As their two years of service as Co-Moderators of the 225th General Assembly come to a close, the Rev. Shavon Starling-Louis and the Rev. Ruth Faith Santana-Grace shared their thoughts in this 14-minute video on the highlights of their years in office uniting under the theme of “Unbounded We Thrive.”
Columbia Theological Seminary has appointed the Rev. Shavon Starling-Louis — fresh off the culmination, as of June 30, of her term as Co-Moderator of the 225th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) — as campus minister, effective August 1.
Beginning in 2016, the Presbytery of Philadelphia began shepherding the congregations of three struggling churches — First African Presbyterian, Good Shepherd Presbyterian, and Calvin Presbyterian — in a process that eventually led to the formation of a new, vibrant church: New River Presbyterian Church.
In one of the great introductions in the history of such speeches, the adult children of Dr. Jacqueline E. Lapsley, Emma and Sam, introduced their mother on Wednesday to an adoring crowd present to witness Lapsley’s inauguration as Union Presbyterian Seminary’s eighth president, the first woman to hold that office.
The Presbyterian Committee on the Self-Development of People has released its annual SDOP Sunday Resource & Yearbook and it’s available for free online, with a list of 13 ways to engage in poverty eradication.
The Unification Commission spent the bulk of its Saturday morning together divided into the four teams that will do much of the commission’s work over the coming months.
Batting leadoff during Monday’s ecumenical worship at the 67th Commission on the Status of Women, prominent Presbyterians preached a message of hope and inclusion to those gathered in person at the Church Center for the United Nations and to those participating in worship online.
Thousands of people from around the globe, including a contingent from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), are headed to New York City for the 67th Commission on the Status of Women, a gender equality gathering that will be celebrated by the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the PC(USA), both Co-Moderators of the 225th General Assembly, and the president and executive director of the Presbyterian Mission Agency.
Calling herself a sometimes “reluctant pursuer of hearing God’s voice,” the Rev. Ruth Faith Santana-Grace nonetheless picked up the phone one day early in 2022 and “made a blind call to this dear sister and now friend,” the Rev. Shavon Starling-Louis, to discuss standing for the office of Co-Moderators. The rest is history, of course: in June 2022, commissioners to the 225th General Assembly elected the two as Co-Moderators, offices they hold right up until the 226th General Assembly, set to be held online and in-person in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 2024.
It was New Year’s Day 1773. The faithful in the English town of Olney, though, were not thinking about old acquaintances being forgotten. (It would be another 15 years before Robert Burns would write his poem that would forever become synonymous with New Year’s Eve revelry.) They were thinking about grace and all its amazingness.
