To celebrate his 95th birthday on July 31, Bob Abrams went on a glider flight.
That’s nothing new. Abrams began taking regular glider flights when he celebrated his 80th birthday and has only missed one birthday flight since. “At the time, I figured I’d better get started or I’d never get around to it,” Abrams said with his characteristic wide grin. “As a kid I was always making paper gliders or playing with balsa ones, so I just kind of settled on the real thing.”
I grew up with Whitney Houston’s rendition of “The Greatest Love of All,” and at one time you couldn’t turn on the radio without hearing her soaring vocals sing the song first made famous by George Benson. I learned it alongside my multiplication tables and sentence diagramming. There’s a line in the song that did not strike me until I was well into adulthood, particularly after I went into ministry.
One of the marks of Presbyterianism is that we are a “connectional” church — that is, our congregations are connected through presbyteries that are connected to synods and to our General Assembly. In some profound ways, our “being connectional” is a way of practicing “being church” — sharing our gifts, talents and resources as well as our sorrows and pain.
An energetic new pastor arrives to the resounding “Alleluia!” of a grateful congregation. Two years later, she leaves in fury, blaming a toxic environment, with her health in tatters.
The perfect call finally appears for the seasoned pastor hoping to ease his way into retirement. Within a month, the pillar of the church leaves the denomination altogether.
Hundreds of people gathered from across the world for an ecumenical prayer service at the Nieuwe Kerk, a 15th-century church in Amsterdam, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the World Council of Churches (WCC) at the very spot in which the organization was founded.
“You cannot understand our history as a country until you understand the history of the church.”
That’s how Mark Charles — a Navajo pastor, speaker and author — began his presentation to a room full of missionaries in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which gathered this past summer for their annual meeting.
World Food Day — celebrated on Oct. 16 every year — commemorates the founding in 1945 of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The FAO was created to respond to famines and hunger in a world of God’s abundance. Despite the abundance of land, water, nutrients and sunlight on this precious planet, even in the 21st century, hundreds of millions of people go hungry.
This organization Hombres Presbiterianos Hispanos Latinos (HPHL) has served Hispanic Latino Presbyterian men for more than 13 years. The organization seeks to act as an instrument of reconciliation between God and men. HPHL’s purpose is to assist and encourage Hispanic Presbyterian men to accept and proclaim the love of Jesus Christ and to offer spiritual formation through prayer and Bible studies so men can understand their role in our church. HPHL also hosts seminars, conferences and workshops that encourage Hispanic Latino men to get to know each other and to help empower them to discover their spiritual gifts so they can bring the Good News to their communities.
While many voices vied for the attention of Kofi Annan, the former U.N. secretary general consistently listened to people seeking peace from the vantage point of faith, according to a Presbyterian mission leader.
For Bud Frimoth, a 92-year-old World War II veteran and retired minister of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), reading accounts of those working to contain the recent Mendocino Complex fires in California brought back memories from years ago.
