One of the churches I visit every few years is Grace Taiwanese American Presbyterian Church outside of Trenton, New Jersey. I was briefly its youth director during seminary, and it was part of my call to ministry in Taiwan.
“Pride is in its essence this uncontrolled joy, a light and a reflection of how the Holy Spirit works,” Ophelia Hu Kinney recently told “A Matter of Faith” podcast hosts the Rev. Lee Catoe and Simon Doong. “I think of Pride as a way that light shines on things that didn’t have a light shone on them before and blows on things where the wind hasn’t gone before.”
During Kevin Riley’s first interaction with Tom Wenzl, Riley was pinned in the parking lot of a grocery store in the Skagit Valley in Washington state. Wenzl, then a Mount Vernon police office, arrested Riley.
Presbyterian Publishing Corporation has announced that it will donate royalties from sales of the Glory to God hymnal to organizations involved in reparative justice for every African American spiritual and Indigenous peoples’ song in the book. This is being done to honor the creators of these songs, who, unlike other hymn writers in the book, were never able to benefit from their creations.
Before Kevin Riley got clean and sober, he found himself at the former site of Trinity Presbyterian Church, which is now home to a nondenominational church in Sedro Wooley, Washington, a town about an hour north of Seattle.
Jerome Zamgba will tell you that he has always been a compassionate and empathetic person.
“When I was in high school, I was not the brightest,” he said, “but my classmates looked up to me to lead the class because of my emotional intelligence. I have been a person who has always tried to make the world around me a little better.”
There are still so many wonderings about what the church would look like, to face the current state of affairs in the world. What does it take to transform entire generations into disciples of Christ on their journey witnessing that a better world is possible?
The prophet Isaiah invites us to imagine God’s peace in unlikely places. Trees clap their hands. Joy grows where sorrow once reigned. A world torn by enmity, strife and despair blossoms back to abundant life. Lions lie down with lambs, and nations once at war with each other come together in peace.
