The Presbyterian Mission Agency Board spent most its six-hour meeting Friday discussing how the Matthew 25 vision will inform the work of the Mission Agency in the coming years. The PMA has begun a Vision Implementation Process to align its work with the three foci of the Matthew 25 invitation: building congregational vitality, dismantling structural racism and eradicating systemic poverty.
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.
A few years after its creation, the Together We Grow Mission Garden of Covenant Presbyterian Church in Fort Myers, Florida, continues to bring a bountiful harvest to families in the Immokalee farming community.
In an ongoing effort to build gender equity, the Women’s Leadership Development and Young Women’s Ministries of the Racial Equity & Women’s Intercultural Ministries has awarded women’s ministries leadership development grants to two congregations: St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church in Beechwood, Ohio, where the Rev. Carmen Harwell is pastor, and the Seigle Avenue Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, now known as The Avenue Presbyterian Church.
Headed into next week’s Presbyterian Mission Agency Board meeting on Jan. 22, the board’s Coordinating Committee met Wednesday to learn more about a plan to better align the agency to more effectively bring about the Matthew 25 invitation with its three foci: building congregational vitality, dismantling structural racism and eradicating systemic poverty.
The 2021 APCE (Association of Presbyterian Church Educators) annual event, themed “Anything but Ordinary Time,” is set for February 4-6, but the registration deadline for submitting names for scholarship opportunities is Friday, January 15. The deadline for accessing interpretation services is Friday, January 22. Hopeful participants can register for the three-day online event here. There are several levels of participation available.
In our Hispanic/Latinx cultures, the Christmas season doesn’t really end until Epiphany and the “Día de los Reyes” (The Kings Day) celebrations on Jan. 6.
In the fall of 2018, youth at Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Center (BAJCC) in Chesterfield County, Virginia, asked to start a gospel choir. The request reached the Rev. Lauren Ramseur and the Rev. Ashley Diaz Mejias who, along with friends, collaborated to support the initiative. Ramseur and Mejias soon discovered that they were “doing church” — gathering twice a month at the correctional center for a community of worship. The group named themselves the Voices of Jubilee.
By way of photo submission, Presbyterians are invited to tell the world the ways their church, mid council or organization is carrying out the Matthew 25 invitation.
