In South Sudan, more than 1 million people have been displaced in recent months by flooding. Of those displaced, more than 29,000 are from Mayendit County in the southern part of Unity State. Before the flooding, the country was plagued by years of civil war that also contributed to massive displacement.
While staying connected to family, friends and church, Paula Howlett, a member of Westminster Presbyterian Church in DeKalb, Illinois, has followed all the rules for social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Author, entrepreneur, election reform advocate and candidate for Georgia governor Stacey Abrams can now add another title to her impressive résumé: Festival of Homiletics lecturer.
A recent New York Times story tells of a Catholic priest in Queens who decided not to let the coronavirus-mandated closure of his church keep him from worshiping with, and ministering to, his parish.
“He decided that if people can’t come to church, the church ought to find a way to go to the people,” explained the Rev. Dr. Ted Wardlaw, president of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exploited wounds we never healed.
Once who knows that truth all too well is the Rev. Dr. William Barber II, president of the group Repairers of the Breach, co-chair (with Presbyterian pastor the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis) of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, and pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in North Carolina, where he preached a sermon as part of the Festival of Homiletics.
Bintou Jalloh’s father was clear — education was a priority. “Your first husband is your degree,” he told her. “You get your degree first.” He wanted Jalloh to have the educational opportunity of America, so she left her home in Bamako, Mali’s capital, to study accounting at Temple University, in Philadelphia.
Nebraska Presbyterian Foundation’s Board of Directors awarded grants totaling $137,211 to nine Nebraska churches or organizations in April to partially fund projects that support outreach activities to enhance or expand some aspect of their ministry.
Two hundred years ago, William Dunlop, a professor of church history at the University of Edinburgh, published two volumes of confessions that had enjoyed “public authority” in Scotland since the Reformation. While the Westminster Standards (1647–48) filled the first volume, more than 10 earlier confessional documents — including the Geneva Catechism (1542), the Scots Confession (1560) and the Heidelberg Catechism (1563) — filled the second. By placing Westminster in the broader tradition of Reformed (“Calvinist”) theology, Dunlop honored a distinctly Reformed custom: He compiled a book of confessions.
Saying he’d been dreading preaching as part of the Festival of Homiletics, the Rev. Lenny Duncan nonetheless did just that with precision and panache during a sermon broadcast — even though “I wasn’t sure what God wanted from me this time,” as he put it.
The Presbyterian Association of Musician offers ideas for congregations as they navigate the return to public worship and seek to bridge online and in-person gatherings. These suggestions may need to be adapted for a particular context of ministry. They should be undertaken only insofar as local resources and current conditions allow.
