Mission Yearbook: Presbyterians experience Armenia firsthand on Jinishian Study Tour

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Eliza Minasyan and Study Tour participants enjoy a previous journey. (Contributed photo)

Armenia’s rich history, vibrant culture, faith traditions and breathtaking scenery is now on full display as the Jinishian Memorial Program once again is offering its annual Study Tour to Armenia, taking place Oct. 1–10.

Hosted by local JMP staff, this immersive study tour is providing firsthand insight into faith-based community development projects throughout Armenia, while also allowing participants to explore the beauty of Yerevan, enjoy breathtaking views of Mount Ararat, and gain a deeper understanding of the country’s post-Soviet transformation.

The Jinishian Memorial Program, administered by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), was established in 1966 through an endowment from Vartan H. Jinishian to provide economic, social and spiritual assistance to millions of Armenians in Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Armenia, Georgia and other countries. Its fundamental mission is to help people transition from poverty and despair to self-sufficiency and hope.

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The Oct. 1-10 tour will enable visitors to learn about Armenia through the eyes of local people. (Contributed photo)

“The primary goals of our study tours are to learn about Armenia through the eyes of local people; understand its past, present and aspirations for the future; and experience local tradition, hospitality, humor and culinary delights,” said Eliza Minasyan, JMP coordinator. “Participants learn about our development projects and often appreciate and build upon what they have in their own life and are inspired by the resilience, creativity and dynamism of the Armenian people. They often continue to stay involved and connect with us.”

In addition to visiting selected projects, those taking the tour will also have ample opportunity to go sightseeing with a knowledgeable guide, who will enrich their experience with local history and cultural insights.

Reflecting on his own experience, 2024 JMP Study Tour participant, Eric Diekhans, a member of Lake View Presbyterian Church in Chicago, called Armenia “a country steeped in tradition but unafraid of change.”

“Most of our tour participants leave Armenia with a profound appreciation for its people and a renewed motivation to make a positive impact in their own communities,” added Minasyan. “One former participant encapsulated the experience perfectly: ‘All I can say is, go … and let the people, their faith and the landscapes draw you into their embrace.’”

To read the stories of former participants, guests of Jinishian, click here and here.

Emily Enders Odom, Associate Director of Mission Communications, Interim Unified Agency

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff:

Heather Colletto, Program Administrator, Presbyterian CREDO, Engagement & Church Relations, Board of Pensions
Nikki Collins,  Coordinator, 1001 New Worshiping Communities, Interim Unified Agency

Let us pray:

Heavenly Father, help us to keep our focus on you and on what we have in common through Jesus Christ. Keep our eyes on your mission, so that we will see what is possible and what is already happening when we work together. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Pastor's Life - Time Change

Time Change by Rev. Philip Beck Soon we will “fall back” an hour. The first weekend in November, we return to standard time having been in daylight savings time since March. Like many, I grumble and complain about the change. There really isn’t an hour more of sleep. It will be dark earlier and many of us will be off to work when it is dark and return home in the dark. It is the nature of the days in this season. The writer of Ecclesiastes remarks on these seasons and the change when they write, “For everything there is a season, a time for every matter under heaven.” There is a saying my kids and younger friends have said to me, “times have changed.” There is of course truth to “times have changed.” Those of us who are older remember our math teachers saying, “You need to learn how to do your percentages. You aren’t going to have a calculator with you.”

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Rev. Philip Beck is the pastor at First United Presbyterian Church of Tarentum, north of Pittsburgh, having served there since May of 2001. Phil and his wife Christa have three adult children. In their spare time, Phil and Christa travel to visit their children and to experience the world. Phil likes to cook, plant flowers and vegetables at home and in the community garden, take walks, and nap occasionally. You will also find him the first two weeks of the season at the Chautauqua Institution every year.

Featured Resources

Year-End Giving Making gifts at year-end is a holiday tradition for many. Considering which assets to give and in what forms to give them can be challenging. We have resources you can use to support your members in making year-end gifts to your church or other ministries they care about. Luminosity Conference 2026 The Luminosity Conference will be taking place March 9-11 in Orlando, FL. This conference will be an inspiring and transformative experience filled with insightful teaching, practical strategies, and meaningful connections. Join us as we learn, dream, and grow - because the future of ministry starts with leaders like you.

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Mission Yearbook: Guns to Gardens Action Circles are growing

As the federal government dismantles programs that prevent gun violence, the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship begins its fifth year of another kind of dismantling: Guns to Gardens Action Circles that help churches learn to safely dismantle unwanted firearms, turning them into garden tools, art or jewelry.

Since summer 2021, volunteers from the Peace Fellowship’s Gun Violence Prevention Ministry have guided nearly 600 local church participants through the online series, growing a nationwide community of gun violence prevention activists armed with chop saws, anvils, determination and hope.

“Churches like Guns to Gardens because it is a positive response to a painful issue,” said the Rev. Margery Rossi, the Peace Fellowship’s Minister for Gun Violence Prevention. “It brings people together at a very deep level in our society — churches, gun owners, veterans, woodworkers, blacksmiths, artists and many more.  And our volunteer leaders are amazing.”

The Action Circles are ecumenical and have included participants from 21 denominations, including the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Southern Baptists and the Church of the Nazarene.    

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Action Circle participants meet online.

“What I really liked about the Action Circle was learning on Zoom with other church members around the country,” said Douglas Hunt, a graduate of the Guns to Gardens Action Circles. His congregation, First Presbyterian Church in Stockton, California, has supported Guns to Gardens events in Oakland and Sacramento.

“The federal government is not only abandoning programs and research that prevent gun violence, but they are actually cutting the staff who enforce background checks and inspect gun stores to prevent illegal gun trafficking. The church can stand by or it can stand up. Join an Action Circle and stand up,” said Hunt.

With over half a billion guns in private hands in the United States, Guns to Gardens provides a responsible way for gun owners to dispose of unwanted guns without returning them to the gun market, or risk them being stolen or accessed by children or others who may be at risk. Each gun owner is thanked with a gift card, with values from $25 for a BB gun up to $250 for semiautomatic assault rifles. Action Circle participants learn how to bring all of this to fruition in a church parking lot. See a video here as a gun owner calls on other gun owners to bring unwanted semiautomatic assault weapons to Guns to Gardens.     

Originally created by the Rev. Deanna Hollas, the first minister in the United States ordained to a ministry of Gun Violence Prevention, the Action Circles use an online curriculum with two volunteer leaders per session. The current leaders are the Rev. Rosalind Hughes, Episcopal Canon for Beloved Community in the Diocese of Cleveland, Ohio; Rita Niblack, a retired art teacher and lay leader at Most Precious Blood Catholic Church in Denver; the Rev. Rachel Sutphin, pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Hammonton, New Jersey, who grew up as part of the “lockdown generation”; Emily Bruno, a Tallahassee, Florida, attorney and recent seminary graduate; Nancy Halden, communications coordinator for the Gun Violence Prevention Center of Utah; and the Rev. Jan Orr-Harter, a retired Presbyterian pastor in Aledo, Texas.

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Action Circle Leader Rita Niblack orients volunteers at a Guns to Gardens event in Denver. (Photo courtesy of Presbyterian Peace Fellowship)

To keep Action Circles current with rules and best practices for Guns to Gardens, the Peace Fellowship partners with RAWtools, the national nonprofit that provides a network of blacksmiths to transform gun parts into garden tools, as well as oversight on safety and legal issues.

“The Action Circles are fantastic,” says Scotty Utz, a Quaker blacksmith who coordinates RAWtools South in North Carolina. “When you look at those faces on the screen, you know that you are seeing some of the finest people in our country and in the church.”

Guns to Gardens Action Circles run four times a year, with a daytime or evening option, a total of eight Circles per year. Technology allows leaders to share videos on how unwanted guns are dismantled on a chop saw, as well as diagrams for how to set up a safe disposal event in a church parking lot, and sample publicity materials from congregations around the nation.

The six weeks have distinct topics, with time for each participant to share about their efforts locally. Topics include outreach, logistics of a safe disposal event, publicity and fundraising for gift cards.

Learn more about Guns to Gardens Action Circles here. 

Presbyterian Peace Fellowship  (Click here to read original PNS Story) 

Let us join in prayer for:

Luke Choi, Church Consultant - Korean and Church Relations, Engagement & Church Relations, Board of Pensions
Vilmarie Cintrón-Olivieri, Interim Unified Agency   

Let us pray:

May the tender mercy of Christ cause God’s love-light to shine upon us so we can reflect light to those sitting in darkness and together follow the Spirit’s guidance into the way of peace — for ourselves, our neighbors and the world. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: Presbyterians are urged to break silence on Gaza and seek justice and peace

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Photo by Mohamed Bassuoni via Unsplash

A day after this statement in June from the World Council of Churches called for an end to apartheid and occupation in Palestine, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s Office of Public Witness held its monthly Presbyterian Advocacy Hour on the war in Gaza and the ongoing crisis in Palestine and Israel, which now includes Iran. More than 270 people participated.

Three people spoke as part of “Seeking Peace, Speaking Truth: Presbyterian Advocacy for Justice and Peace in the Holy Land”: Muna Nassar, a Palestinian Christian leader from Bethlehem and the World Communion of Reformed Churches’ Executive Secretary for Mission and Advocacy; Peter Beinart, a leading Jewish political commentator and journalist who teaches at City University of New York; and Noushin Framke, a Presbyterian ruling elder and leader in the PC(USA)’s Palestine Justice Network.

Asked to speak about the urgency of the situation in Gaza, Nassar said everyone viewing the webinar could agree that “this is very urgent. The situation has been escalating at an alarming speed.”

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Muna Nassar

She recalled witnessing as a 10-year-old a 40-day siege during the Second Intifada. Stopped by an Israeli military tank, the girl was asked, “What are you doing?”

“I was standing outside my house,” she said. “I felt like there is me and there is this Israeli military tank and nothing else. No one else could provide security. I remember this deafening silence.”

Today, when she sees images and videos of people “who cannot protect themselves in Gaza, I feel this on a much larger scale. For us Palestinians, the silence and the urgency have always been there.”

The sorrow “has become devastatingly familiar,” Nassar said. “If these thousands of videos cannot stop another child from being murdered, where is the urgency? People have normalized suffering and pain. How is the world still silent about this?”

Ever since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s retaliation, “we have woken up to gut-wrenching anxiety and this fanatical need to check the news from Gaza,” she said. “We thought patients would never be shot in a hospital ward or people would be shot waiting in line for food.” People are being “made invisible by the software of the media,” Nassar said.

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Peter Beinart

“As a Palestinian Christian, I look at the Western church and say, ‘what is the Western church saying? When will it break its silence?’”

She suggested “listening to Palestinian Christians who have written so much about this. Try to engage in ways that will broaden the conversation and not make it a polarizing issue.”

One of Beinart’s central points was that being a faithful Jew doesn’t necessarily equate with being a strong supporter of Israel. His most recent book is “Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning.”

“It is common on book tours to find people who say, ‘I can’t talk to my parents or my grandparents on this issue,’” Beinart said, calling the equating of being a good Jew with strong support for Israel “idolatrous.”

“In Judaism, idolatry is just about the paramount sin,” he said. “It is treating anything human-made as if it is sacred, and a state is human-made.”

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Noushin Framke

He pointed out that human beings are made in the image of God, while states “are mere instruments for the protection of human life and flourishing.” If states destroy human lives, “they must be reimagined, because states are secondary to human beings.”

Framke cited this timeline compiled by the Palestine Justice Network. Included are the “Breaking Down the Walls” report from 2010 and 2012 and the divestment from three companies in 2014 following what the Rev. Dr. Glenn Dickson and others from Westminster Presbyterian Church in Gainesville, Florida, witnessed during a trip to the West Bank.

“Our church prides itself in being connectional, not hierarchical,” Framke noted.

Framke was part of a Palestine Justice Network journey last year that included a stop at the Aida Refugee Camp.

“As the granddaughter of a survivor of the Armenian genocide, I fervently say silence is not an option,” Framke said. “It’s a shrug. It normalizes the dark chapter we are living through.”

“We need to speak out,” Framke said, “and do it in the name of the Prince of Peace.”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Antonia Coleman, Administrative Project Manager, Center for Repair, Interim Unified Agency
Octavia Coleman, HR Generalist, Human Resources, Administrative Services Group      

Let us pray:

Good and gracious God, we pray that you would continue to show your face to all of us as we step out in faith to see what you have for us. We pray that you will make us good stewards of your good gifts. Amen.

Christmas Joy Offering Resources

Let’s prepare the way – Together! We want to make sure you have what you need to prepare for Advent and the Christmas Joy Offering. We have a great slate of resources to meet your congregation’s unique needs as you prepare for this Advent season. Media Tool Kit Creating your own images and announcements is easier than ever with our media tool kit. Get the logos and backgrounds you need as you prepare for the Christmas Joy Offering and drop them into your favorite editor like Canva, and you can make exactly what you need for your next newsletter or worship bulletin. DOWNLOAD MEDIA TOOL KIT Powerpoint Slides Visuals help you communicate clearly, and our customizable PowerPoint presentation does just that. Use these slides in worship or a meeting with your committee, ministry team or session. These premade slides make it easy to “plug and play,” or you can utilize our templates to build your own slides with relevant information for your congregation. DOWNLOAD POWERPOINT SLIDES Social Media Images Need an easy social media post about the Christmas Joy Offering or a Facebook cover image for Advent? We have some ready for you — all you have to do is download the image you want and post it on your platforms. DOWNLOAD SOCIAL MEDIA IMAGES Still need more resources? View our whole collection. VIEW ALL RESOURCES Thank you for your generous support of Special Offerings. If you have any questions, reply to this email or call 800-728-7228, Ext. 5047.

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