The centuries-old Black struggle for freedom and equality in the creation of a better country, a better world, has erupted in Louisville. The Movement for Black Lives, powerful and undaunted community organizing by young people committed to racial and social justice, came into existence here and everywhere because it had to.
Westminster Presbyterian Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has developed a proven and comprehensive method to help members and friends receive quality mental health services when they need them the most.
When the City Council of Tulsa, Oklahoma, voted last month to remove a Black Lives Matter mural from the city’s Greenwood District, the site of the infamous 1921 Race Massacre, the session at College Hill Presbyterian Church and the church’s pastor, the Rev. Todd Freeman, knew what had to be done.
An African American preacher and a white college basketball coach formed a formidable duo teaching Presbyterians how not to let first impressions based on bias form lasting impressions.
The Rev. Dr. Diane Moffett, president and executive director of the Presbyterian Mission Agency, welcomed more than 230 attendees to a recent Matthew 25 online event focused on eradicating systemic poverty within the U.S.
Early in 2019, a crop of strange, new signs started springing up everywhere across the yards and businesses of rural, predominantly white Macomb, Illinois, like so many cornstalks in Iowa’s neighboring fields.
If you’re looking for a congregation that personifies the spirit of Matthew 25 congregational vitality, you will find one in White Rock Presbyterian Church (WRPC) in White Rock, an unincorporated community of nearly 6,000 people in Los Alamos County in north- central New Mexico. “We’re a small little church,” said Jennifer Holmes, who serves as a deacon at White Rock. “When we used to go to church, prior to the pandemic, we would have between 20 and 25 people in service. And that includes the pastor and the pianist and any little kids that happen to come. It’s really small. We’re one of those little churches you read about. In some ways you might look at it like we’re just barely hanging on, if you look at our numbers and our budget. On the other hand, we are so vital in our community and in our larger community.”
In early 2020, the dean of Belk Chapel at Queens University of Charlotte, Dr. Suzanne Watts Henderson, was in Chicago visiting with Eboo Patel. The founder and president of Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC) mentioned to her that he was interested in working with Queens to build a statewide and regional network to do interfaith work in the Carolinas.
As June turned to July, Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles needed a place to store food.
Its direct food service to people in need had skyrocketed from 120 households a week before the COVID-19 pandemic to more than 2,000 a week as the virus staged a resurgence in California that has resulted in it being the state with the most coronavirus infections in the country. Immanuel, in L.A.’s Mid-Wilshire/Koreatown area, was running out of space to keep food – at one point jerry-rigging cooling ducts in a hallway to create improvised, temporary cold storage. Then church leaders cast their eyes on its Westminster Chapel.
