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Mission Yearbook
As stewards of God’s Creation, we are challenged to care for planet Earth and all its inhabitants.
This is an awesome responsibility, but also an incredible opportunity. There are many concerns facing our planet, with climate change and its impact on the most vulnerable at the top of the list. Related concerns include privatization of the Earth’s precious resources, threats to the safety of our world’s water supply and the effects of toxic emissions.
The Presbyterian Women of the Presbytery of Geneva in New York’s Finger Lakes region has become the 400th congregation or group to accept the Matthew 25 invitation.
The Rev. Dr. Mark Snelling, a lifelong Presbyterian and pastor in the Seattle Presbytery, wants to see impoverished children in Mexico break out of the cycle of poverty in a wholistic and sustainable way. He is confident this is possible through education, specifically Christian education.
I spent the last year as a Presbyterian Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) in Austin, Texas.
In my role as a YAV, I served with Texas Impact, an interfaith advocacy organization representing the mainstream faith traditions of Texas. I worked on a research project related to Hurricane Harvey recovery and began to draw connections between climate change and this local disaster. After a few months into the project, I had the opportunity to attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Katowice, Poland.
We knelt on the pavement, three long lines of women. One woman at a time led in prayer, acknowledging our need and crying out for God’s intervention in South Sudan. The rest of us joined in, praying silently or quietly, and I could feel the collective passion as we publicly prayed together. Women from different denominations took turns leading specific prayers — for soldiers who are hungry and underpaid, for youth who are sucked into the gang and drug culture, for leaders implementing the peace agreement, for the economy and jobs and for our churches and families. It was about 10 a.m., but the sun was already hot. Lively worship interspersed the times of prayer, and several women passersby got in line to join the prayers.
The Rev. Dr. Ray Jones III turned to history and the cinema to open a conversation about congregational vitality at the February meeting of the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board.
Jones was 9 years old, he said, when he first encountered the story of Harriet Tubman, who saved more than 70 people from slavery. But the scene he invoked was from the Oscar-nominated biopic “Harriet,” which came out last fall. Tubman is ready to flee her home and master for the first time, and she goes to her church, where her pastor counsels her.
May Friendship Day, a Church Women United initiative, is most often celebrated on the first Friday of the month of May around a theme of shared concern for Christian women and their communities. The predecessor to May Friendship Day, May Fellowship Day, began in 1933 after two Christian women’s groups planned gatherings based on similar concerns: child health and children of migrant families. These groups united and over the years eventually became what we now know as Church Women United. The May celebration has been continually observed since 1933; in 1999, Church Women United changed the name from May Fellowship Day to May Friendship Day.
Take a minute to look back on your life. Who all have you lived with? In the earliest parts of our lives, we might live with parents or grandparents or other caring adults. Perhaps siblings. Over the years, we might live with friends and extended family, family of choice or even sometimes with strangers. And sometimes we might find ourselves living alone.
In 2012, the General Assembly made a bold commitment — to create an environment within the denomination that would lead to the flourishing of the existing church and the birth of at least 1,001 new communities of worship and witness. The Presbyterian Mission Agency went to work creating a system of resources to support this call to equip presbyteries, help potential leaders discern God’s call, develop a system of grants, build leadership capacity, and create a network of coaches prepared to accompany a new worshiping community through all the stages of development. Establishing partnerships and collaboration with other North American denominations, the reach of these resources extends far beyond the PC(USA).
The 223rd General Assembly (2018) approved the initiative to “Declare an Imperative for the Reformation of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) in being a Transformative Church in This Intercultural Era.” The 223rd General Assembly also declared the period from 2020 to 2030 as the “Decade of Intercultural Transformation” by focusing on transformative priorities and initiatives across the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
