As a mission co-worker and cultural worker in the Philippines, sometimes I am utterly exhausted. There are periods that require quite a bit of travel related to meetings and theater-based trainings for children, youth, church workers, teachers, women and others. When I am in Dumaguete, days sometimes stretch into late evenings for rehearsals with our youth theater group or with Silliman University Divinity School students preparing for the annual church workers convocation. So a few years ago, when asked by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) program if my husband, Cobbie, and I would consider reopening the Philippines YAV service site, we pondered, could we? Should we? Could we say no?
PC(USA) Seminaries are crucibles of faith formation for our future ministers and they have joined a chorus of those responding to the threats and acts of violence over the last week.
Bounding up to the pulpit with his laptop, Big Tent Bible study leader Eric Barreto cut right to the chase: “We have a problem,” he told Presbyterians gathered in Graham Chapel on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis.
“Even as the church is changing, even as our neighborhoods are changing, we as Christians don’t know quite know what to say in the face of these changes,” said Barreto, an associate professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary who was born in Puerto Rico and grew up in Slidell, Louisiana. He was leading the first of two Bible studies on the topic “Difference and Diversity in the Book of Acts.”
I remember how shocked I was the first time I heard the question. As I stood in the receiving line during my first year as an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), one of the parishioners asked point-blank, “Pastor, do you love Jesus or the social gospel?”
Politics can divide a church. I remember how shocked I was the first time I heard the question. As I stood in the receiving line during my first year as an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), one of the parishioners asked point-blank, “Pastor, do you love Jesus or the social gospel?”
The Revs. Jeya and Daniel So, lead pastors of the Anchor City Church, a new worshiping community in the Presbytery of San Diego, will lead Tuesday evening worship and give the Wednesday morning plenary address for “Living, Dying, Rising,” the 2017 national gathering for 1001 New Worshiping Communities.
