The legal exoneration of the man who killed Antwon Rose last summer has sent yet another shock wave through our community. It seemed inconceivable that a man shooting and killing an unarmed boy who was fleeing from him could be found innocent of wrongdoing. Yet that is precisely what the jury determined. It is claimed that their decision hung on a single factor, that the killer was an on-duty police officer. In Pennsylvania, police are legally given discretionary latitude to shoot at anyone they deem to be a danger to themselves or to others. Yet what is “legal” and what is “right” can be very different. Read more »
March 28, 2019
Setting things right
The legal exoneration of the man who killed Antwon Rose last summer has sent yet another shock wave through our community. It seemed inconceivable that a man shooting and killing an unarmed boy who was fleeing from him could be found innocent of wrongdoing. Yet that is precisely what the jury determined. It is claimed that their decision hung on a single factor, that the killer was an on-duty police officer. In Pennsylvania, police are legally given discretionary latitude to shoot at anyone they deem to be a danger to themselves or to others. Yet what is “legal” and what is “right” can be very different. Read more »
With all the skill and passion she’s built spending 30 years in the pulpit, the Rev. Dr. Diane Moffett christened the Matthew 25 Invitation before the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board Wednesday. 
When Dan Turk gazes at tangerine trees in Antanetibe, Madagascar, he sees more than an agricultural success story.
He sees a path out of poverty for the families who tend the crop. It’s a route that traces its beginnings to Turk and his partners at the Church of Jesus Christ in Madagascar (FJKM). In 2010, Turk’s colleagues from the FJKM visited Antanetibe and trained about 70 people in tangerine production. The church’s entire Development Department traveled to the town, stayed in the homes of the future tangerine farmers and helped them plant the trees. 
Young adults in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) ages 18–30 are invited to serve during a Young Adults in Mission (YAM) Work Camp July 23–31 on the island of Curaçao in the eastern Caribbean Sea. The eighth YAM Work Camp, sponsored by the Caribbean and North America Council for Mission (CANACOM), will bring together young people from a dozen Caribbean and North American countries to experience a Caribbean culture in mission, rather than as tourists. 
Count the stars. Open your eyes and see the well of water. Take a stone and use it as a pillow.
During my first year as a new pastor, I decided I would write a curriculum for our children that would focus on common outdoor experiences that they and the main characters in the book of Genesis had. The first lesson focused on God’s covenant with Abraham in which he was told to look at the sky and count the stars to get an idea of the number of his descendants. The next centered on Hagar and what it was like to be hot and thirsty and to discover a water source to quench your longing. The third week focused on Jacob’s falling asleep outdoors with a stone as a pillow. Week four’s curriculum was never written because by then I had discovered that the children in my suburban congregation had never counted stars on a dark night, quenched their thirst in a cool stream or slept out under the sky. 
Museum commemorates lives lost constructing Thai-Burma railway April 27, 2019 Although Thailand is the only Southeast Asian country to avoid colonial occupation, it did not escape war and the… 
The church doesn’t have a mission. Church is mission, embodying God’s “fullness of life” economy in Christ for all and living this out in partnership.
While a Caribbean “multiple hybrid belonger,” I am at home in the United Reformed Church (URC) in the United Kingdom, actively involved in the global and intercultural work of our mission department. The “world,” in all of its diversity, is everywhere! Linking global, intercultural and missional is significant. 
Across the United States, one of the major struggles for people with criminal convictions is finding work. For many employers, having a criminal record ends the conversation with a prospective employee.
After funding a pair of initiatives that helped ex-offenders in Lansing, Michigan, return to the workforce, the Presbyterian Committee on the Self-Development of People (SDOP) has funded a program that is helping those people take their work to the next level. 
The men were taken first, and then the women and children were brutalized. Witnesses saw the Euphrates run with blood, and women plunged into the river to escape the terrors of the desert march. 
Participants in this month’s Presbyterian Peacemaking Program travel study seminar in Rwanda saw much more than memorials to the genocide 25 years ago when between 800,000 and 1 million people were killed by their neighbors in a period of 100 days.