While Black Friday elevates the urgency of shopping over the Advent of the arrival of Jesus, #GivingTuesday offers a time to support the timeless values he taught.
Rocking peacefully on a porch at Ferncliff Camp and Conference Center—a broad smile across his face—it is impossible to imagine Peter Newbury as the “angry kid” who says that he went to camp at his parents’ insistence against his will.
If camps are famous as places for roughing it, the tablecloths were an unexpected amenity. “Because you are here at camp, there are tablecloths,” said Doug Walters, Camp Hanover’s executive director, to a dining hall filled with delighted laughter. “There are no tablecloths here in summer.”
The message couldn’t have been any clearer—not only the message of the Rev. Tom Tickner’s closing sermon on Oct. 14, but also the underlying message at the heart of the entire ARMSS/POAMN national conference.
Over two mornings at the 2016 ARMSS/POAMN conference the Rev. Dr. John T. Carroll shared his wisdom in a comprehensive, two-part keynote address with broad implications for his audience of pastors, educators, and others engaged in ministry with older adults.
There was at least one elephant in the room at Chris Pomfret’s workshop at the 2016 ARMSS/POAMN conference. But an elephant could scarcely have fit into the packed meeting space, which nearly exceeded the room’s seating capacity as extra chairs were carried in to accommodate conference-goers eager to engage the workshop’s theme, “Making Our Third Thirty a Great Thirty: How to Make the Difficult Decisions.”
A lively spirit filled the gathering space as the leadership of the Presbyterian Older Adult Ministries Network (POAMN) and the Association of Retired Ministers, Their Spouses or Survivors (ARMSS) celebrated their 20th year of co-sponsoring a national conference for persons engaged in ministry with older adults.
As part of its ongoing mission to foster a culture of discipling—central to Christian life and practice—the Presbyterian Mission Agency’s office of Evangelism announced plans for its annual Disciple Making Church Conference.
With more than 400 current participants and upwards of 500 alumni/ae, the Company of New Pastors represents just such a community of care and challenge—a community committed to deepening and sustaining the theological foundation of pastoral leaders.
Over the past few years, three members of my very Protestant extended family have become Roman Catholic. All of these conversions were undertaken with little or no contact with the other persons. These shifts have deepened the question that all of us face, particularly on Reformation Day: What is the future of Protestantism, particularly Reformed Protestantism?
