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Mission Yearbook
In a presentation that featured a Zoom conversation with three people on the ground in Ukraine, the Rev. Dr. Robert Gamble, executive director of This Child Here, recently spoke on the topic “The Lamentations of Ukraine” with clergy and members of churches in Mid-Kentucky Presbytery. Gamble and others illustrated ways that This Child Here, a ministry validated by the Presbytery of Western North Carolina, works with families, mostly women and children, displaced by the war in Ukraine.
“We don’t rise to the level of our goals; we fall to the level of our processes,” says the Rev. Dr. Jason Whitehead, a pastor and social worker who has co-created the Daily Ripple app as a model for spiritual formation and the meeting space of a new worshiping community. “And so, if we can build a process around change and around incrementally getting better at something, then when we have those inevitable hiccups, we’re falling back on a place that’s much higher than we were before. And that really informed the idea of our new worshiping community.”
While men in Asian American congregations cite biblical beliefs as the main reason why fewer women are in leadership, women in these congregations say overrepresentation of men is the dominant reason.
“I was raised to see that faith and justice were completely linked, and so I just think it’s about living out one’s faith,” says the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, who talks with the Rev. Sara Hayden on the “New Way” podcast about being raised by an activist mother and where she is finding hope and challenge in her own activism and motherhood today.
With his most recent book, “Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart,” now available, author, speaker and activist Brian McLaren recently returned to New York Avenue Presbyterian Church’s airwaves for a 90-minute presentation and Q&A on “Creating a Church for the Future.”
The Presbyterian Mission Agency’s World Mission ministry is collaborating with ecumenical partners in Germany and Poland to offer multiple volunteer opportunities for young adults between the ages of 19–30. Although this program targets the same demographic as the PC(USA)’s Young Adult Volunteer program and is supported by YAV, the selected participants will not be part of the YAV program. Both opportunities begin in September 2024 and conclude in June 2025.
Destini Hodges, coordinator of the PC(USA)’s Young Adult Volunteer program, took to the “Between 2 Pulpits” airwaves to describe and celebrate a ministry of social justice and faith transformation that’s produced more than 1,900 alums over the last three decades.
Following an action by United Methodist Church delegates to repeal their church’s longstanding ban on LGBTQ clergy, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s LGBTQIA+ Equity Advocacy Committee, known as ACQ+E, issued this statement:
“The LGBTQIA+ Equity Advocacy Committee joins our United Methodist Church siblings in celebrating their historic votes to remove prohibitions for ordaining LGBTQIA+ clergy. We’re also excited to see the UMC removal of teachings against homosexuality and their recognition of marriage as ‘between two people of faith.’
Second Presbyterian Church in Roanoke, Virginia, recently hosted a moving and joyous ecumenical service, dedicating a newly renovated Alexa House for hosting families being served by Family Promise of Greater Roanoke. Watch the hourlong service here.
The Labyrinth Café and Gathering Place, a campus ministry for Tulane University and the University of New Orleans in uptown New Orleans, is “a community center where people can gather and ask deep questions about life and faith,” said the Rev. Zoë Garry, campus minister and director of the Labyrinth.
