With roots in a historic family farm in rural Appalachia with an old-growth forest, the Rev. Dennis Testerman is deeply connected to the natural environment and the need to care for it.
The Rev. Robert “Bob” W. Abrams brings joy to his colleagues at the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) headquarters in Louisville.
At age 96, Abrams, a former mission co-worker who from 1960–64 served World Mission in India alongside his late wife, Wanda, arrives at his office on the fourth floor of the Presbyterian Center two days each week. For the past 16 years, Abrams has volunteered to serve as coordinator of the national office of Presbyterian Men.
Media, says Mari Graham Evans, has always been social, for at least two reasons: It often features user-generated content and it sometimes goes viral.
Evans, the Presbyterian Mission Agency’s social media and media relations strategist, teams up with Gail Strange, the agency’s director of church and mid council communications, to travel the country putting on one-day workshops that help church and mid council communicators reach their audiences as effectively as they can. The two recently completed one such workshop for about two dozen participants from the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area at Calvin Presbyterian Church in Long Lake, Minnesota.
Three presbyteries — Trinity, Newark and San Jose — have finished up a pilot program of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s Vital Congregations initiative’s two-year revitalization process.
Yesterday, a wise worshiper at the church I serve requested prayers “for all leaders as they work through difficult times ahead.” That request rings in my head as I think about “empowering servant leadership,” which is one of the seven marks of congregational vitality identified in the Presbyterian Mission Agency’s Vital Congregations program.
A decade ago, the advocacy group Heeding God’s Call to End Gun Violence helped to shut down a controversial gun shop in Philadelphia.
With the involvement of many different faith communities, “we brought nine months’ worth of public attention to this particular gun shop, which was selling lots of guns that ended up in crime and so on,” said Bryan Miller, the group’s executive director. “We eventually basically embarrassed ATF (the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) into closing the gun shop.”
We fear so many things, the Rev. Dr. Cláudio Carvalhaes told worshipers during the recent celebration of 35 years of ministry by Presbyterian Border Region Outreach.
Who are you passing by today as you hurry to get to your next destination?
Christina Cosby, mission specialist for the Middle East and Europe with Presbyterian World Mission, remembers a few months ago she was watching a TV documentary about the refugee crisis in Europe and a camp, Moria, better known by its nickname “Hell on Earth.”
A “narrative of hate and rejection” is spreading across Mexico in response to the caravans of migrants from Central America and elsewhere, a Mexican lawyer and human rights defender told the 150 or so people attending the “Responding to an Exodus: Gospel Hospitality and Empire” celebration of 35 years of work and service by Presbyterian Border Region Outreach. One of the five ministries, Frontera de Cristo, hosted the fall conference.
The Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP) and World Mission organized a gathering with ecumenical representatives from around the world this past fall in Bangkok. The purpose was to have deeper conversations about worldwide crises such as climate, weakened democracy within nations and increasingly divisive practices among nations.
