According to a 2020 count, Los Angeles County had 66,433 homeless residents, about the same population as two of California’s college towns, Palo Alto and Davis. Churches including First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood and its indominable director of Urban Mission and Community Outreach, Amie Quigley, became “the model for how church-based homeless ministries work in collaboration with city, county and private agencies,” said the Rev. Heidi Worthen Gamble, Mission Catalyst for the Presbytery of the Pacific.
Even while looking back at what occurred earlier this summer during the 225th General Assembly, Presbyterian Peace Fellowship presenters kept their eyes focused on the road ahead during an hour-long online event Tuesday. Watch it here.
President Joe Biden, singer/songwriter James Taylor, the Rev. Jimmie Hawkins and a few thousand others were on the White House lawn Tuesday celebrating Biden’s signing last month of the Inflation Reduction Act.
Over the weekend, the Rev. Jimmie Hawkins and the Office of Public Witness in Washington, D.C. — together with National Capital Presbytery — hosted two women of faith who regaled a Zoom audience with stories of the decades they’ve spent advocating for and ministering to God’s people.
During last week’s edition of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast,” which can be heard here, the Rev. Deborah Lee did a quick primer on our different kinds of power before delivering the clincher: we owe it to the God who put us here for a reason to use our personal and collective power to help change things for people living on the margins, beyond our borders and inside our prisons.
This summer, together with his partner Troy, the Rev. Brian Ellison, executive director of Covenant Network of Presbyterians, crossed three countries off his bucket list with a visit to the Baltic states — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. In Latvia’s capital, Riga, they visited the new Museum of the Occupation of Latvia, which “tells the story of a healthy functioning democracy” in a country that was occupied from 1939-89 by first the Soviets, then the Germans and then the Soviets again.
“Do you feel like you belong?”
That’s what the Rev. Dr. Cynthia Rigby, the W.C. Brown Professor of Theology at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, asked the people attending Saturday’s Covenant Conversation at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Oklahoma City. Rigby was the keynote speaker.
It’s back to school time, and for parents that means helping children sharpen their pencils and charge their laptops in preparation for the first day. For children it means adapting to new morning routines and getting back to a studying and test-taking rhythm. And for pastors, it’s that wonderful time of year to bless school backpacks. While blessing backpacks is popular in big and small churches, it is only the start to what congregations can — and should — be doing to engage more deeply with local schools. According to Dr. Irvin Scott, a faculty member of Harvard Graduate School of Education, backpack blessings have grown over the years because they provide a relatively hassle-free, easy-to-execute outreach to families. “It’s a good first step,” said Scott, with emphasis on “first.”
Open Hand Ministries, a collaborative effort of four PC(USA) churches in Pittsburgh working to empower Black families living in the Steel City’s East End to build multi-generational wealth, was the featured organization last week on “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast.” Open Hand Ministries’ executive director, Wayne Younger, explained to hosts Simon Doong and the Rev. Lee Catoe how churches can help to empower the communities in which they’re situated.
The PC(USA)’s Office of Public Witness and the Cuba Partners Network are among the organizations calling on the U.S. government to give aid, engage in dialogue and suspend U.S. sanctions following a massive blaze that started last week at the Matanzas Supertanker Base, Cuba’s largest oil storage facility.
