minute for mission

Minute for Mission: Pentecost Offering

“We plan and God laughs” is identified as a Yiddish proverb, the title of a book or two and the headline of multiple online articles meant to help people navigate periods in life when personal plans seem to disintegrate in front of their eyes. When we hear or read the proverb, it can be difficult not to nod along, especially when the phrase encapsulates something most of us have experienced: a perfect resume or proposal sent, but no word back; a flawless itinerary dissolved by the smallest delay; an event set to begin, upended by a storm; a setback or an entirely “new normal.”

Minute for Mission: 1001 New Worshiping Communities

Today is the day the liturgical calendar turns green. Ordinary Time … the long expanse of days without festival or celebration. It’s as if all that fire of Pentecost has burned out overnight and the Holy Winds have blown right out to sea. Yesterday was a great and mysterious day, but it’s time to get back to work and on with life as we’ve known it. Blow out the birthday candles. The Church is another year older, feeling her age in her joints and in her responsibilities. So, let’s get on with it.

Mission Yearbook: National Gun Violence Awareness

Gun violence is an issue that divides our nation, our political parties and our churches. Whenever there is an incident of gun violence, whether it be an accident or a mass shooting, people always return to the same debate: gun rights versus gun control.

Minute for Mission: National Day of Awareness & Action for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and Two-Spirit People

Indigenous communities have been struck by the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and Two-Spirit people (MMIW) for decades. This epidemic is a systemic failure where Indigenous women are going missing and being murdered at alarmingly high rates with minimal justice. Within the past several years, the MMIW movement has brought awareness of this violence to the public’s attention. Still, there is much work to be done.

Minute for Mission: Palestinian Nakba Remembrance Day

Like thousands of other Palestinians, my parents experienced dispossession and became refugees because of the Nakba (disaster) that befell the Palestinian people and society on May 15, 1948. Becoming refugees and seeing the disintegration of all that you used to love is a very difficult transition. Spiritual guidance and comfort are a resource that I witnessed both my father and mother use to recoup and go on.

Minute for Mission: May Friendship Day

May Friendship Day, a Church Women United initiative, is most often celebrated on the first Friday of the month of May around a theme of shared concern for Christian women and their communities. The predecessor to May Friendship Day, May Fellowship Day, began in 1933 after two Christian women’s groups planned gatherings based on similar concerns: child health and children of migrant families.

Minute for Mission: Mission Worker Sunday

Called to serve at the invitation of our global partners, Presbyterian mission co-workers are important bridge people, helping us understand issues of ministry around the world. Through their quarterly letters, mission co-workers describe how partners are engaged in the Matthew 25 vision in their own contexts. Here are a few highlights they have shared recently with their supporters:

Minute for Mission: Heritage Sunday

Twenty years ago, the Rev. Dr. Fahed Abu-Akel was elected as Moderator of the 214th General Assembly, making him the first Arab American to lead a major U.S. denomination.

Minute for Mission: Fair Trade Day

Ezekiel and Eduardo Ezekiel, the Israelite, lived in depressing and politically volatile times, 590 years before Christ. A hundred years before he was born, his country was conquered, first by the Assyrians, later by the Babylonians. Eduardo Perez Verdugo, the coffee farmer from Chiapas Driven from his homeland in search of work, lived in depressing and economically volatile Times, 2000 years after the birth of Christ. Both prophets in exile speak with anguish about Their similar plights and both plead for justice as they search for a vision of hope amid despair.

Minute for Mission: Holocaust Remembrance Day, Standing in solidarity

On this day, communities around the world observe Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day. Together we stand in solidarity with the Jewish people and pay tribute to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust. An estimated 6 million European Jews and at least 5 million prisoners of war, Romany, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals and other victims were murdered by the Nazis in one of the most horrendous campaigns in human history. On this day, as we pay tribute to the victims of the Holocaust, we also come together knowing that this act of remembrance is a commitment to a shared responsibility for humankind to ensure such crimes never happen again.