In 2016, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) celebrated the 60th anniversary of women serving teaching elders following the October 24, 1956, ordination of the Rev. Margaret Towner, the denomination’s first clergywoman. For much of Presbyterian history, women had been restricted from access to classrooms, pulpits, platforms and lecterns.
During the Gathering as One online conference of the Presbyterian Church Camp and Conference Association (PCCCA), leaders from around the United States and Canada explored how to enhance intergenerational connections in their outdoor ministries, where everyone — young participants, adults, families and entire church communities — could learn together through a shared faith experience.
Middleburg Presbyterian Church, a small community church southwest of Jacksonville in Clay County, Florida, participates in a feeding program called Operation Backpack. The outreach program works with the guidance counselor at a nearby elementary school. The counselor identifies the children and families who will receive a backpack filled with healthy child-friendly food.
The Tooth Bus is a large bus outfitted with all the equipment needed to make and repair dentures. After over 10 years of visioning, fundraising and hard work by churches in the Presbytery of St. Augustine, the Tooth Bus has finally made its way to Jamaica. The plan is that the bus will be able to go most anywhere in Jamaica where there was a work site and have everything required to make dentures for those in need.
During a recent online forum held in the Presbytery of St. Augustine on racial and ethnic tensions, a woman named Kristen shared her family’s story: “I didn’t really know what systemic racism was. Then my father, who wore hearing aids, was arrested during a traffic stop when he didn’t understand the rules for including his adaptive devices on his driver’s license.”
Monday was the Moving Forward Implementation Commission’s moment to begin moving forward.
The 12-member, two-year commission, created by the 2018 General Assembly to carry out recommendations of the Way Forward Commission and those of other groups regarding such goals as transparency and cost-sharing, met for nearly an hour by video conference Monday evening to, among other tasks, talk about what the commission hopes to accomplish.
