The Rev. Michiko Bown-Kai, a pastor in the United Church of Canada, discussed during “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” last week how people who feel they don’t belong in religious spaces can indeed feel that sense of belonging.
“Did you agree to be dirt?” the Rev. CeCe Armstrong asked commissioners of Charleston Atlantic Presbytery and members of a newly chartered church in Charleston, South Carolina. The members of Parkside Church in Charleston, in accordance with G-1.0201 in the Book of Order, signed a charter that read in response to the grace of God, “We promise and covenant to live together in unity and to work together in ministry as disciples of Jesus Christ, bound to him and to one another as a part of the body of Christ in this place according to the principles of faith, mission, and order of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).” As a result, the presbytery convened at St. Barnabas Lutheran Church, which is Parkside Church’s place of worship, for a chartering service on Jan. 29 to commission the church, ordain and install elders and fully install their organizing pastor, the Rev. Colin Kerr.
“On Sunday, March 10, 1822, four men and six women swore an oath together in district school #1 on the corner of Concord and Adams Street in the village of Brooklyn,” reads Collette Foster, a member of First Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn, New York, in a video series celebrating the congregation’s bicentennial. “Their idea,” Foster continues, “was to organize a house of worship and to found the only Presbyterian church in their settlement of 7,000 people.”
Five months after Hurricane Ian destroyed a seaside Florida church, its members will gather beside the storm-ravaged building on Sunday, Feb. 19, for a service that’s being called a Celebration of Healing and Hope.
A book published last month by Westminster John Knox Press, “Fractured Ground: Preaching in the Wake of Mass Trauma,” offers help to preachers and community leaders who are called to speak and respond to mass trauma.
The tenor of Lent is one of “complicated joy,” according to the Rev. Carlton Johnson, Associate Director for Theology, Formation & Evangelism for the Presbyterian Mission Agency.
For more than 140 years, Magnolia Presbyterian Church in Riverside, California, has been providing ministry in this Southern California community. The city recognized it as a historic landmark in 1973. Members cite the church’s many outreaches into the community, across the country and around the world.
Whatever Covid stage churches find themselves in — post-pandemic, a return to in-person worship, a re-evaluation of what hybrid worship looks like, whatever the case — “we need to be attentive to the way our sermons are being offered to people,” the Rev. Dr. Peter Henry said Wednesday during the monthly “Equipping Preachers” webinar offered by the Synod of the Covenant.
Dr. Tori Smit, a diaconal minister and professional Christian educator in the Presbyterian Church in Canada serving the 262 churches in the Synod of Central, Northeastern Ontario and Bermuda — yes, that Bermuda — offered an insightful workshop during last week’s annual event of the Association of Partners in Christian Education, addressing a situation many churches find themselves in: “What to do when the kids are few.”
The ministry areas of the Presbyterian Mission Agency and offices of the PC(USA) practiced being good neighbors in the marketplace at this week’s Association for Partners in Christian Education event. APCE’s Marketplace, which features a bookstore and informational resources from various denominations, seminaries, and church-adjacent non-profits, is a major attraction at the annual event.
