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Mission Yearbook
The Colegio Americano, an educational ministry of the Presbyterian Church of Colombia (IPC), recently celebrated its 150th anniversary. The school, older than the National University of Colombia, began in 1869 when Presbyterian mission worker Kate MacFerren began to teach English classes to a group of 18 girls in Bogotá.
Two congregations that worship in the same Louisville, Kentucky, church are comfortable enough with one another that host church members didn’t even bat an eye recently when the smaller congregation told the larger one that the church had termites.
The right idea in the right place at the right time has led the Presbytery of Arkansas to say yes to the Matthew 25 invitation, one of the most recent mid councils to do so.
Despite having worked in youth ministry at two Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregations before becoming a marriage and family counselor, 72-year-old Gregg Dana has never attended Presbyterian Youth Triennium (PYT). He could’ve gone to the first two Trienniums in 1980 and 1983, but he was serving large PC(USA) churches with active summer programs.
Imagine being an observer of SINKEX 2016. A SINKEX is a Navy exercise in which a ship is deliberately sunk by being subjected to missiles and bombs until it slips beneath the waves to the bottom of the sea. SINKEX 2016 took place 117 nautical miles north of Guam on Sept. 13, 2016. The targeted ship sank after five hours and 22 missile hits. The vessel subjected to this tortuous end was the decommissioned USS Rentz.
The Rev. Dr. Stewart M. Pattison, pastor of Community Presbyterian Church in Lombard, Illinois, has been living — and serving — with multiple sclerosis for more than 20 years.
Beth McCaw didn’t know what she was getting into when she first heard God’s call to start a new worshiping community. As a social worker, she was a long way from the challenges she would face in launching a new faith community.
Some Sundays, five or 10 people show up for worship at Yaphank Presbyterian Church on Long Island, New York. The church, established in 1851, has 41 members on its rolls. The average Sunday attendance is about 15.
Yet the session of the historic church, whose sanctuary was destroyed by a December 2013 fire, has embraced the invitation to become a Matthew 25 church. Its chosen focus is eradicating systemic poverty.
The Rev. Cheryl Barnes was at her computer getting ready to go teach Bible school when the Lord sent an email.
Of course, it wasn’t actually the Lord. The email was from World Mission about a mission co-worker position with a strong focus on education. She went down the list. It was as though it had been written for her. Then she saw the location. It was in Malawi. She shut down her computer and went to church determined to forget all about it.
At age 16, Kalief Browder found himself on New York’s Rikers Island, awaiting trial for a crime he said he didn’t commit. Returning from a party in the Bronx, Browder was accused of stealing a backpack holding a credit card, an iPod Touch, a camera and $700. At his arraignment, he was charged with second-degree robbery. Bail was set at$3,000. Browder didn’t have the ability to “bond out” — pay the fee. He would spend the next three years in jail before being released, with his charges dropped.
