The children coming to “Camp in a Van” were one of Misión Presbiteriana Hispana’s greatest success stories of 2017.
Forty children showed up when the new worshiping community in Fayetteville, North Carolina, took its Vacation Bible School to a nearby park. Eighty percent of the children were not members of Misión Presbiteriana. Some of the children told leaders they had not seen their parents, who had been deported to their home countries, “for a long time.” Then they asked for hugs.
Work is an important part of vocation, but an equally important part of living out my calling is my new home. My current home as a Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) is an intentional Christian community in Boston, where my fellow YAVs and I seek to build faithful relationships with one another, with our neighbors and with God. My year of service is teaching me that “being in mission” is a way of living that starts in the place where I eat, rest, reflect and pray with those closest to me.
For as long as I can remember, every prayer has begun and ended with the sign of the cross. The sign of the cross has been the catalyst for, and the conclusion to, every Mass I have ever attended. The sign of the cross is indicative of my religious and Latina identity.
I was sent to the home shortly after the death to comfort a family I had never met. The case sheet read: young, male, black, single, Baptist, terminal cancer.
The GPS guided me deep into the heart of Chicago’s South Side. My destination was Englewood, a poverty-stricken area that often makes the headlines due to gun violence.
I still remember the first words from the first church leader I met as I first arrived in Manila: “You are welcome here, but
you are not needed here.” Those words, spo0ken with wisdom and love almost two decades ago, would shape the course of my time as a Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) in the Philippines. I didn’t know it then, but that same sentiment shaped the YAV program at its inception. And it continues to guide our vision for the program as volunteers serve around the world and witness the holy ways the Spirit is leading them.
Fasting clergy and staff from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) joined with congregation and community members for a Jan. 18 vigil at a Wendy’s restaurant in Louisville. The witness was one of nearly five dozen taking place at Wendy’s restaurants across the U.S. on the National Day of Fasting and Witness. As many as 160 clergy and faith leaders took part in the fast.
To be relevant in the 21st century, the church must read Scripture differently — to determine who is left out of the biblical texts and reach out to those people, the Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson II told Seattle Presbytery on Jan. 16 in a thunderous sermon that electrified a full house at Mercer Island Presbyterian Church.
Women are in leadership roles throughout the church, serving as clergy, Christian educators, elders, deacons and as living testaments to our Brief Statement of Faith, which acknowledges that the Holy Spirit “calls women and men to all ministries of the Church.”
Westminster Presbyterian Church opened its spacious new wing in Minneapolis on Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, with more than 1,100 people celebrating the connection of their 121-year-old church to a new building full of sunlight and color.
With “home” as its theme, the 2018 Montreat College Conference (Jan. 2–5) urged students and their ministry leaders to consider the many ways the word impacts their lives. “What makes a place home? What does it mean to leave home? What does it mean to feel like you don’t have a home?” the conference introduction asked. “What about those who
do not have a home and cry out for justice and mercy?”
