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Do you call today’s Gospel reading (Luke 16:1–13) the parable of the Dishonest Steward, the Shrewd Manager, or something else? Either way, in the end, this servant pleases the master in the story with his more abundant view of the economy and in spite of unjust accounting to gain friends and shelter. We could call the servant a shrewd investor in eternal homes.
A common religious conceit is that people turn to prayer only in times of difficulty and despair. In my time as a hospice chaplain, I have found that idea to be untrue. Often pain and grief seem to stifle one’s ability to connect with God in prayer. Prayer can seem both insufficient and overwhelming when trauma has pierced the soul. I am often called in to assist people in these times of spiritual disconnect.
In December 2013 Steve Shive had a dream.
Shive, general presbyter of the Presbytery of Wyoming, says that in the dream, he felt a strong sense to create a place where God’s people could come together to work on spiritual practices. “I saw our teaching and ruling elders coming together to learn from each other,” he says, “and to engage in the presence of their lives in Christ in community.”
Winnebago Presbytery got a chance to learn from its counterpart in Colombia earlier this year when five visitors from Urabá Presbytery spent a week in northern Wisconsin.
The sounds could be coming from any busy school office responding to myriad requests: Someone needs first aid for a scraped elbow. Someone else is turning in a missing nametag. Someone else wants to change classes.
But this school is different. It’s Synod School, the annual midsummer ministry of the Synod of Lakes and Prairies. It’s a nearly weeklong event—Sunday afternoon through Friday noon—that always runs the last week in July at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa.
The way Mark Roberson sees it, it was Roswell Presbyterian Church’s turn to plant a church.
Roberson, a ruling elder for over 50 years—18 at Roswell—knew about church planting. He’d worked with the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta’s New Church Development Commission, and in 2011 he just knew it was Roswell’s time.
A group of 19 young adults from the Presbytery of Yukon faced some significant travel challenges when they went to West Lafayette, Indiana, for this year’s Presbyterian Youth Triennium.
The delegation came from all parts of Alaska, from Barrow in the north to Anchorage in the south, where average temperatures in July range from 60 to 70 degrees during the day and 40 to 50 degrees in the evening. Indiana greeted them with temperatures approaching or exceeding 90 degrees and humidity that ranged from the high 70s to mid-80s each day. As if that wasn’t enough of an adjustment, the group was assigned to a dormitory without air conditioning.
Mark Hinds remembers the effect that confirmation had on both himself and his brothers.
“In our family, it had a 30 percent success rate,” Hinds told a room full of Christian educators at the 2016 Association of Presbyterian Church Educators gathering in Chicago. “I’m still in the church; my brothers aren’t.”
As heads nodded in response to Hinds’s admission, the room hummed with questions about the efficacy and future direction of the confirmation process in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
Around 40 people, half of whom were homeless, spent a recent afternoon fishing on Monterey Bay aboard a luxury yacht.
The trip was organized by Sweaty Sheep, a PC(USA)-affiliated ministry that uses sports and games to build relationships across socioeconomic groups. The Santa Cruz chapter organized the fishing excursion.
A four-church collaboration in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, recently gave roughly 200 children an opportunity to learn about arts and science. Tippecanoe, Grace, and North Shore Presbyterian Churches joined with Hephatha Lutheran Church to sponsor Arts and Science Literacy Camp specifically for low- and middle-income families.
