As we begin the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, there are reasons for hope, including vaccines approved for emergency use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Yet even 95% efficacy for a vaccinated individual means that, statistically, 19 out of 20 people are effectively covered against becoming seriously ill from coronavirus, but 1 in 20 is not.
This Easter season, one of the ways Covenant Network of Presbyterians is furthering its mission is to offer Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) preachers a week off from filling their virtual pulpit on April 11, the Sunday after Easter.
Originating high atop Elk Mountain, the Gallinas River flows southeast through upper Gallinas Canyon past Montezuma’s hot springs straight through the heart of Las Vegas, New Mexico as it courses toward the Pecos River, luring expert fishers along its winding path.
Not to mention great pastors.
The gift of $22,000, which after legal fees would be worth around $250,000 in today’s dollars, was given to Knox Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati exactly 100 years ago to aid the congregation in constructing a new church. But according to Knox’s pastor, the Rev. Adam Fronczek, there was “some lore” in the congregation about the gift, which came from a woman who wanted to be buried inside the walls of the church.
Some of the best worship and most meaningful preaching the Rev. Landon Whitsitt has seen and heard during the pandemic has come from preachers and other worship leaders willing to share themselves in an authentic way with those attending the online services they’re creating each week.
The pandemic has given church leaders “opportunity at a very strange time,” the Rev. Jessica Vaughan Lower said during her Facebook Live conversation Thursday on leading congregations in 2021. The Rev. Dr. Lee Hinson-Hasty, senior director for Theological Funds Development for the Committee on Theological Education at the Presbyterian Foundation, appeared with Lower as part of the twice-monthly online conversations he hosts with Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) leaders from around the country.
What started off as an initiative of the adult Sunday school class at First Presbyterian Church in Morgantown, West Virginia, has grown to a wider community-based effort now called Dismantling Racism Together.
