Faith & Worship

The preacher’s power to persuade

Their place at the pulpit offers Presbyterian preachers a weekly opportunity to persuade parishioners of the power and reach of God’s love for them — as well as hundreds of other messages found in Scripture.

An inconvenient truth

In episode two of the first official season of Everyday God-talk, host So Jung Kim uses the lens of Reformed theology to face what she calls “an inconvenient truth.”

We’re so quick to judge

For Friday’s final convocation during this week’s Synod of Lakes and Prairies’ Synod School being held at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa, the Rev. Dr. Jill Duffield selected the biblical account of the woman pouring an alabaster jar of ointment on the feet of Jesus, which she washed with her tears and dried with her hair.

Speaking the truth in love

One good way to live out its embodiment is for the church to speak the truth in love.

A plaintive cry: Won’t you be my neighbor?

“Only as an adult,” the Rev. Dr. Jill Duffield told the Synod of Lakes and Prairies’ Synod School Thursday, displaying a picture of a familiar Presbyterian pastor and children’s television pioneer dressed in a red zip-up sweater, “did I realize how much my theology was shaped by Mister Rogers.”

Playground behavior

If you think churches are divided today, reread Ephesians 2:11-22.

What the church is called out to do

LOUISVILLE — “Why?” The favorite and persistent question of children everywhere may exasperate parents, grandparents and caregivers, but it’s an important question, the Rev. Samuel Son told the 450 participants during worship Tuesday at the Synod of Lakes and Prairies’ Synod School.

An unexpected blessing

Blessings can come from unanticipated sources in places we might not expect. For the Rev. Dr. Jill Duffield and her family, the place was outside a Goodwill dressing room, and the sources were two older women unknown to the Duffield family.

‘An amazing love story’

Growing up in the City of New York, the Rev. Samuel Son said he remembers pretending that he didn’t care how early in the process he was selected to play in a pickup baseball game. “We would stand there, trying to look like we didn’t care,” Son recalled during evening worship Monday at the Synod of Lakes and Prairies Synod School. “But at the same time, we tried to stand out. We definitely didn’t want to be the last kid [selected].”