If their repartee on Facebook is any indication, the current and former General Assembly co-moderators, moderators and vice moderators, quite frankly, miss each other.
In the midst of the pandemic last fall, Sheri Dittman, the commissioned pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Brownsville, Texas, gained some fame in Presbyterian circles as the mastermind of a photo scavenger hunt with a purpose — getting parishioners at the church she serves and at First Presbyterian Church in Mission, Texas, where she’s part-time coordinator for Congregational Development, more familiar with multiple options available through the Presbyterian Giving Catalog.
The eight-hour livestream planned for #GivingTuesday on Nov. 30 will feature events and check-ins with congregations and mid councils across the country.
When Doris Brown, a member of Sherrill’s Ford Presbyterian Church in Sherrill’s Ford, North Carolina, was invited to write a prayer for the 2020–2021 Presbyterian Giving Catalog, the words she penned revealed a singular truth about this extraordinary woman’s life and legacy. Brown lived to serve.
When Dr. Seuss’s iconic Grinch famously declared that he must stop Christmas from coming, Sue Powers would hear nothing of it.
Pandemic or not, Oak Grove Presbyterian Church’s annual Alternative Christmas Marketplace would go on last year as usual.
Just not in the usual way.
These days she’s the Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Davis, who teaches seminarians about education at Union Presbyterian Seminary’s Charlotte, North Carolina, campus. When she was 9 and growing up in West Virginia, that role would have been difficult to fathom.
Even as she’s been working stateside during the pandemic, mission co-corker Cindy Corell continues to walk alongside her Haitian partners. As Monday’s Between Two Pulpits broadcast made clear, Corell’s heart is very much in Haiti, especially following Saturday’s kidnapping of 12 adults and five children connected with a U.S. missionary organization.
For every step forward that has been taken toward closing the global gender gap, there have been at least two steps back.
And then some — largely due to COVID-19.
With many hands-on volunteer service opportunities and most mission trips still largely on hold because of the pandemic, Presbyterians need only let their fingers — and their imagination — do the walking, straight through the new Presbyterian Giving Catalog in order to reach out and touch people’s lives.