Over her long career in higher education and in hymnody, Dr. Melva Wilson Costen taught her students that music is a gift from God that can lift our spirits and serve as a refuge during difficult times. “It speaks,” said the Rev. Addie Peterson, eulogizing Costen at Central Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, “when we don’t know the words to say.”
The Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II noted that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. celebrated his final birthday on Jan. 15, 1968, helping to plan the Poor People’s March that he would not live to see. Meeting in the basement of the historic Ebeneezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, King’s staff presented the civil rights leader with a birthday cake and a few gag gifts. “They cut his birthday cake and they laughed for a while,” said Nelson, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), “and then he said, ‘Let’s get back to work.’ On his last birthday he reminded us there is still work to be done.”
The Rev. Dr. Gayraud S. Wilmore and the Rev. Dr. Frank Yamada will receive Excellence in Theological Education awards at the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s 225th General Assembly this summer.
Add churches — and more and more Black churches — to the list of organizations that are seen by social impact investors as financial anchors in their neighborhoods and communities.
Last week the Special Committee on Racism, Truth & Reconciliation hosted conversations with the Rev. Dr. Mark Lomax, founding pastor of First Afrikan Presbyterian Church in Lithonia, Georgia, and Dr. William Yoo of Columbia Theological Seminary around race, church history and reparations.
The Rev. Darius Swann, the lead plaintiff in a landmark Supreme Court case, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, died March 8 at the age of 95.
Racism, the Rev. Dr. Mark Lomax told staff and guests at the Presbyterian Center on Wednesday, the actual birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., is a spirit fueled by hatred and fear, a spirit born of a lie “that you and I, fellow Christians, refuse to address. You and I live into the lie to this very day.”
National staff of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) will celebrate the life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., from 9 a.m. through 11 a.m. on Jan. 15 during a special worship service in the Chapel at the Presbyterian Center.
As a professor of music and worship at the Interdenominational Theological Center (ITC) in Atlanta, she shared the music of the world with future pastors and others. Melva, now retired, brought this passion to her work as a member of the committee that produced the first hymnal of the newly reunited Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
