Very early on Easter Sunday, two women went to the historic cemetery in Decatur, Georgia, accompanied by a musician. They carried a Christ candle and copies of a printed liturgy. Others joined them, but it was hard to say how many, for they were just shapes in the darkness — spirit or flesh? It was hard to tell until the morning light reached its fingers through the trees and gravestones to pull away the shroud of the long night.
In the midst of the Covid pandemic, when the efficacy of new vaccines was still unknown and many churches were not back to worshiping inside, the Rev. Aisha Brooks-Johnson, executive presbyter of the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta, issued an invitation for congregations to join the Vital Congregations Initiative (VCI). The Rev. Katie Day, having accepted her call to Pleasant Hill Presbyterian Church in Duluth, Georgia, during the pandemic, remembers that her congregation was still worshiping in a parking lot and conducting meetings on Zoom.
“We’re not going to have change or create change unless we vote,” says Lolita Watkins, a member of Saint James Presbyterian Church of Greensboro, North Carolina, in her opening statement for a Matthew 25 video posted to the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s Facebook page on Nov. 3. Watkins, who is the co-coordinator of the social justice advocacy committee at Saint James Church, goes on to explain how voter engagement is key to her congregation’s embodiment of Matthew 25.
The Center for Lifelong Learning at Columbia Theological Seminary invites registrations for two upcoming courses in its Older Adult Ministry (OAM) course of study in the winter and spring of 2020.
When talking about his work, Mark Hare knows how to capture your attention.
A mission co-worker in the Dominican Republic, he was sharing the details of his project with Mouvman Peyizan Papay (MPP), a grassroots organization in Haiti. At the heart of his presentation was the goal of introducing Community Health Evangelism (CHE) in the ecovillages built in Papaye, about 75 miles north of Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
