“I’m just the pastor. This congregation rocks!”
That’s the outlook of Kirk Perucca, pastor at Covenant Presbyterian Church. This small, ethnically diverse congregation south of downtown Kansas City, Missouri, has been a Presbyterian Hunger Program Certified Hunger Action Congregation since 2017, but has been advocating hunger, fairness and justice issues for most of its 110-year-plus existence.
“People sometimes look at 20-to-40-page reports on energy, tax policy or end-of-life issues and ask, ‘Do you have something shorter?’ Well, the ‘Social Creed’ is that concise statement of what the churches stand for, deliberately avoiding ‘hot button’ language,” said Christian Iosso, coordinator for the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy for the PC(USA). “The Trinitarian format, loved by the Orthodox churches, was suggested by Patty Chapman, a marketing executive as well as Christian educator who served on the Presbyterian writing committee.”
Not long after Roman Catholic Mary Tudor rose to the English throne in 1553, the outspoken Scottish reformer John Knox felt compelled to leave the British Isles. After a spell in Frankfurt, Knox joined a fellowship of religious refugees from across Europe who had thronged to Geneva.
The Presbyterian Mission Agency recently approved Mission Program Grants to 10 new worshiping communities. The Mission Development Resources Committee announced the following recipients:
It’s been more than a year since a trio of hurricanes wreaked havoc on Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico, leaving a path of destruction, major power outages and many people without homes. Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, in quick succession, pummeled their targets over several days late last summer.
When soldiers are seeking to reclaim lost territory, they have little regard for the peace agreements signed by their national leaders. That’s why the grassroots work of the Rev. Peter Tibi and PC(USA) partner RECONCILE is a critical component of South Sudan’s fragile peace process.
The Rev. Keith Gunter, pastor of the newest chartered PC(USA) congregation, New Creation Church in Hendersonville, Tennessee, had “a whirlwind of a summer.”
To celebrate his 95th birthday on July 31, Bob Abrams went on a glider flight.
That’s nothing new. Abrams began taking regular glider flights when he celebrated his 80th birthday and has only missed one birthday flight since. “At the time, I figured I’d better get started or I’d never get around to it,” Abrams said with his characteristic wide grin. “As a kid I was always making paper gliders or playing with balsa ones, so I just kind of settled on the real thing.”
I grew up with Whitney Houston’s rendition of “The Greatest Love of All,” and at one time you couldn’t turn on the radio without hearing her soaring vocals sing the song first made famous by George Benson. I learned it alongside my multiplication tables and sentence diagramming. There’s a line in the song that did not strike me until I was well into adulthood, particularly after I went into ministry.
One of the marks of Presbyterianism is that we are a “connectional” church — that is, our congregations are connected through presbyteries that are connected to synods and to our General Assembly. In some profound ways, our “being connectional” is a way of practicing “being church” — sharing our gifts, talents and resources as well as our sorrows and pain.
