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minute for mission

Minute for Mission: Mental Health Awareness Week begins

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The first week in October has been designated as Mental Illness Awareness Week since 1990. People of faith, especially pastors, are especially important to those who live with mental health concerns. Christian clergy have often been identified as “frontline mental health workers” since it has been found that as many as 25% of people who seek treatment turn to their pastor. Faith leaders can provide referrals and encouragement to their church members who need mental health services.

Minute for Mission: Gifts of New Immigrants

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Rola Al Ashkar is a Presbyterian Christian from Lebanon. She grew up in a nonreligious family, in a culture drenched in religion. Her parents took her and her brothers to church and Sunday school on occasions. When she had her confirmation class, she received her first Bible, and even as a teenager, she read the Bible with critical eyes, questioning parts of it and searching for answers. Her curiosity led her to regularly attend Sunday services, youth meetings and church summer camps, and through those experiences her faith grew, and she found a community in the Presbyterian Synod of Syria and Lebanon.

Minute for Mission: International Day of Peace

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The International Day of Peace is a day set aside originally by the United Nations. They hoped that by focusing our attention on peace on this day, we would have a yearly opportunity to stop and educate ourselves on issues of contemporary concern, to mobilize ourselves to address these domestic and global conflicts, and to memorialize and celebrate hard-won peaceable achievements. This is a timely reminder for us Presbyterians, one we would do well to take a minute to reflect on today.

Minute for Mission: Evangelism Sunday

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Picking up on his previous day’s theme of faith communities and mid councils “seeing beyond the standalone model of being church,” Dr. Corey Schlosser-Hall told the 540 or so people attending Synod School that he talked to several attendees about how they’re “creatively using God’s resources to be a blessing beyond themselves.”

Minute for Mission: A Season of Peace

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September marks the beginning of our yearly Season of Peace. Every fall, the Presbyterian Church’s Peacemaking Program extends an invitation to join with people of faith from around the country and the world for A Season of Peace, a monthlong pilgrimage designed to deepen the pursuit of peace for congregations, small groups, families and individuals. This season is a time of growth, encouragement, challenge, inspiration and education that leads the way to World Communion Sunday by inviting you to consider your own relationship to peacemaking and justice.

Minute for Mission: A Social Creed for the 21st Century

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The common good is rarely a “trending” topic. Across various platforms, the latest guffaw by a politician or celebrity inevitably outperforms reflections on this concept, as do spectacles of spending and images photoshopped to perfection. Perhaps the challenge to locate threads dedicated to, let alone acting from, the common good has to do with the complexity of its component parts. In a society marked by polarities, how do we even begin to determine what is “common” or what is “good”?

Minute for Mission: World Day of Prayer for the care of Creation

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Each year from Sept. 1 to Oct. 4, the Christian family unites for the Season of Creation, a worldwide celebration of prayer and action to protect our common home. It is a special season where we celebrate God as Creator and acknowledge Creation as the divine continuing act that summons us as collaborators to love and care for the gift of all that is created. As followers of Christ from around the globe, we share a common call to care for Creation. We are co-creatures and part of all that God has made.

Minute for Mission: Young Adult Volunteer Commissioning Sunday

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On the last day of Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) orientation, we are sent off to be commissioned at churches in the area. Several churches in the area agree to host small groups of YAVs for worship where we are commissioned for our year of service, followed by a meal and conversations. We as YAVs come as we are, bringing our whole selves, exhausted from the past week of orientation to a table of strangers, to share our intentions for our year of service and what we have already begun learning during the first week.

Minute for Mission: Day of Prayer for the Peaceful Reunification of the Korean Peninsula

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In recent years, news from the Korean peninsula has tended to focus on the North. Nuclear capabilities and missile tests, famine and poverty, and the political turmoil that marked Kim Jong Un’s ascendance following the death of his father, Kim Jong-Il, have all captured headlines. Added together, these headlines can give the misimpression that the barriers to peace and reunification on the Korean peninsula are largely parochial affairs to which those of us in far flung places can only look in on. But because today is set aside as a chance for us to reflect on and hope for peace, reconciliation and reunification on the Korean peninsula, it’s also worth remembering that the current situation is deeply indebted to U.S. interference and a longstanding U.S. foreign policy that puts militarism first.

Minute for Mission: Hiroshima Day

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Next year will mark the 80th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What should we mull over as we remember these bombings from our vantage point today?

“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” — Luke 23:42

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