The Presbyterian Mission Agency Board spent most its six-hour meeting Friday discussing how the Matthew 25 vision will inform the work of the Mission Agency in the coming years. The PMA has begun a Vision Implementation Process to align its work with the three foci of the Matthew 25 invitation: building congregational vitality, dismantling structural racism and eradicating systemic poverty.
If “Zoom fatigue” is really a thing, the nearly 200 participants in the second day of the Mid Council Financial Network’s (MCFN) virtual conference showed no traces of this pandemic phenomenon.
“Blessed is the church that trusts in the grace of Christ to build congregational vitality,” said Ruling Elder Elona Street-Stewart, Co-Moderator of the 224th General Assembly (2020). This is just one of the Beatitudes read by Street-Stewart and the Rev. Gregory Jerome Bentley, Co-Moderator of the 224th General Assembly, as they opened the newly recorded Matthew 25 worship service.
When the decision was made earlier this year to hold a virtual assembly, not only did Ruling Elder Elona Street-Stewart and the Rev. Gregory Bentley, Co-Moderators of the 224th General Assembly (2020), have to forego a trip to Baltimore, but they also missed out on the time-honored tradition of gathering with their predecessors who have also held the denomination’s highest elected office.
Thanks to #GivingTuesday, their wait is over.
Ruling Elder Elona Street-Stewart, Co-Moderator of the 224th General Assembly (2020) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the synod executive of the Synod of Lakes and Prairies, will preach online at 12:15 p.m. Eastern Time Wednesday as part of the Vine Deloria Jr. Theological Symposium.
The Rev. Gregory Bentley and Ruling Elder Elona Street-Stewart, the Co-Moderators of the 224th General Assembly (2020), took 45 minutes Thursday with members of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), A Corporation Board to share their vision of what’s ahead over the next two years.
The Rev. Gregory Bentley, co-moderator of the 224th General Assembly, believes that this presidential election is a critical one for the United States, and he already has a voting strategy in mind.
Like the Apostle Paul, when the Rev. Kevin Johnson was a child, he thought like a child. But even then he had the good sense to ask his mother and the people at his church plenty of questions — much the same way Muhammad Ali did in a taped interview Johnson played for his colleagues on the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board Thursday.
Young adults with a desire to see the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) move forward say they’re running up against a wall when they try to approach older members about sensitive issues, such as institutional racism and bias against queer people.
