A short walk to dinner in the nation’s capital became a life-changing experience for 8-year-old Meghan DeLuca. The New Jersey native was walking with her family in Washington, D.C., and came across several homeless people, including a few who were sleeping in boxes. Instead of ignoring them or closing her eyes to their anguish, young Meghan made a compassionate choice to do something about it. A few years later, with the help of her congregation at First Presbyterian Church of Belmar, she’s raised nearly $8,000 to help homeless individuals and families get back on their feet.
A two-day faith-based forum on supporting LGBTQ refugees is being praised by those who participated in it. First Presbyterian Church in the City of New York hosted the recent symposium on the challenges facing LGBTQ refugees and asylum seekers. The church worked alongside several ministries within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to present the event, titled “Love Welcome.”
Did you know that Presbyterians are more willing than Americans in general to pay higher prices for environmentally friendly products? Or that one-third of Presbyterians belong to a congregation that is trying to become more racially and ethnically diverse? These are just a few of the things learned from Presbyterian Panel surveys.
As Presbyterians commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation two prominent Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) theologians say it is an opportunity for the church to reconsider history — and how it tells the story of the past 500 years.
For the Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, seeing large numbers of homeless people in one city was eye-opening.
The genesis of the Hands and Feet initiative came from Nelson, stated clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), after his experience at the 222nd General Assembly (2016) in Portland. He had never seen so many homeless people in one place.
The 2017 International Peacemakers, who spent four weeks speaking across the U.S., have returned to their homes. But the impact of their visit is still being felt by presbyteries, churches and communities where they spoke.
Although many children grow up in an atmosphere of violence, poverty and other negative influences, a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) initiative is working to counter that reality.
What began as a planned screening of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance’s newest documentaries in Dayton, Ohio, recently morphed into a communitywide event dedicated to peace.
The original idea was to simply schedule screenings of the most recent Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) documentaries on immigrant detention and refugee resettlement (Locked in a Box and To Breathe Free) at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Dayton. What Westminster member Sally Dyer didn’t realize, however, was that a number of organizations across the city were planning their own awareness events around these issues.
Mission co- worker Douglas Dicks has gone home. Not to his boyhood home in Virginia but to his spiritual home in Israel/Palestine.
Last month Dicks began serving as an associate for ecumenical partnerships at the invitation of St. Andrew’s Scots Memorial Church in Jerusalem, working with churches in Bethlehem, Jerusalem and elsewhere in the Holy Land. However, neither the job nor the region is new to him. He was commissioned by his home church, Buckton Presbyterian, to go to Jerusalem in September 1995 for two years. He stayed 18 years and finished his term in 2013 to return to Virginia to care for his aging mother.
In the first six months of a new program to fight hunger, Presbyterians nationwide have responded with commitment and action.
The Presbyterian Hunger Program (PHP) has announced that more than 70 Presbyterian churches have become Hunger Action Congregations since the initiative was announced last summer.
