As an adviser for the Unglued Church, a program in Pittsburgh Presbytery for help with church change, I encounter a lot of churches at the end of their rope. It’s a time in a church’s life when it’s important to emphasize the importance of thinking beyond survival, and how the congregation might imagine leaving a legacy for God’s ministry and mission.
Moving from a 9-to-5 job to a lifestyle without a clock may not be as easy as you might suppose. It’s about finding perspective and balance, planning, and setting realistic expectations.
This annual special offering assists past and present church workers in need, and it provides for the education and leadership development of the PC(USA)’s future racial-ethnic leaders.
For more than a century, the manse next to First Presbyterian Church in tiny Baird, Texas (population 1,600), served many functions: as the church’s first sanctuary, as a home for a string of pastors, and as space for vacation Bible School and adult Sunday school classes. In recent years, however, it had become an albatross, a dilapidated structure that was too expensive to repair and too expensive to demolish.
Tired of their country’s civil war and related atrocities, some church women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo bravely walked to the hiding place of a notorious warlord in March 2013, seeking peace.
Hope for reconciliation between the United States and Cuba reached a peak when Barack Obama became the first sitting president in 88 years to visit the island nation. People lined the streets of Havana, chanting for the American president—an act that could have sent them to jail in another era.
