Jonesville First Presbyterian Church in Jonesville, Michigan, has always prided itself (and still does) as being a congregation of warm and welcoming Christian worshipers. The church, which has 120 members and an annual budget of slightly over $150,000, has always welcomed strangers with enthusiasm.
New Castle Presbytery’s mission statement condenses the Matthew 25 invitation into 13 words: “Sparked by grace to transform the church for the good of the world.”
Over the past two years, I’ve been collecting a list of small things I’ve noticed that struggling pastors and declining churches perhaps don’t pay enough attention to.
For the Rev. Shelvis Smith-Mather, the road to the majestic halls of Oxford University took a journey of nearly a decade and three continents. But it is, he says, a “crazy, wonderful, beautiful story.”
When Tony and Lilia Acabal were determining where to send their children to school, they both carried deep memories of the struggles they faced years ago as new immigrants.
Tony’s family had managed to escape violence-riddled Guatemala in 1987 when he was 15. A decades-long civil war, which claimed the lives of 200,000 people, posed danger at every turn.
From fighting against wage theft to pushing for more affordable housing, the Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance has made its mark by challenging injustice in their southern California enclave since 1992.
A recent morning worship service at the Presbyterian Center in Louisville opened with a powerful beat of the djembe, a West African drum, played by the Rev. Dr. Alonzo Johnson, coordinator of the Self-Development of People ministry for the Presbyterian Mission Agency (PMA).
Living in intentional Christian community has been looking different for Young Adult Volunteers (YAVs) in South Korea. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s two Korea YAVs — Susannah Stubbs and Amanda Kirkscey — have lived in a school dormitory and a church guest house instead of the previous site model where they lived together, next door to the YAV site coordinator.
As a young adult, I moved to New York City. I wanted to know what it was like to ride in a crowded subway right underneath another person’s armpit. I wanted to know what it was like to walk down a crowded Manhattan street and have to engage with some people who were well and some who were not so well, all co-existing together.
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) partners from the Assembly of Evangelical (Presbyterian) Churches in Iraq are sharing, in their own words, about the Matthew 25 ministries to which they have been called.
