Before COVID-19 forced him to work from home, the Rev. Dr. Alonzo Johnson, coordinator of the Presbyterian Committee on the Self-Development of People, was walking in downtown Louisville one day when he came across a man holding a “I’m homeless and I’m hungry” sign. Johnson made eye contact and asked how the man was doing. The man clutched Johnson’s arms and told him, with tears streaming down his face, “Thank you for recognizing that I am a human being.” Read more »
April 30, 2020
An outward focus
Before COVID-19 forced him to work from home, the Rev. Dr. Alonzo Johnson, coordinator of the Presbyterian Committee on the Self-Development of People, was walking in downtown Louisville one day when he came across a man holding a “I’m homeless and I’m hungry” sign. Johnson made eye contact and asked how the man was doing. The man clutched Johnson’s arms and told him, with tears streaming down his face, “Thank you for recognizing that I am a human being.” Read more »
Fort Collins church encourages it members to bike to church because it’s good for their health and it’s good for the Earth. 
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) has worked in long-term recovery efforts following disasters for years. This includes scheduling volunteer work teams at recovery host sites who clean, rebuild or repair homes years after a disaster. In the past two years, PDA has scheduled 16,516 volunteers from 468 different churches, universities and organizations to stay at one of our many host sites. 
When the Rev. Dr. Jeri Parris Perkins became pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Clinton, South Carolina, she knew the congregation needed to revitalize. It’s what the Pastor Nominating Committee was looking for when the church called her in 2014. 
Disaster relief volunteers Richard and Susan Caldwell had been praying about their mission work and where God would lead them to when fate stepped in. 
“This is our stone-cold moment to be like Jesus, our rock and our redeemer,” Dr. Brian K. Blount told the recent NEXT Church national gathering at the close of a sermon. The president and professor of New Testament at Union Presbyterian Seminary called on worshipers to “stand on God’s promise … and rock out our world.” 
A formal apology by the Presbytery of Giddings-Lovejoy to African Americans for what the presbytery calls “the sin of slavery and its legacy” recently occurred following a “Journey of Reconciliation” last fall to two institutions in Montgomery, Alabama, dedicated to telling the stories of enslaved black people and those terrorized by lynching and humiliated by Jim Crow. 
In the fall of 2015, mission co-worker Nadia Ayoub was attending a conference with colleagues in Budapest when the city’s Keleti train station became the epicenter of the refugee crisis overwhelming Europe. She could not forget the images of children sleeping on cardboard, families with not enough to eat and the pervasive fear of what would happen next.
At that moment she felt a strong call to work with refugees. 
It’s a universal theme among mission co-workers that they often learn more from the people in the cultures they serve than they could ever hope to give. That’s exactly the lesson mission co-workers Richard and Debbie Welch, serving in Guatemala, learned from their longtime partner in ministry, Julian. 
The Governing Board of the National Council of Churches, meeting during the Easter season 2020, sends greetings to all with the eternal message, “Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen!”
These joyful words are a balm, especially during these difficult days when the COVID-19 pandemic is sweeping over the country, and indeed the entire world, causing illness, death, and the disruption of lives and livelihoods. At the time of our meeting on Tuesday, 3,090,844 people worldwide have tested positive for the virus, and 213,273 have died.