PC(USA) News

April 3, 2024

Women should consider their life expectancy — and the fact that they tend to live longer than men do — when thinking about and planning for their financial futures. Those were some of the takeaways from “Empowering Older Women as Consumers,” a virtual event held in conjunction with the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. The March CSW68 summit included delegates from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and Presbyterian Women as well as women from around the world.

April 3, 2024

Now is the time eager applicants await their college acceptance letters. Individuals and families start to consider not just what institutions to attend but also how they will realistically pay for them. Churches around the country add these young adults and their families to their prayer lists and prepare to celebrate the members graduating in May or June. But for many seeking a degree, the PC(USA) can do more than just pray for their acceptance and ongoing education.

April 3, 2024

Congregations will have greater flexibility and choice when the new Benefits Plan of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) takes effect Jan. 1, 2025. The plan, redesigned to better support congregational ministry in the Church of today, received approval last month from the Board of Directors of The Board of Pensions of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

April 3, 2024

The PC(USA)’s Christian Zionism working group, which includes PC(USA) national staff and members from its congregations, will present the first in a series of webinars centered on the topic of confronting and challenging Christian Zionism. The Zoom-based webinar is scheduled for noon Eastern Time on Thursday, April 18.

April 3, 2024

Christians are minorities in Asia and the Pacific. The area is known to be home to the most Buddhists in the world, with a projection of 476 million followers in 2050. Nonetheless, the Christian population may rise by about 33% and reach 381 million in 2050.  The highest growth in church membership occurred between 1970–2020. In countries like China, the phenomenon of house churches continues to grow, which is in direct contrast with the global North, where church membership is declining.

April 2, 2024

Kayla Craig describes her family’s dinner table as “absolute chaos, but it’s a great kind of chaos.”

April 2, 2024

John Pavlovitz’s “Worth Fighting For: Finding Courage and Compassion When Cruelty is Trending,” a book published by Westminster John Knox Press, is now available.

April 2, 2024

If given the choice, most people would rather not ride on a hospital gurney. Except for Hector Cardenas.

April 1, 2024

Very early on Easter Sunday, two women went to the historic cemetery in Decatur, Georgia, accompanied by a musician. They carried a Christ candle and copies of a printed liturgy. Others joined them, but it was hard to say how many, for they were just shapes in the darkness — spirit or flesh? It was hard to tell until the morning light reached its fingers through the trees and gravestones to pull away the shroud of the long night.

April 1, 2024

Describing himself as an “almost empty-nester” with a daughter set to soon attend college in Scotland and a son preparing for higher education two years later, the Rev. Dr. Andrew Pomerville, the president of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary since July 2023, says he’s seeing the world more and more through the eyes of younger people.

March 30, 2024

Easter Sunday’s coming. But on Saturday afternoon, those who attended the online “Hope in the Dark: A Holy Saturday Vigil for Palestine” were reminded that while we may be Sunday people, we live in a Friday-Saturday world, where “loss, grief and the humanness of tombs being filled are all around us,” as one speaker lamented.

March 28, 2024

As the International Day of Transgender Visibility falls on Easter this year, Christians wrestle again with the ways that religion wounds those on the margins of society and in what ways the resurrection calls Christian into new ways of seeing, believing and loving.

March 28, 2024

Lisa Baker has a promise for those pondering the idea of becoming a member of the National Response Team (NRT) of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance. “It might seem daunting, but the reality is, you’ll get more than you give in this ministry,” said Baker, who’s part of the team. “Your heart becomes larger with every deployment.”

March 28, 2024

In response to a recent General Assembly mandate, the Advocacy Committee for LGBTQIA+ Equity is at work assisting the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in providing full expression to the rich diversity of its membership as described in the Book of Order.

March 28, 2024

For the past year, building on an initiative in the Presbyterian Mission Agency Mission Workplan to organize a Global Advisory Panel, a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) team has been working with a representative group of the full range of the PC(USA)’s global partners to create a space where in the spirit of living into a decolonial vision of being the church we could meet with our global partners and explore together how the PC(USA) could most effectively show up in the world today.

March 28, 2024

While most pastors devote Holy Week to poring over commentaries, planning worship and washing feet, the Rev. Caroline Vickery also washes clothes. At the local laundromat.

The Rev. Bronwen Boswell and others say ‘the killing must stop’

March 27, 2024

Mike Ferguson | Presbyterian News Service

Louisville

Together with more than 140 other church leaders from around the world, the Rev. Bronwen Boswell, Acting Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), has signed a letter calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and the halt of arms sales to Israel. Read the letter by Churches for Middle East Peace here.

“As Christians around the world prepare to commemorate the final suffering in the earthly life of Jesus Christ during Holy Week, we stand in solidarity with all in the Holy Land who suffer,” the letter states. “We repent of the ways we have not stood alongside our Palestinian siblings in faithful witness in the midst of their grief, agony, and sorrow.”

March 27, 2024

“Calvinists don’t really do the devil,” Dr. Philip G. Ziegler, professor of Christian Dogmatics at the University of Aberdeen, said on March 18 as he named the “strong sense of human responsibility and the demystifying impulse that marks Reformed theology” before setting out the plan for his six lectures to prove the doctrinal importance of the devil. Ziegler presented his case to about 150 attendees in person and online during the 2024 Annie Kinkead Warfield Lectures.

March 27, 2024

“Calvinists don’t really do the devil,” Dr. Philip G. Ziegler, professor of Christian Dogmatics at the University of Aberdeen, said on March 18 as he named the “strong sense of human responsibility and the demystifying impulse that marks Reformed theology” before setting out the plan for his six lectures to prove the doctrinal importance of the devil. Ziegler presented his case to about 150 attendees in person and online during the 2024 Annie Kinkead Warfield Lectures.

March 27, 2024

“Between 2 Pulpits” hosts the Rev. Dr. John Wilkinson and Katie Snyder called on the Rev. Dr. Laurie Kraus to wrap up their One Great Hour of Sharing podcast series by highlighting and illustrating the intersections of disaster assistance, ending hunger and the self-development of people.