Mission Yearbook

Working to restore a Presbyterian school in South Carolina that helped shape Black leaders in the PC(USA)

The school, founded in 1867 and constructed around 1890, was closed when combined with another school in the early 1960s and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1997. For decades, Goodwill Parochial School, with support from antecedents of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., a predecessor of the PC(USA), educated thousands of African American children whose parents and grandparents had not long before been freed from enslavement.

A retired PC(USA) minister lives into the call to let go

“The way I’ve always done ministry is that I love my people,” said the Rev. Cynthia Jarvis, a retired pastor in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), in a recent episode of “Everyday God-talk.” Jarvis spoke to the Rev. Dr. So Jung Kim, associate for Theology in the Office of Theology and Worship, in three 10-minute conversations organized around the themes of how Jarvis’ soul, heart and mind are responding to the call to retire.

Mission Yearbook: National Gun Violence Awareness

Gun violence is an issue that divides our nation, our political parties and our churches. Whenever there is an incident of gun violence, whether it be an accident or a mass shooting, people always return to the same debate: gun rights versus gun control.

Award-winning poet Tim Lilburn connects to the land through contemplative practice

“I didn’t know how to be where I was,” award-winning poet and essayist Dr. Tim Lilburn said in a public Zoom lecture recently held by Union Theological Seminary in New York City. The lecture was the fifth public forum of The Insight Project, which is described on its website as “a multi-year program series that seeks to put theology in conversation with a wide range of partners in the humanities, social sciences and the natural sciences.”