After the first day of the Vital Congregations virtual facilitator training, the Rev. Neil Ricketts spoke with elders at the church he serves.
“I told them that we — our church — and denomination are in good hands,” he said. “How we had heard from God and were implementing a plan for a healthy vital church.” Read more »
January 25, 2021
Pastors hopeful for church’s future
After the first day of the Vital Congregations virtual facilitator training, the Rev. Neil Ricketts spoke with elders at the church he serves.
“I told them that we — our church — and denomination are in good hands,” he said. “How we had heard from God and were implementing a plan for a healthy vital church.” Read more »
From October 2019 through the beginning of 2021 and for the foreseeable future, Lebanon continues to navigate its way through four simultaneous crises that compound the challenges faced by all who live here: political corruption; economic collapse; COVID-19 and the resulting health-care crisis; and recovering from the Beirut Port blast of Aug. 4, 2020. These crises have left young adults in Lebanon without hope for their future. No employment possibilities mean no capacity to marry and start a family. In this context, it has been easy to withdraw into one’s own community and to blame others, whoever they may be. 
The Presbyterian Communicators Network (PCN) will hold its first online workshop for 2021 at 2 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, Feb. 16. 
The Presbyterian Mission Agency Board spent most its six-hour meeting Friday discussing how the Matthew 25 vision will inform the work of the Mission Agency in the coming years. The PMA has begun a Vision Implementation Process to align its work with the three foci of the Matthew 25 invitation: building congregational vitality, dismantling structural racism and eradicating systemic poverty. 
With Palm Sunday just nine weeks away, churches are encouraged to turn their thoughts to Eco-Palms by March 5, the deadline to order fronds. 
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has signed an interfaith statement supporting the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). The nuclear ban treaty was adopted in the United Nations in 2017 and entered into force Friday, which means it becomes binding international law for the parties who have ratified it. 
The pandemic has given church leaders “opportunity at a very strange time,” the Rev. Jessica Vaughan Lower said during her Facebook Live conversation Thursday on leading congregations in 2021. The Rev. Dr. Lee Hinson-Hasty, senior director for Theological Funds Development for the Committee on Theological Education at the Presbyterian Foundation, appeared with Lower as part of the twice-monthly online conversations he hosts with Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) leaders from around the country. 
Over the past year amid a pandemic, protests and politics, I often heard many pastors, elders and mid council staff say that they are having a particularly hard time making ends meet. People aren’t giving the way they used to give. 
The Presbyterian Ministry at the United Nations in New York and Office of Public Witness (OPW) on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., have been natural collaborators for years. 
Next month, World Mission global partner Confronti Magazine and Study Center in Rome will launch an English-language version of its magazine called ConfrontiWorld. Confronti in Italian means “dialogue,” and ConfrontiWorld is “the world through the dialogue.”