With support provided by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian (CCAP)’s Synod of Zambia created a Health Department in 2016. During its first three years, the CCAP’s Health Department has focused on building and improving infrastructure, strengthening the health of women and girls and ensuring availability of preventative medicine and personnel. Read more »
December 17, 2019
Church of Central Africa Presbyterian and the PC(USA)
With support provided by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian (CCAP)’s Synod of Zambia created a Health Department in 2016. During its first three years, the CCAP’s Health Department has focused on building and improving infrastructure, strengthening the health of women and girls and ensuring availability of preventative medicine and personnel. Read more »
The Board of Trustees of Eden Theological Seminary announced last week the appointment of the Rev. Dr. Deborah Krause as president. Krause, an ordained clergywoman in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), is the first female president in the seminary’s history. 
Do you ever get irritated when reading genealogies in the Bible? All that “so-and-so begat so-and-so…” Most of the time, we just skip over these lists of unpronounceable names to get to the good parts that really matter. Yet, genealogies hold deep meaning for us if we pause a moment and consider them closely. This is especially true for the genealogy in the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. 
Grocery shopping was once an anxiety-filled experience for the Rev. Gloria Casasus-Urrutia. 
One half of the draft report being written by the Special Committee on Per-Capita Based Funding & National Church Financial Sustainability will be put to the vote this week, with the report’s second half, on the future of per capita funding, expected next month. 
Filmmaker, pastor and presbytery executive the Rev. Ryan Landino closes his most recent “Pastor Ryan’s Sixty Second Sermons” video, which he calls “It’s a Wonderful Church,” with a variation on the capper to a certain Jimmy Stewart holiday film standard: “Teacher says every time a church pays its per capita, an angel gets their wings.” 
When I was a child in East Germany in the 1950s, oranges were hard to get. This was still the case when we had our own young children in the 1970s and 1980s. But in all those years one of the special things about Christmas was that we were able to buy oranges! We labeled them “Christmas quota oranges” and they came from Cuba. We rather loved them for their juicy sweetness even though they had a leathery surface and chewy flesh inside. And we learned later those oranges were originally a variety not meant for eating, but for juice production. 
I got off the train after a four-hour ride along the Pacific Ocean and headed to the exit to be met by a pastor from Bunun Presbytery, an aboriginal presbytery on Taiwan’s east coast. I was on my way to lead the fourth pastors retreat in three weeks. 
Jonesville First Presbyterian Church has always prided itself (and still does) as being a congregation of warm and welcoming Christian worshipers. The church, which has 120 members and an annual budget of slightly over $150,000, has always welcomed strangers with enthusiasm. 
Like a lot of people, I look forward to Christmas. It is one of the most meaningful times of the year. But being from the Caribbean, our Christmases are a little different than the typical American celebrations.