Presbyterians Today

What to Expect When You’re Expecting to Retire

Moving from a 9-to-5 job to a lifestyle without a clock may not be as easy as you might suppose. It’s about finding perspective and balance, planning, and setting realistic expectations.

Christmas Joy Offering Transforms Lives

This annual special offering assists past and present church workers in need, and it provides for the education and leadership development of the PC(USA)’s future racial-ethnic leaders.

Dreaming Big Dreams

Feeling underwhelmed by big-production meetings and conferences? Meet the “unconference.”

And the walls came tumbling down

For more than a century, the manse next to First Presbyterian Church in tiny Baird, Texas (population 1,600), served many functions: as the church’s first sanctuary, as a home for a string of pastors, and as space for vacation Bible School and adult Sunday school classes. In recent years, however, it had become an albatross, a dilapidated structure that was too expensive to repair and too expensive to demolish.

A chance to promote peace

Tired of their country’s civil war and related atrocities, some church women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo bravely walked to the hiding place of a notorious warlord in March 2013, seeking peace.

When borders break relationships

Hope for reconciliation between the United States and Cuba reached a peak when Barack Obama became the first sitting president in 88 years to visit the island nation. People lined the streets of Havana, chanting for the American president—an act that could have sent them to jail in another era.

Changing the way we think of suicide

Within a few days of my son’s death by suicide, a chaplain said to me, “You can’t stop people. If they are determined to end their lives, they will.” I could not fathom how that might be comforting news, but I was too numb to respond. Since that week, I have heard the same thing countless times.