The National Council of Churches (NCC) will hold its 2017 Christian Unity Gathering on Nov. 8–9 at the Sheraton Hotel in Silver Spring, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C. This year’s theme is “Resilience, Resistance and Persistence.”
In many ways, the world has changed since last year’s gathering. In other ways, the same challenges face us as before. Still, the central question is: What does it mean to live as a follower of Jesus today?
Weeks after Hurricane Harvey pounded the Houston area, many emergency response teams were packing up and preparing to leave the area. But Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) was setting its sights on the long haul.
In an age of tightened budgets and more limited financial resources, congregations are understandably counting the cost to engage in mission. Supporting the work of African partner churches in areas like evangelism, poverty reduction and reconciliation does, after all, take money.
I am Veronica Soto-Feliciano, 37 years old, born and raised on a small island in the Caribbean, Puerto Rico. I come from a family that has been serving God in the PC(USA) for over 35 years. I’m one of three children in a family that loves to celebrate their happiness and failures with all the extended family.
This year Presbyterians celebrate the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses. The theses, which criticized the sale of indulgences by church officials, are considered the opening salvo in the Protestant Reformation — a movement that emphasized individual relationships with God and salvation through faith alone.
“If you ask people, ‘What are your problems?’ they’ll immediately expect you’re going to come in and fix them,” Attahiru told me. Facing village expectations of handouts was his No. 1 concern in moving forward with Community Health Evangelism (CHE). Attahiru is from a village of 300 in Niger, where he is a lay pastor and youth leader. He recently finished the church’s regional CHE training, which introduced 25 pastors to how they can use the CHE strategy to help their communities increase overall health, development and exposure to the gospel.
When I ask women church leaders in Africa about important issues, the need for women to be able to support their families always comes up first. Closely tied to this concern is the need for education, as it is the surest way for people to be able to get ahead.
Education can take on many forms at different ages and stages.
During the past year, over 1 million people have had to flee their homes in the Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of Congo because of militia and/or army activities. As political unrest has spilled over into ethnic violence, many villages have been burned, and health centers and schools have been destroyed in the process. Since 1892, the Kasai region has been the main area in Congo where Presbyterian mission work has been carried out with what is now the Presbyterian Church of Congo (CPC).
At the end of the Rwandan genocide in 1994, 16 Presbyterian pastors had been killed, many had been wounded and some had fled the country. The churches that remained were empty.
The president of the Presbyterian Church of Rwanda called his colleague Elisee Musemakweli to return from Belgium, where he was finishing his PhD. Together, with the help of German and Dutch partners, they restarted a two-year theological training course, with emphasis on peacebuilding and reconciliation.
Reconciliation is a sacred space where weary bodies are refreshed and troubled souls are soothed, where the roar of oppression is silenced and the calm of compassion resounds. The pathway to reconciliation is long and grueling with setbacks, detours and delays. Along the journey lie ambushes of criticism and alienation, yet those on the journey press on like flocks of birds surging through cold winds for warmer homes. Reconciliation is a distant place — far from the battlefields of South Sudan — yet not beyond reach.
