Hurricane-damaged Westminster By-the-Sea Presbyterian Church in Daytona Beach Shores has been a blessing to its community and to other PC(USA) churches by Mike Ferguson | Presbyterian News Service DAYTONA BEACH… Read more »
Just a few days before visitors from Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, the Synod of South Atlantic, the Presbytery of Tampa Bay, together with the Executive Director and Stated Clerk of the General Assembly for the interim unified agency, the Rev. Jihyun Oh, arrived at Maximo Presbyterian Church in St. Petersburg, Florida, on Thursday, “this place looked awful,” said the church’s pastor, the Rev. Bobby Musengwa.
“Tell the story of Center Church honestly: the good, the bad and the ugly.”
This guiding principle framed the Rev. Tom Moore’s workshop at Stewardship Kaleidoscope 2022. Moore told participants the story of Center Presbyterian Church in McMurray, Pennsylvania, showing the importance of honesty and transparency when it comes to the church and its finances.
Reflecting the ecumenical spirit of Stewardship Kaleidoscope, Mark Stauffer, past Council president and treasurer of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, and the Rev. Joseph Moore, Ministry Relations Officer of the Presbyterian Foundation, co-presented a workshop called “Stewardship After the Gift.”
The view from the 15th-floor hotel conference room of Savannah’s Historic Landmark District was impressive. Tall church steeples reaching to the sky testified to the generosity of congregations over the centuries. But in a contemporary church world where dedication to Christian faith is flagging, what can pastors and ministry leaders do to revive the spirit of giving?
What can you do with a photo of paper clips and a Zoom chat box?
Quite a lot — and it might be just the thing to open up a discussion on innovation and empowering servant leaders.
Using Ezekiel’s stark vision of the Valley of Dry Bones, the Rev. Dr. David Gambrell elicited any number of innovative ideas from about 70 pastors and other church leaders during Wednesday’s videoconference on Spirit-inspired worship, one of the Seven Marks of Vital Congregations.
Making inroads against human trafficking
When Jill Bolander Cohen’s stepdaughter called her one afternoon, she didn’t expect her stepdaughter to be asking for her to help a high school victim of human trafficking. “This young woman’s mother sold her to a trafficker for $25,000,” Cohen says. “Her mother needed the money to open and operate her business, and the young woman’s trafficker was shipping her around the country as she worked to pay back her mother’s debts.”
App helps students identify red flags and false leads of traffickers
A new anime-style gaming app for mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, has an extraordinary mission: to keep children and young adults, ages 11 to 14, from becoming victims of human traffickers.
