virtual wedding. Read more »
January 26, 2021
The Holy Spirit is not under quarantine in Washington state
During the first week of COVID-19 quarantine and canceled in-person worship services, the Revs. Liz and Dexter Kearny performed a wedding via Zoom.
The Kearnys have served as co-pastors of Longview Presbyterian Church (LPC) in Longview, Washington, since 2016. It’s their first call following their studies at Princeton Theological Seminary and definitely their first virtual wedding. Read more »
Pastors and Christian educators from around the country as well as Canada and the United Kingdom joined for a webinar Monday to find out from one another how they’re creating community among the generations during the pandemic and, just as importantly, once it’s over. 
A decade ago, Walter Brueggemann called the church to journey together for the good of our community through neighborliness, covenanting, and reconstruction in “Journey to the Common Good.” He distilled this challenge to its most basic issues: Where is the church going? What is its role in contemporary society? What lessons does it have to offer a world enmeshed in turbulent times? 
The COVID-19 era “is going to radically push what the church is in the future,” the Rev. Dr. Jason Brian Santos recently told the Synod of Lakes and Prairies’ Synod School. 
Although mission co-workers Rachel and Michael Ludwig were pained to leave Niger when the State Department ordered citizens to return to the U.S., they believe they are still having a lasting impact through partnership bridges they have built since they answered the call to serve there in 2014. 
On this Health Awareness and Day of Prayer for Healing and Wholeness, it seems clear that most people who read this will have been acutely aware of their own health and that of their loved ones and indeed, perfect strangers, as we have navigated the COVID-19 pandemic in the past 11 months. The challenges posed by the restrictions and practices we have followed have brought far-reaching and long-lasting changes to nearly every aspect of our individual and communal lives. Issues of racial and economic injustice have demanded our attention and action. As a result, we have been lifting up prayers for healing and wholeness for a world that has known trauma and loss as we seek to carry on and support one another in the midst of this time of heartache and brokenness. 
Standing together and singing hymns while your ship sinks into the waves, taking you to your certain death, is not normal behavior. And yet the Four Chaplains did exactly this on Feb. 3, 1943. Through their sacrifice, others were spared and many more have been inspired. Perhaps as they considered their actions that frigid night, they had in mind the words of Paul from our lectionary today, “I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.” 
Opportunities abound for interfaith engagement, a pastor with the Des Moines Area Religious Council recently told a virtual classroom full of the Synod of Lakes and Prairies’ Synod School students. All one must do is “step outside of what is normal for you and move into someone else’s reality.” 
Two former co-moderators of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assembly will join the Office of Public Witness/Presbyterian Ministry at the United Nations for a discussion about white supremacy and the intersection of racism and gender inequality. 
When a group of Presbyterian women came to the state prison where Shanon Anderson was incarcerated, she quickly learned the program they offer provides more than reading and writing. It’s all about love.