When Tony and Lilia Acabal were determining where to send their children to school, they both carried deep memories of the struggles they faced years ago as new immigrants.
Tony’s family had managed to escape violence-riddled Guatemala in 1987 when he was 15. A decades-long civil war, which claimed the lives of 200,000 people, posed danger at every turn.
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) partners from the Assembly of Evangelical (Presbyterian) Churches in Iraq are sharing, in their own words, about the Matthew 25 ministries to which they have been called.
As a Hunger Action Congregation, Faith Des Peres Presbyterian Church is taking aim at food insecurity in greater St. Louis by providing food for schoolchildren and other vulnerable populations.
The medieval church in the 4th century set Dec. 25 as Christmas Day to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. In the years that followed, the church expanded the celebration of Christmas to a 12-day festival, running from Dec. 25 to Jan. 6, the observance of Epiphany. For Presbyterians, Epiphany is key to our discipleship of Jesus in the world God so loves.
This isn’t a story about how a small church runs a big program. It’s not a story about how a small church grows into a bigger church. It’s a story about the lessons a group of adults learned from a handful of children as God challenged the adults to try something new.
This isn’t a story about how a small church runs a big program. It’s not a story about how a small church grows into a bigger church. It’s a story about the lessons a group of adults learned from a handful of children as God challenged the adults to try something new.
“At a time when fear and uncertainty are looming in the air, at a time when emotions have overtaken reason, at a time when the sacredness of human life has been defiled, at a time when we are creating more enemies than friends, at a time when division seems to be destroying the unity of our people, and at a time when we do not seem to trust each other, we are here again to remind all Presbyterians and the people of Cameroon of our collective responsibility and role as a Church and as a people in these trying moments of our nation and history.” Thus, starts the Oct. 10, 2017 official statement of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon (PCC) concerning the crisis in Cameroon, often referred to as the Anglophone Crisis.
It’s considered the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet today.
In 2018, the United Nations estimated that 14 million people in Yemen were on the brink of starvation. UNICEF estimates that 1.8 million Yemeni children suffer from acute malnutrition. Thirty thousand die each year.
“Summertime, and the livin’ is easy.” American composer George Gershwin clearly wasn’t thinking about life in the church when he wrote his 1930s song “Summertime.” For many congregations, summertime isn’t easy. Blue skies beckon people to mow, garden or hike rather than sit in a pew on a Sunday morning. Weekend getaways and family vacations also mean fewer volunteers available to provide child care, sing in choirs and host coffee hours.
During Lent, a new pastor asked the Christian education committee to keep the children in the sanctuary on Easter morning rather than leaving after the children’s time for church school. After the pastor explained how beneficial it was for children to see adults worshiping and hear the Easter hymns and prayers, the committee agreed. But when Easter came, a Sunday school teacher led the children out of the sanctuary for their own separate time.
