Preacher, tell us a story.
People who listen to sermons week after week will usually sit up and take notice when the preacher launches into a good story, according to the Rev. Dr. Alice Ridgill, associate executive presbyter for the Presbytery of Charlotte. Ridgill spoke Saturday during the third installment of The Preaching Lab, a five-part online workshop offered monthly by New Hope Presbyterian Church in Anaheim, California, through a grant by the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
The recently released book, “Fury and Grace: 40 Days of Paintings and Poetry from Prison,” edited by the Rev. Riley Pickett and the Revs. Layne and Crawford Brubaker, is now a podcast, too.
For three social justice-focused Presbyterian churches in Orange County, California, Ash Wednesday will look different this year. But its meaning may be even more profound and deeply felt than in pre-pandemic times.
New Castle Presbytery has created NCPtechtalk, a new Google Group to collaborate on issues of a technical nature during this time of virtual church and beyond. The presbytery consists of 49 Presbyterian communities in Delaware and the Eastern Shore of Maryland, some fairly new and others well into their fourth century.
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is providing for congregational use an online Ash Wednesday service that features liturgy and music in English, Spanish and Korean. The 40-minute pre-recorded service was filmed at the chapel in the Center’s Louisville, Kentucky, office and is available on the Center’s Vimeo page here.
Years ago, at a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) youth conference in East Texas, Kurt Esslinger felt the Spirit nudging him toward a ministry that reaches out to people who feel they don’t belong because of their differences.
Dr. John Weaver, a celebrated Presbyterian organist and composer, died Monday at the age of 83. His daughter, the Rev. Kirianne E. Weaver, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Ithaca, New York, described his passing in a Facebook post on Tuesday morning:
“Last night, in the small hours, Dad took his last breaths. It was the winding down of a clock, and we knew this moment was coming when the hands would stop moving; it was all peaceful and then came the dawn.”
Meaningful worship doesn’t necessarily rely on the traditional Presbyterian Sunday morning centerpiece — a well-crafted and carefully-exegeted 20-minute sermon.
