Virtually every adult American knows that Mahalia Jackson sang at the 1963 March on Washington and that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech there on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
Present both online and in person, nearly 70 people recently turned out for a special screening at the Presbyterian Center of the brief film “1963-Still: Same Shot,” which was filmed by and featured youth ages 6–18. The film was made last summer through a partnership among the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.); its Louisville neighbor, the Roots 101 African American Museum; Media Pros Productions; Upcoming Storytellers; and the Louisville Central Community Center.
The Presbytery of Boise took up the Matthew 25 challenge last year by moving outside its walls. Each of its 2023 presbytery meetings included a Matthew 25 field trip to learn about community needs and ministries that were helping to meet those needs.
This day begins the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. The theme: “You shall love the Lord your God … and your neighbor as yourself” from Luke 10:27 answers the question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” How am I assured to have life with God beyond this life? Jesus’ simple (yet not so simple) answer was to say: Do what’s written in the law: Love God with all of who you are, and your neighbor like you love yourself, and you will live. I often wonder about the “as you love yourself” command. Does that mean that we don’t love ourselves because there are so many hurting and suffering people in the world? People to whom we do not show mercy and kindness?
“The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love, we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.” — bell hooks (Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations, 1994)
Just like those wise pilgrims from the East who followed the star to Bethlehem only to return home by another way, Carla Louca and Susannah LeMay took some unexpected detours to find purpose and meaning.
“I like to refer to us as church adjacent,” said Gina Brown, founder of the new worshiping community The Faith Studio, describing how people respond when she outlines the three tenets of the community as “connect, inspire and explore.”
When leaders at First Presbyterian Church of Mt. Pleasant first heard about the Matthew 25 initiative, they thought it was “a good challenge” to think about how their faith guides them to serve their community. The church has engaged in outreach to people who are part of the LGBTQIA+ community, who have immigrated to the United States and their community, and many others in this small Midwestern town. We caught up with the church as it was celebrating its embrace of the Matthew 25 initiative to hear how it has impacted it as a faith community and individuals.
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance is helping the church to understand healthy volunteerism through training that it also calls “decolonizing volunteerism.”
By describing each slide as she displayed it, Dr. Rebecca F. Spurrier recently practiced what she preached while delivering the Caldwell Lecture to a roomful of people at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and online.
