On April 2, Good Friday, musicians and pastors will offer a gift to the church: an experience of the practice that has sustained them through the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Rev. Aisha Brooks-Lytle enjoys nothing more than cheering on the Herculean online worship efforts being made each week during the pandemic by churches of the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta, where she’s the executive presbyter.
Dr. John Weaver, a celebrated Presbyterian organist and composer, died Monday at the age of 83. His daughter, the Rev. Kirianne E. Weaver, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Ithaca, New York, described his passing in a Facebook post on Tuesday morning:
“Last night, in the small hours, Dad took his last breaths. It was the winding down of a clock, and we knew this moment was coming when the hands would stop moving; it was all peaceful and then came the dawn.”
After seeing the latest edition of Everyday God-Talk, the Rev. Dr. David Gambrell, associate for Worship in the Office of Theology and Worship, was filled with an overwhelming sense of gratitude and rejoicing.
At the Presbyterians Association of Musicians’ Town Hall Forum on Thursday, the Rev. Dr. Ronald P. Byars spoke passionately about the faith of the church as he addressed the question, “Why bother with the Book of Common Worship?”
This year’s global pandemic canceled conferences all across the globe, but the most creative and inventive groups figured out ways to turn those gatherings virtual.
Although they won’t actually “be confirmed” during the Presbyterian Association of Musicians (PAM) 2021 Worship and Music Conference, a small group of middlers will make history by being part of the first denomination-wide confirmation class at Montreat.
Following the compelling study of the Cain and Abel story she delivered Tuesday to the Presbyterian Association of Musicians, Dr. Suzie Park, who teaches the Hebrew Bible at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, turned to another of the faith heroes held up in Hebrews 11 — Abraham, who, according to the Genesis account, was willing to sacrifice his only son, Isaac — during a Thursday broadcast to the 800 or so people registered for PAM’s online Worship & Music Conference, celebrating the organization’s 50th anniversary.
The fact that the 2020 Presbyterian Association of Musicians Worship & Music Conference, which is being held online this week with live broadcasts from Montreat Conference Center, is happening at all is “kind of a miracle,” said conference co-director Eric Wall.
Whoever wrote the book of Hebrews — especially the 11th chapter, which the Presbyterian Association of Musicians is studying this week as part of its online 50th anniversary celebration — wasn’t a very careful reader of the biblical account of humankind’s first murder, told in Genesis 4: 1-10.