Clarkston, Georgia, has been synonymous with refugee resettlement for decades. Described as the Ellis Island of the South, and the most diverse square-mile in North America, the small city includes a number of faith and nonprofit groups assisting and accompanying refugees. According to a CBS News report, more than 60 languages are spoken in Clarkston. Fifty-three percent of its residents were born outside the United States. Read more »
March 26, 2024
Say ‘yes’ to the community
Clarkston, Georgia, has been synonymous with refugee resettlement for decades. Described as the Ellis Island of the South, and the most diverse square-mile in North America, the small city includes a number of faith and nonprofit groups assisting and accompanying refugees. According to a CBS News report, more than 60 languages are spoken in Clarkston. Fifty-three percent of its residents were born outside the United States. Read more »
If the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s cadre of Disability Concerns Consultants had a motto, it might be: “We are small but mighty.”
That’s how Hunter Steinitz, an elder at Riverview United Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, describes the group, which consists of four consultants who each have a different specialty: people with mobility or accessibility issues, people with intellectual or developmental disabilities, people who are deaf or hard of hearing, and people who are blind or have low vision. 
For her recent talk at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis, author and journalist Michele Norris gathered prominent Minnesotans — including the state’s lieutenant governor — to take turns sharing various people’s six words on race. 
As womanist theologians, the pastors of Liberty Community Church in Minneapolis are seeking the healing of their Northside neighborhood through co-creating spaces of rest and resistance with individuals victimized by the sex trafficking trade and within a community suffering from the effects of systemic poverty and structural racism. 
The PC(USA)’s Asia Pacific Office, part of World Mission ministry, and Burmese churches in diaspora have organized a recorded prayer service for Myanmar to air on the World Mission Facebook page on Saturday at 7:30 pm Eastern (U.S. & Canada), which is Sunday, March 31, at 6 a.m. in Myanmar. The Rev. Pek Muan Cuang, General Secretary of the Presbyterian Church in Myanmar (PCM), will deliver a message and lead prayers and meditation during this Easter Service. 
For Pastor Helivao Poget, the situation was familiar. Poget is the director of the National Chaplaincy Program for the 6-million-member Church of Jesus Christ in Madagascar, a PC(USA) global partner, which goes by its Malagasy acronym, FJKM. A social worker and a missiology lecturer at one of FJKM’s theological seminaries, much of Poget’s ministry has been with marginalized people, including those exploited by labor traffickers and Madagascar’s sex tourism industry. 
“I was glad to see that the church building has become a library to serve the community,” said Sara Jean Jackson as she attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new Audubon Regional Library in Clinton, Louisiana, a town of 1,275 people about 45 minutes northeast of Baton Rouge. 
In her new book “Blessed are the Women: Naming and Reclaiming Women’s Stories from the Gospels,” the Rev. Claire McKeever-Burgett supplies readers with what could have been the backstory for some of most interesting women in the New Testament, including the Canaanite woman and her daughter, whom Jesus heals after first arguing with the woman. 
The PC(USA)’s Office of the Middle East and Europe, part of the World Mission ministry, is presenting a webinar titled “Roma in Europe: Living on the Margins.” 
Given the opportunity to talk about the well-known and well-respected work of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, the Rev. Edwin González-Castillo did not hesitate when he took to the Between 2 Pulpits microphone recently.