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minute for mission
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. These groups united and over the years eventually became what we now know as Church Women United. The May celebration has been continually observed since 1933; in 1999, Church Women United changed the name from May Fellowship Day to May Friendship Day.
Take a minute to look back on your life. Who all have you lived with? In the earliest parts of our lives, we might live with parents or grandparents or other caring adults. Perhaps siblings. Over the years, we might live with friends and extended family, family of choice or even sometimes with strangers. And sometimes we might find ourselves living alone.
The 223rd General Assembly (2018) approved the initiative to “Declare an Imperative for the Reformation of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) in being a Transformative Church in This Intercultural Era.” The 223rd General Assembly also declared the period from 2020 to 2030 as the “Decade of Intercultural Transformation” by focusing on transformative priorities and initiatives across the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
Americans celebrated the first Earth Day 50 years ago this spring, on April 22, 1970. That same year the United Presbyterian Council on Church and Society undertook a study on threats facing human survival on an increasingly crowded and polluted planet. The study culminated in the 1971 United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. General Assembly adopting the council’s report, Christian Responsibility for Environmental Renewal.
Fighting hunger is at the heart of the Presbyterian understanding of mission. Jesus fed the hungry and told his disciples to do the same. Yet, we know that hunger is an extremely complex phenomenon with economic, political and social causes. The Presbyterian Hunger Program celebrates the vital work of local congregations and we complement it by doing “root cause” work to help address the underlying questions of why people are hungry in order to reduce ongoing hunger.
Faith has always played an important role in the Rev. Dr. Sam Miglarese’s life. He spent most of his life as a Catholic priest, but decided to become Presbyterian and became a teaching elder at First Presbyterian Church in Durham, North Carolina.
International Roma Day is an opportunity for those of us who know little about the Roma (often pejoratively called “gypsies”) to learn about and celebrate their culture, history and people, moving past stereotypes and media depictions.
The men were taken first, and then the women and children were brutalized. Witnesses saw the Euphrates run with blood, and women plunged into the river to escape the terrors of the desert march.
On April 22, 1970, 20 million Americans — 10% of the U.S. population at the time — took to the streets, college campuses and hundreds of cities to protest environmental ignorance and demand a new way forward for our planet. That first Earth Day is credited with launching the modern environmental movement and is now recognized as the planet’s largest civic event.
The Northeast region is one of Nigeria’s agricultural centers, producing cereals, vegetables and livestock. However, the increasing incidence of Boko Haram violence there has devastated agricultural production in the region. People have had their property destroyed, livelihoods disrupted, and have been displaced from their ancestral homes and farmlands.
