After three experts on the topic of what’s known as the prison industrial complex had their say during a 90-minute webinar last week, Dr. Rodney Sadler summed up their critique and ideas with this sentence: “It’s almost like you’ve said we ought to take this faith we say we believe seriously.” Read more »
December 7, 2020
The complexity of the prison industrial complex
After three experts on the topic of what’s known as the prison industrial complex had their say during a 90-minute webinar last week, Dr. Rodney Sadler summed up their critique and ideas with this sentence: “It’s almost like you’ve said we ought to take this faith we say we believe seriously.” Read more »
The Rev. Ruth-Aimée Belonni-Rosario Govens is a testament to the leadership development that takes place through the Conference for Seminarians of Color. 
As its final action, a Baptist seminary that was born in innovation is helping undergird the beginning of two new ventures in theological education. 
An Oklahoma husband-and-wife pastor team uses a love for theater to share the Good News with the congregation, providing sermons as plays that often feature modern and humorous takes on biblical stories. 
I’ve been spending a lot of time with Genesis 11:1–9 lately, or the story of Shinar and the so-called “Tower of Babel.” It’s a popular Sunday School lesson, an etiology we recount to children to explain why humanity is so varied in language and location. We don’t engage it as much when we get older. For that reason, how we read and are taught the story as children often stays with us well into adulthood. 
None of the New Year’s Day metaphors — a clean slate, a do-over, a second chance, even grace itself — can quite capture the hopefulness I experience most New Year’s Day mornings. The possibilities seem almost as endless as the upcoming year’s to-do list. 
Living relatively close to China with their three young children, Eva, Eli and Samuel, mission co-workers Jonathan and Emily Seitz feel comfortably safe in Taipei, Taiwan. 
Having as much fun as they could via Zoom, more than 330 Presbyterians gathered from across the country and across borders for the opening night of Synod School recently. They were treated to a childhood faith story from the Rev. Dr. Rodger Nishioka and laughed with — not at — a Synod School mainstay, the Rev. Burns Stanfield and his online band of tie dye-clad musicians. 
Just how powerful is prayer? On Sunday morning I was greeted by an email from a colleague at the Presbyterian Mission Agency with these words: “May you feel the love and receive strength from all the prayers coming your way this day.” 
When Stonewall Ministries decided to use money received from the Presbytery of Riverside to purchase radio ads on KGAY, the Pride of the Valley, Nathan Sobers had no idea that soon he’d have a weekly show exploring spirituality and social justice.