Meaningful worship doesn’t necessarily rely on the traditional Presbyterian Sunday morning centerpiece — a well-crafted and carefully-exegeted 20-minute sermon.
For many in the United States, the summer of 2020 served as a moment of renewed attention to the disease of racial inequality and injustice in our country. But in order to look forward in our pursuit of antiracism, we must also look back and acknowledge our history. To help churches address the difficult work of examining the history of American slavery, Cheri L. Mills offers her new Lenten devotional, “Lent of Liberation: Confronting the Legacy of American Slavery.”
After seeing the latest edition of Everyday God-Talk, the Rev. Dr. David Gambrell, associate for Worship in the Office of Theology and Worship, was filled with an overwhelming sense of gratitude and rejoicing.
Churches small and large and everything in between can celebrate Advent, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day even during a pandemic, so long as they’re willing to innovate — and perhaps simplify.
Around the time of national elections, the Rev. Dr. David Gambrell gets requests for resources of prayer and services of reconciliation. And Gambrell, the associate for Worship in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s Office of Theology & Worship, said it’s especially true this year during a presidential election as divisive as any in recent memory.
As churches shifted to digital worship due to the pandemic this past spring, it was clear to the Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow that he wasn’t going to try to replicate what happened each Sunday during in-person worship.
While congregations and new worshiping communities are facing unprecedented challenges as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, they are also innovating by learning new technologies, starting new missions and finding new ways to be the Church while social distancing. A new report from PC(USA) Research Services describes some of the challenges that worshiping communities are facing and provides a peek at the new things that are springing forth.
The fact that the 2020 Presbyterian Association of Musicians Worship & Music Conference, which is being held online this week with live broadcasts from Montreat Conference Center, is happening at all is “kind of a miracle,” said conference co-director Eric Wall.
A recent New York Times story tells of a Catholic priest in Queens who decided not to let the coronavirus-mandated closure of his church keep him from worshiping with, and ministering to, his parish.
Saying he’d been dreading preaching as part of the Festival of Homiletics, the Rev. Lenny Duncan nonetheless did just that with precision and panache during a sermon broadcast Thursday — even though “I wasn’t sure what God wanted from me this time,” as he put it.
