Gita, a toddler, sits on her mother’s lap, her head lying on the table in front of them so quietly she might be napping. It is as if she is willing her mother, Hiromis, to concentrate on her studies in the Superior Ecumenical Institute of Religious Sciences (ISECRE), a weekly interfaith academic program of the Evangelical (Presbyterian) Theological Seminary (SET) in nearby Matanzas.
I’d been on the job for about three months when it came time for the joint planning meeting with the session and deacons. It was my first call to a small congregation in a medium-sized building. I was old enough to remember what church was like
back in the ’70s, when vacation Bible school was a community event and Christmas and Easter meant extra chairs around the perimeter of the sanctuary. The church to which I’d been called didn’t even fill up on the big holidays.
While the religious backgrounds of U.S. military personnel have changed greatly over the past three decades, their spiritual care continues to be a pressing need, the U.S. Navy’s chief of chaplains says.
The Rev. Dr. Seth Agidi, moderator of the General Assembly of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Ghana (EPCG), came to the 223rd General Assembly (2018) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to strengthen relationships with his brothers and sisters in Christ, but also to visit family – his Lake Erie family.
Coffee is a major agricultural product of Mexico, the beverage of choice among millions of people in the U.S., and a link in a mission partnership that transforms people in both countries.
Working with decision makers looks different depending on where you are. Convincing your toddler to brush her teeth looks different from convincing your teenager to write a college admissions essay, which is different still from convincing the school board to keep funding the arts program you care so deeply about.
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) continued to lose members in 2017, extending a pattern that has persisted since the mid-1960s. At the end of the year, church membership totaled 1,415,053, a decline of 67,714 members from 2016.
When Presbyterian pastor the Rev. Dr. Marcia Mount Shoop saw the premiere of Student Athlete in New York City this past fall, with her husband, John Mount Shoop, she felt incredibly sad — yet hopeful.
You would never know from the joyful exuberance of the dancing children that they live in the midst of grinding poverty.
The Sancti Spiritus Presbyterian Church of the Presbyterian Reformed Church in Cuba established a mission in Toyos — one of the poorest neighborhoods in the town of Sancti Spiritus — to provide hope to the barrio’s hopeless.
In 1993, during a study abroad program to Central America, I visited El Salvador, a small Central American nation that had recently signed peace accords after more than a decade of civil war. In a unique exchange with Salvadoran youth, during a Bible study on the beach, we privileged, and somewhat sheltered North American college students were interrogated about our countries’ policies and forced to reflect on our own complicity.
