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Mission Yearbook
On the last day of Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) orientation, we are sent off to be commissioned at churches in the Hudson River Valley near Stony Point Center. Several churches in the area agree to host small groups of YAVs for worship where we are commissioned for our year of service, followed by a meal and conversations. We as YAVs come as we are, bringing our whole selves, exhausted from the past week of orientation, to a table of strangers, to share our intentions for our year of service and what we have already begun learning during the first week.
At the end of March, when schools, businesses and churches began closing their doors to curb the spread of COVID-19, the youth of Myers Park Presbyterian Church came up with an idea. The Charlotte, North Carolina, teens wanted those in the community to know that they weren’t alone.
In a small conference room at the Board of Pensions, before COVID-19 led to staff working remotely, D.J. Lee recalled how he chose to travel from his home in South Korea to Philadelphia to earn an MBA. He spread an imaginary map of the United States across the conference table and ran his hands across it, one westward, one eastward.
Even when writing in times of national crisis (9/11) and personal loss, words never abandoned me as they have now. I’m not sure what to write because I don’t know what our lives will be like by the time you read this.
Social distancing as a way to flatten the curve of COVID-19’s spread has created many questions about how to maintain a sense of community while not physically coming together in one space. For Christians, though, the social distancing that resulted from the worldwide spread of a virus raises a pressing question: How do we understand ourselves as the church when we can’t meet in person?
As a pastor, I am fielding calls now about getting back into our sanctuary for worship. It seems this desire to get back to “normal” is becoming the new virus sweeping the nation. In a way I can understand the longing to return to worship in a sanctuary. I have a rural congregation with older members who have not been all that quick to embrace virtual worship. I’ll admit, though, I’m in no hurry to return to traditional church. I find something exciting in what God is doing with video devotionals and sermons.
Though in-person classes are suspended at Forman Christian College in Lahore, Pakistan, faculty are doing all they can to ensure that the university’s more than 5,000 students are still receiving an education.
“It was a very painful but meaningful time to think again about what it means to live as a Christian and as an American in this world.” This was a comment from Dia, one of the Young Adult Volunteers (YAVs) from 2016–17, after we visited No Gun Ri, the site of a massacre of Korean civilians committed by U.S. soldiers at the beginning of the Korean War. Believing the civilians to be communists, the U.S. military killed 250–300 people, mostly women and children, from July 26 to 29 in 1950, attacking them as they sought shelter under a railroad bridge. Visiting this site is always painful for me. As a site coordinator who is also a Korean, learning about my own history that is related to the U.S. along with YAVs is a powerful and meaningful experience. Stories like these are often ignored or well-hidden, even though there are people who are still suffering from the wounds of these incidents to this day. Learning stories like this may lead to discomfort as we come to face a distorted tragedy. Nevertheless, I believe that we must uncover and retell the stories like this. History can teach us not to repeat gruesome mistakes and it can also teach us how we can live our lives more responsibly in our present day.
The coronavirus has inflicted any number of health crises on Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregations — but in some tangible ways it’s also enhanced their ecclesial health.
“Crocodile’s Crossing: A Search for Home,” a new picture book from Flyaway Books, sensitively exposes readers to the struggles faced by refugees.
