I am...

I want to...

Mission Yearbook

Minute for Mission: Mental Health Awareness Week begins

Posted

The first week in October has been designated as Mental Illness Awareness Week since 1990. People of faith, especially pastors, are especially important to those who live with mental health concerns. Christian clergy have often been identified as “frontline mental health workers” since it has been found that as many as 25% of people who seek treatment turn to their pastor. Faith leaders can provide referrals and encouragement to their church members who need mental health services.

‘Songs in the Key of Resistance’

Posted

“Kairos is an ancient Greek word, describing a time of great change when the old ways of the world are dying and new ones are struggling to be born,” said Pauline Pisano, organizer for the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice. “It’s clear we are living through exactly such a time today.” Pisano called this time “full of grave danger and rare opportunity” and described the work of the center in lifting up leaders and activists to take bold, prophetic and imaginative action to break free from the “intolerable conditions of poverty, systemic racism, militarism, ecological devastation and more.”

Synod Schooler who’s 101 is thrilled to be back where she belongs

Posted

Even though she’s 101 years old, Mary Conklin of Winnebago, Minnesota has not attended every edition of Synod School, which debuted in 1954. But she has been a part of most of the past 50 or so versions of the beloved gathering, put on each year by the Synod of Lakes & Prairies and attended by about 540 people this year, ranging in age from 5 months to 101 years.

Presbyterian Historical Society revisits Tucson Indian Training School records

Posted

In the winter of 2023, a team of archivists at the Presbyterian Historical Society began the process of reparative description on the records of Tucson Indian Training School. Over the next six months, they worked not only to remove outdated and harmful language, but to enhance the descriptions of students so that their full names, tribal affiliations and experiences are better represented in the collection.

Minute for Mission: Native American Day

Posted

Jesus was asked, “… And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29) America’s history with Indigenous peoples hasn’t always been neighborly. In the past five years, the General Assembly has taken actions to change that legacy, and to be neighbors, not conquerors.

Gamers can help us see and shape the future

Posted

A longstanding practice at Synod School is to offer a talk-back session with the convocation speaker each evening. At the start of his talk, Dr. Corey Schlosser-Hall, this year’s convocation speaker, shared some of what he learned during the previous evening’s talk-back.

Try ‘shalomify’ next time you’re playing Scrabble

Posted

Few Synod School convocation speakers can get away with birthing new words on the spot the way Dr. Corey Schlosser-Hall did. The word was “shalomify,” as in the way God asks us to build places of shalom, justice, peace and well-being in the places where we live and work and worship. “You can have projects of shalomification,” Schlosser-Hall, the Presbyterian Mission Agency’s deputy executive director of Vision, Innovation and Rebuilding, told those attending Synod School, which is offered each year by the Synod of Lakes and Prairies at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa.

Gathering new communities of faith from the online to the wild

Posted

1001 New Worshiping Communities hosted a conversation for online and hybrid church leaders at the Wild Goose Festival in mid-July. Started in 2011, the four-day spirit, justice, music and arts festival took place at VanHoy Farms Family Campground in Union Grove, North Carolina.

Minute for Mission: Gifts of New Immigrants

Posted

Rola Al Ashkar is a Presbyterian Christian from Lebanon. She grew up in a nonreligious family, in a culture drenched in religion. Her parents took her and her brothers to church and Sunday school on occasions. When she had her confirmation class, she received her first Bible, and even as a teenager, she read the Bible with critical eyes, questioning parts of it and searching for answers. Her curiosity led her to regularly attend Sunday services, youth meetings and church summer camps, and through those experiences her faith grew, and she found a community in the Presbyterian Synod of Syria and Lebanon.

“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” — Luke 23:42

Contact Us