During a virtual meeting on Thursday, the Presbyterian Hunger Program Advisory Committee heard about a variety of approaches that are being used by faith communities to address poverty and homelessness, from taking a group bike ride to paying off medical debt.
The eventual idea to provide Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregations with a video worship service for use after Easter this year came to the Rev. Katie Barrett Todd in the playroom of her house, which is just above the garage.
On Easter Sunday, 1949, four years after the end of World War II, the One Great Hour of Sharing offering brought relief to neighbors in need within the United States for the first time. In the 1960s, it expanded to include international needs.
As the Rev. Stephen McCutchan, an honorably retired PC(USA) minister in St. Petersburg, Florida, and a member of the Presbyterian Writers Guild (PWG) Board, considered some months ago what workshop he might offer at the PC(USA) Big Tent event, he immediately thought of his longtime friend and former pastoral colleague, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Stevenson, honorably retired in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
It happened in Graham, the seat of Alamance County, on February 26, 1870. A racially charged crowd hung Wyatt Outlaw from a tree until his last breath. None of the hooded men involved in the lynching of the former slave, who was then serving on the Graham Town Commission, would ever serve prison time.
For two decades Starmount Presbyterian Church in Greensboro, North Carolina, has been actively ministering to families resettling in the community, with a special emphasis on children and youth. Part of that commitment has been partnering with families from South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bosnia, Syria, and Chad, to name a few.
