Mission Yearbook: Pastor urges others to preach generosity with purpose

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The Rev. Dr. Carlos Perkins

During a “Preaching Generosity” webinar he recently led for the Synod of the Covenant, the Rev. Dr. Carlos Perkins practiced what he preaches.

Perkins is an assistant research scientist and the associate director of Engagement for the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at the Lake Institute on Faith and Giving at Indiana University Indianapolis. He’s also the senior pastor of Bethel Cathedral AME Church, the oldest Black congregation in Indianapolis.

Perkins infused the lessons he imparted in the webinar with experiences he’s had preaching and teaching at the church he serves.

At the Lake Institute, “Our practice when we do workshops and classes is, we believe in the wisdom in the room. We believe you have practices others can learn from,” Perkins said. “This is my invitation to lean in, unmute yourself and be part of the discussion.”

Perkins began the discussion by asking participants about the worst money sermon they’d heard, and a sermon, Bible study or workshop on generosity they found meaningful or memorable.

“Often we share with pastors as you interrogate your theology around money and giving, what are the Scriptures and experiences you have had with money that helped for [forming] your theology?” Perkins said. Generosity is like any other virtue: it must be cultivated, he said.

Perkins noted that Dr. Patricia Snell Herzog and Dr. Heather E. Price, a pair of Indiana University researchers, have identified four types of givers:

• About 16% of givers are planned givers who follow systems or routines of giving and make planned decisions to give more money away.
• About 6% are habitual givers. They give regularly, but through a system. “They set it and forget it,” Perkins said.
• Selective givers, about 17% of donors, make a conscious decision to give, yet also give spontaneously. “They are very selective in how and why they give,” Perkins said.
• The lion’s share of givers — about 42% — are impulsive givers. 

The other 19% of givers are categorized by Herzog and Price as atypical givers.

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The Rev. Dr. Chip Hardwick

The Rev. Dr. Chip Hardwick, executive for the Synod of the Covenant, said he found this analysis helpful. “I suspect we preach sermons we would like to hear, rather than a variety of sermons for people in the congregation,” he said. “I suspect we preach about money according to the way we think about giving.”

Perkins said younger givers “are looking for a reason to give. … They don’t subscribe to a theology of duty. They are looking to be cultivated and connected to the mission and vision” of their faith community.

Perkins recommended Father Henri Nouwen’s “A Spirituality of Fundraising,” which says that “fundraising is, first and foremost, a ministry. It’s a way of announcing our vision and inviting other people into our mission.”

Nouwen says that “it’s an invitation to partner with God on a vision that’s exciting and engaging,” Perkins said. “the question is, do you have a vision that is exciting and engaging?”

Perkins touched on the model of a year-round cycle for teaching and preaching about generosity:

• Tell the story, including identifying a mission and vision statement and celebrating the story
• Ask, including a stewardship program, time and talent program, planned giving, capital funding program, special giving opportunities and year-end giving
• Keep the momentum going, including education and reflection, affirmation of donors’ giving and a celebration of accomplishments and mission
• Learn and plan, including evaluation and analysis, endowment planning and capital needs planning.

The church Perkins serves uses a STARS model, for “serving, teaching and reaching souls” for Jesus Christ. “They hear that every Sunday,” Perkins said. “I might highlight how we serve on the first Sunday. On the second Sunday, we highlight teaching and then reaching out on the third Sunday. I am very deliberate about sharing the impact.” He’ll tell the congregation something like, “through your generosity, we were able to impact 200 students” because of “your back-to-school activities giving this year.”

“All that I have has been given to me by God, and it all belongs to God,” Perkins said. The question is this: “How do I become a mature steward in what God has given to me?”

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

Let us join in prayer for:

Rheannon Sicely, VP, Customer Experience & Change Mgt, Plan Operations, The Board of Pensions
T. Clark Simmons, Senior Church Consultant, Engagement & Church Relations, The Board of Pensions

Let us pray:

Oh God, whose love stretches around the world, bless your disciples who serve your people. Enliven their ministries and show them compassion, that they may better reflect your presence in our changing world, which craves knowledge and truth only you can illuminate. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: Amid plateau in U.S. Christianity, new signs of spiritual renewal emerge

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After two decades of steady decline, Christianity in America has hit a plateau, even as younger generations continue to step away from traditional religion. Yet spiritual beliefs remain strong across age groups, suggesting that this moment may hold opportunity for rebirth within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and other traditional denominations.

A recent Barna Group survey found that 66% of U.S. adults say they’ve made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that remains important in their life today, compared with 54% in 2021. Notably, many who expressed this commitment did not identify as Christian. Nearly three in 10 non-Christians claimed a commitment to Christ, perhaps revealing a space for outreach outside traditional membership categories.

For years, data from Pew Research Center and others showed Christianity in decline while the “nones” — theists, agnostics and “nothing in particular” — steadily rose.

More recent studies, however, indicate stability rather than freefall. Pew’s 2023–24 Religious Landscape Study found that 62% of American adults identify as Christian and 29% are nones. Research of Ryan Burge and Tony Jones found that 21% of the nones are nones in name only (NiNO), 66% of whom are drawn to spirituality, over half who say they pray daily, and a third who attend a religious service at least once a year.

Still, there’s a lack of “generational replacement,” signaling further decline ahead, Pew says. 

Statistics from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) present a similar picture. 

Pew’s Religious Landscape Study found that 79% of all Americans, adults of all ages, say there’s something spiritual beyond the natural world, even if we can’t see it, and 83% believe in God or a universal spirit. Among 18- to-29-year-olds, 76% believe in God or a universal spirit, compared with 89% of those 65 or older, according to Pew.

“Religious and/or spiritual beliefs are an incredibly persistent aspect of life in the United States, and that’s true even among people who distance themselves from the traditional trappings of religious life,” according to Burge and Jones.

The Barna survey found that Millennials and Gen Z are driving an increase in the commitment to Christ. Gen Xers and Boomers changed little in their commitment from 2019 to 2025. In 2019, just over 50% of the two younger generations expressed a commitment to Christ. By 2025, 64% of Gen Z and 68% of Millennials said they had committed to Christ, compared with 65% of Gen Xers and 64% of Boomers. Barna said its latest findings “may be the clearest indication of meaningful spiritual renewal in the United States.”

Many young people are passionate about fairness, equality and standing up for those in need. These are Gospel values. Jesus championed justice, welcoming the outcasts, challenging corrupt leaders, and preaching love that transcends barriers. But trust in religious institutions has eroded, and post-Boomers tend to see churches as businesses, at best, and at worst, hypocritical.

“Organized religion, they charge, too fervently pursues money, power, and partisan politics,” research sociologist Steven Tipton says. “It imposes too many rules and claims too much truth in the name of God.”

Researchers who followed a cohort of adolescents coming of age during the rapid rise of the nones and shifting social values said that “when young people perceive religious institutions as stifling self-actualization, marginalizing sexual minorities, constraining women, or demonstrating hypocrisy, they experience conflict between their religious commitments and deeply held values related to concern for others and the sacredness of the individual.”

While working on his latest book, “Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America,” sociologist Christian Smith was asked whether a religious revival was possible. “Among the more unlikely but not impossible of history’s surprises,” he concludes, “would be if American traditional religions turned their difficult predicament into an opportunity for self-critical soul-searching. What, finally, are they trying to do and why?”

The Board of Pensions is an agency of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Through the Benefits Plan of the PC(USA), the Board provides a broad range of benefits and programs to PC(USA) congregations, agencies, and mid councils as well as affiliate employers — including educational institutions, camps and conference centers, retirement and senior housing communities and human services organizations.

The Board of Pensions (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Jeanie Shaw, Senior Accounting Clerk Controllers, Administrative Services Group
Julianna Sheridan, Administrator, Investments, The Board of Pensions

Let us pray:

Bountiful God of hope, you sent your son, Jesus, so that all may have life and live it abundantly. Thank you. May freedom and dignity multiply throughout the world, as witness to your love and compassion. Let the people sing. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: Presbyterian Foundation event explores the power of legacy giving

Editor’s note: This information is for educational purposes only. We recommend that you consult with legal and financial professionals regarding your particular needs and circumstances as you make your legacy plan.

How will your story continue after you’re gone? How can the values you hold dear, the faith that guides you, and the generosity you practice today ripple out to bless future generations?

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The Rev. Sandra Moon and Karl Mattison spoke at the Presbyterian Foundation Day of Learning.

At a recent Presbyterian Foundation Day of Learning, the Rev. Sandra Moon, ministry relations officer, and Karl Mattison, vice president of Planned Giving Resources, explored how we can leverage storytelling in planned giving to inspire a lasting legacy, ensuring ministry thrives for years to come.

Moon began with her own story. “I was born in Toledo, Ohio, to first-generation Korean Americans,” she said. Her grandmother lived in Korea but would often come to visit and then came to live with them.

“When I would wake up in the morning,” Sandra recalled, “I’d see her reading the Bible and praying. Even with our language challenges, I knew she was praying for us.”

When her grandmother’s health failed, she returned to Korea to die in her homeland. Upon her death, she left a small inheritance to her children and a special gift to her home church in Seoul: a new set of pew Bibles. “Considering that my grandmother attended one of the largest Presbyterian churches not only in Korea, but in the world, this was a significant gift,” Sandra shared. “In life and death, we belong to God, and I’m so grateful for my grandmother’s legacy.”

This is the heart of planned giving. It’s about weaving together your values, your faith, and your generosity into a lasting story.

Legacy is more than money. It’s the intangible-yet-powerful effect of a life lived with purpose. It’s the stories, values, recipes and faith practices we pass down.

Legacy is woven into the very fabric of our faith as a call to remember, teach and create a path for others to follow.

Many people intend to plan their legacy but hesitate, thinking they don’t have enough assets or that the process is too complicated. The starting point is simpler than you think.

Estate planning deals with the tangible elements of your legacy, Moon said. It is the preparation for the management and distribution of your assets upon your death or incapacitation. Far from being just a financial task, it is an act of faith and a gift to your loved ones, easing their burden during the challenges of managing your care and your assets as they are dealing with stress and mourning your loss.

In the United States, the majority of a typical household’s assets are not in cash. They are in homes, retirement accounts and investments. “One day we will all be finished with all of this,” Mattison said. “We have the opportunity to decide who uses these resources to continue on our story on our behalf.”

Here are some common ways to make a planned gift to your church or other ministries:

• Bequest: A gift made through your will. It can be a specific amount or a percentage. If tithing is your practice, leaving 10% of your estate is a powerful final tithe.
• Retirement plan beneficiary: Naming your church as a beneficiary of your IRA can be highly tax-efficient. Heirs pay income tax on IRA distributions, but a church does not.
• Other beneficiary designations: Bank accounts, investment accounts and life insurance policies can all have a charity named as a beneficiary, bypassing probate.
• Donor-advised funds: This tool simplifies all your giving. You make a tax-deductible gift of cash or securities to a fund and then advise the fund to make grants to your favorite charities over time.

Planned giving is more relevant than we imagine. The peak years for making a first planned gift are the 40s, 50s and 60s. Yet only 5% of Americans have a planned bequest, while studies show 28% would if asked.

The Presbyterian Foundation is here to help. Resources like the Center for Print Resources, Stewardship Navigator, and dedicated Ministry Relations Officers can help your congregation build a legacy giving program from the ground up.

Erin Dunigan for the Presbyterian Foundation (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Robyn Davis Sekula , VP, Marketing and Communications, Marketing, The Presbyterian Foundation
Anish Sharma, Software Developer, Digital Strategy & Information Systems, Administrative Services Group

Let us pray:

Gracious and wonderful God, we thank you for the magnificent world you created. We thank you that you have made us a people who seek relationships with others and with you. Keep us ever mindful of your presence among us. Amen.

Pastor's Life - Midwinter

In the Bleak Midwinter: January in church life by Rev. Philip Beck It’s approaching January and in western Pennsylvania, from where I write, the bleakness of winter is present. Whether or not this time of year is indeed "bleak" depends on perspective, of course. Some people love this time of year. I have a friend, he looks a bit like Yukon Cornelius from Rudolph, and he and his family love winter. They embrace all the opportunities winter has to offer — hiking, skiing, snowball fights, even a midwinter jump into a pond where they have to break the ice before they plunge. I would love to have their enthusiasm, but I don’t. Gray days, slush, and piles of dirty snow in parking lots with an inventive youth, most likely, parking a shopping cart at the very top of the pile, does not fully warm my heart. Like the song, I find this time of year a bit bleak, foreboding, and even barren.

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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.

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Mission Yearbook: Scholar says New Testament calls Christians away from gun ownership

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Dr. David Lincicum

The final installment of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) webinar series “Gun Violence and Christian Ethics” examined the appropriateness of gun ownership through a New Testament lens.

“My thesis is simple,” said the University of Notre Dame’s Dr. David Lincicum. “The gun is a temptation to arrogate life-destroying power to the wielder and should be resisted by those” who have an allegiance to “a crucified Messiah.” 

Lincicum, an associate professor of Christianity and Judaism in antiquity, was the featured guest of the Presbyterian Office of Public Witness, which began the series featuring leading Christian ethicists in the spring.

Early on in the final installment, Lincicum explained that using the New Testament for theological and moral guidance, he would be trying to “mount an argument to dissuade Christians from owning guns.”

His lengthy argument focused on owning guns for self-defense or to defend others but excluded owning a gun for hunting, sport shooting or collecting. He also excluded carrying guns for jobs, such as the police and military, that come with public duty.

Along the way, he acknowledged that humans are living in an increasingly violent world filled with political manifestos, mass shootings and petty squabbles settled with bullets.

He also acknowledged that scads of Christians already own guns, so much so that arguing against it might seem stupid.

“According to a 2023 report by the Pew Research Center, the U.S. has the highest number of guns per capita, followed at some distance by Serbia,” he said. “Something like 32% of the population owned guns, with 42% of adults living in a gun-owning household, so these numbers already suggest that there are tens of millions of Christian gun owners in the U.S.” 

He added, “This suspicion is confirmed when studies of religious affiliation of gun owners are taken into consideration. Protestants comprise the highest percentage of gun owners, with white evangelicals, perhaps predictably, leading the way, more than Catholic, Jewish or non-religious populations.”

So, again, why is gun ownership by Christian people problematic?

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Photo by Joshua Lindsey via Pixabay

For one thing, “the Christian should be a signum amoris, a sign of love, marked by contrast, rather than an armed repetition of the armed world,” Lincicum argued. “The gun is a temptation to become a kind of powerful self, with the capacity to kill instantaneously. This is an arrogation of power that the New Testament witness does not support, even in self-defense.”

Some of his other points included:

• “The New Testament envisions humans as subject to self-deception and violent tendencies and does not think of fear or self-defense as legitimate motive for violence or lethal force.”
• “The master narrative of the Christian faith involves Jesus facing those who wish to take his life and renouncing the violent strategies of resistance that might have saved him. This is the narrative that wants to structure Christian practice in the world, rather than the counter narrative that enshrines a violent hero who overthrows the evildoer” with good marksmanship (The “good guy with a gun” story).
• Matthew 5:39 says do not resist an evildoer.
• Jesus doesn’t indicate that fear is an acceptable motive for violence.
• Compare walking according to love with the right of private choice. “We might imagine Paul addressing American Christians in light of the tragic statistics of human devastation to which gun usage in this country has led. He might say: For if for the sake of owning a gun your brother or sister is grieved, you are no longer walking according to love. Do not for the sake of mere gun ownership destroy the one for whom Christ died.”
• Paul urged doing good to one’s enemies.

“The example of Jesus and the teaching of Paul urge us toward Christian difference, toward an embodied protest that might call the followers of Jesus to be like him, an innocent sufferer, a lamb to the slaughter,” Lincicum said. “They call us to be a bodily witness to a violent world” and to the “power of nonviolent love.”

Go here to watch a recording of Lincicum making those points and more. Learn more about the PC(USA)’s Decade of End Gun Violence here.

Darla Carter, Communications Strategist, Communications (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Jose Santana, Project Manager Academic Books, Operations, Presbyterian Publishing Corporation
Michelle Schulz, Administrative Manager, Information Technology Infrastructure, Administrative Services Group

Let us pray:

Gracious God, we ask that you give members and leaders creativity and patience as they move expectantly into the new way in the wilderness you are creating for them. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: Presbyterian pastor writes book on reflecting and healing after Texas floods

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Less than a month after the devastating floods in the Texas Hill Country, the Rev. Elaine Murray — who lives in Kerrville and serves as co-pastor, along with her husband, the Rev. Dr. Rob Lohmeyer, of nearby Pipe Creek Presbyterian Church — wrote and self-published a theological book of essays and devotions called “Hill Country Strong: Reflections for Healing Through the Texas Flood.” All proceeds from the book are going toward supporting local rebuilding efforts.

“As a pastor, you’re not a first responder,” Murray said. “But you want to encourage people and find a way to make sense of what’s happening.”

“I thought there was a need to tell a deeper story of this incredible community and that God is at work even in this storm,” she told Presbyterian News Service. “This is the way God’s power, God’s love and God’s presence in a tragedy are being known.”

Murray introduces that theme with an essay, “Where is God When Waters Rage?”

“What this book aims to bring you close to is the reality of God’s intimacy and deep involvement in times of crisis and disaster,” she wrote. “God cannot bear to be apart from us — even in our terror. There is no depth of human emotion or experience in which God is not deeply close to and intertwined with.”

That’s “a far more powerful story to me than the idea of God with some sorcerer’s hat, conjuring up a whirlpool of rising river tide in the middle of the night,” she wrote. “This storm was not punishment. This storm was not God’s design. This storm was an intersection of lots of things, which we will parse out and research in weeks and months to come. But where was God as the waters raged? With us, heartbroken open and muddied up. God was with us in the terror, in the relief, in the sadness and in the mourning. God is with us in the suffering.”

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The Rev. Elaine Murray

Murray envisions the book as a devotional or “for particular aspects of the healing process where you or others feel stuck,” she wrote. “God’s big enough to handle your mad and sad and all the other big feelings. The writer is big enough to handle your pushback, too. This book is my gift to a community I love, as we are in pain together.”

On the morning of July 4, Murray and others checked on people who’d been camping along the Guadalupe River, who survived. One person who didn’t survive, Jane Ragsdale of First Presbyterian Church of Kerrville, was Murray’s Sunday school teacher in sixth grade.

While all the members of Pipe Creek Presbyterian Church’s Rockin’ RVers group got out in time, the restaurant where they’d eaten the night before was completely washed out, Murray noted.

“The losses have been one after another,” she said. Part of her task putting the book out as quickly as she could was that “I thought I could do spiritual cleanup” that complements all the cleanup and restoration work going on in the affected area.

“It was the shock energy” that propelled her across the finish line, she said. “I thought, ‘This is what I can do.’”

Her husband is “an uncredited partner” in her project. “As we were weeping over all this, he helped me see that Creation started with a flood. ‘That’s an essay,’” he told her. “I thought it was better to give an imperfect timely offering,” she said, “than to hold off.”

In a devotional on John 11:35 and the death of Lazarus that led to Jesus weeping, Murray writes that “sometimes the best thing we can do is wait and weep. Hold the space, get curious about what heals in times like these.” In the week that followed the floodwaters, “2,000 people showed up to sniff, wade, swim, search and retrieve the lost,” she wrote. There’s “value in weeping with and for them. In doing so, we show solidarity and gratitude. We remind these folks that they are not alone, like Jesus did with those grieving Lazarus’ death. The time would come for miracles, but it is miracle enough to be, to share in the heartache, to create and nurture safe places for rest and renewal.”

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

Let us join in prayer for:

Alicia Samuels, VP of eCommerce & Marketing, Electronic Resources & Strategic Business Development, Presbyterian Publishing Corporation
Elizabeth Sanders, Customer Service & Logistics Associate, Operations,  Presbyterian Publishing Corporation

Let us pray:

Loving God, you know us better than we know ourselves. Help us find moments to identify how you are working in our lives and using our gifts as we minister as your disciples. You do call each of us. May we hear and follow that call. Amen.