Today in the Mission Yearbook - Once upon a time in a pandemic

A Presbyterian grandmother’s story of social distancing

October 31, 2020

Storytime at a safe social distance — Paula Howlett, of Westminster Presbyterian Church in DeKalb, Illinois, reads author Jill Murphy’s book, “Five Minutes’ Peace,” to her granddaughters, Maisie, who will be 5 in June, and Freya, 1. The children are fifth-generation Presbyterians. (Photo by Kat Schnorr)

While staying connected to family, friends and church, Paula Howlett, a member of Westminster Presbyterian Church in DeKalb, Illinois, has followed all the rules for social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a retired early childhood special education teacher, Howlett understands how easily things like viruses can spread. So, she’s been cautious, talking to her granddaughters by phone, video chat, driveway visits or inside-outside front-door story time, which the kids loved. “They could see the pictures much better through the glass than on screen,” Howlett said.

Maisie, who turned 5 in June and began kindergarten in the fall, has continued her weekly dance classes virtually, and Freya celebrated her first birthday with a safe, socially distanced parade.

Maisie is “quite verbal,” Howlett said. “Sometimes she tells me, ‘I want to read you a story.’ Then she tells a story from a book we’ve read before.”

Although Howlett would love to give her granddaughters a big hug, the closest she’s been to them in months is this inside-outside storybook time that began as a spur-of-the-moment idea. Typically, she’d been reading by video chat with the girls each evening before bedtime. They never seem to tire of hearing Grandma Howlett, whom they lovingly call “Guy Guy,” read the same stories again and again.

“I have tons of books,” Howlett said. “They seem to like just about anything.” Favorites include any of the adventures of “Franklin the Turtle,” “Five Minutes’ Peace,” a story about a mother elephant and her three energetic elephant children, and “Bad Hair Day,” a tale about a little girl who wears a hat because she isn’t quite sure about the at-home haircut her mother gave her. “I try and sneak in other books,” but they ask for these often, Howlett said.

Before the pandemic, Howlett saw the girls nearly every day, since they live just across town, maybe three miles away. Their paternal grandmother, “Nana Wendy,” lives just south of DeKalb, and also sees the girls often. Sometimes Nana and Maisie go for socially distanced bike rides, or Nana may jog behind Maisie as she rides her bike.

Howlett’s daughter, Kat Schnorr, mother of Maisie and Freya, grew up attending Westminster Presbyterian Church and has followed her mom’s career path in teaching. Schnorr worked for several years as a nursery attendant before accepting the position of Sunday school coordinator and teacher at the church.

Westminster Presbyterian Preschool, now in a different location and known as The Growing Place, was Howlett’s first job after college graduation. She is currently president of the board and her youngest granddaughter, Freya, is in the day care program.

Howlett has a couple of dogs, close friends and has enjoyed virtual church during this time of isolation. She knew the technology was in place but had never need to try it before. She’s noticed that former members who have moved away are also tuning in to worship virtually.

“Easter Sunday was wonderful. I really felt in community, seeing who’s there as their names come up. Westminster also has a ‘virtual coffee hour’ Zoom meeting, so people can catch up with one another and pass along prayer concerns. It’s not the same, of course, but certainly better than not having anything.” She says it is an exciting time to be part of Westminister Presbyterian. The church hopes to call a youth pastor soon. For now, there are only a few preschool-age children in the church, maybe six or seven, but a ministry for children in a nearby apartment building and a mid-week dinner program are promising post-pandemic outreach ministries.

May 27 was Howlett’s 69th birthday. Granddaughter Maisie told her mother, “I think we should have a parade for Guy Guy’s birthday. And, I think we should do it as soon as she wakes up!”

Tammy Warren, Communications Associate, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us join in prayer for: 

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Michelle Schulz, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)
James Seaman, Board of Pensions

Let us pray:

Lord, help us to be instruments of your grace: constant in our love, unrelenting in pursuing peace and faithful in working for all Amen.

How can disciple-making best be accomplished from a macro perspective. - Part 2

Thank you for those who recently attended the WEA Forum for Disciple-Making webinar "HOW CAN DISCIPLE-MAKING BEST BE ACCOMPLISHED-PART 2". We hope you found the conversation valuable.  You can now watch this webinar again and share insights with your colleagues. You can also watch the other recordings in our youtube channel.

Churches, Denominations and Religions: Transforming Discipleship

Churches, Denominations and Religions: Transforming Discipleship: The General Assembly of the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) in November 2019 in Jakarta, Indonesia declared the next ten years to be a deca...

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Family, often the best teacher, can drive home environmental truths

Politician, author and entrepreneur Stacey Abrams shares a bit of her faith story

October 30, 2020

Stacey Abrams

Author, entrepreneur, election reform advocate and candidate for Georgia governor Stacey Abrams can now add another title to her impressive résumé: Festival of Homiletics lecturer.

Abrams, the daughter of a clergy couple, spoke during free online festival lectures and sermons. She labeled her talk “Stewardship, Service and Redemption: Called to be God’s Ministers.” Her text was 2 Chronicles 7:11-22, which includes these words from God to Solomon following construction of the temple in Jerusalem, along with a palace for the earthly king: “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land. … But if you [plural] turn aside and forsake my statutes and my commandments that I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will pluck you up from the land that I have given you; and this house, which I have consecrated for my name, I will cast out of my sight, and will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples. And regarding this house, now exalted, everyone passing by will be astonished, and say, ‘Why has the Lord done such a thing to this land and to this house?’ Then they will say, ‘Because they abandoned the Lord the God of their ancestors who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and they adopted other gods, and worshiped them and served them; therefore he has brought all this calamity upon them.’”

Abrams recalled her two summers interning at the Environmental Protection Agency while she was an undergraduate student at Spelman College. She wrote her senior thesis on the environmental racism she’d seen growing up near Gulfport, Mississippi, where she took in her first environmental lessons.

She, her parents and siblings would attend church on Sunday, then head north through the Piney Woods to visit her grandparents and great-grandmother, the daughter of sharecroppers, who would tell Abrams stories about her garden and the land. “They tended the land with grace that only comes from God,” Abrams said. “Whether they were cultivating the harvest on another’s land or plants they’d planted themselves, they were called to preserve life.”

Later, she realized this remarkable woman was “one of the first environmentalist I ever knew, but she never used that term. She spoke the language of our shared faith, the obligations that guided stewardship.”

Abrams said we’re all in debt on at least two accounts: “We owe this temple the Earth our stewardship,” she said, “and we also owe the Lord’s people our service.”

Hurricane Katrina, a storm that killed more than 1,200 people, struck Mississippi when Abrams’ father and mother were pastors there. Abrams and her younger sister drove from Atlanta to be with their parents 12 days after the storm passed. “The lovely Piney Woods had been ripped away. In their place were root balls,” Abrams recalled.

The sisters reached their parents’ parsonage, where their parents’ bed had been placed in the middle of the bedroom to avoid leaks in the roof. “We joined an assembly line of church volunteers where donations were pouring into mom’s church,” Abrams said. “We had been home for 15 minutes, but we got to work.”

When she and her sister left a few days later, they and other volunteers had distributed food to about 1,500 hungry residents.

“Our foes exist, but redemption is in the works,” Abrams told the preachers who were listening in to her talk. “From your pulpits, you care called upon to rise up against this mockery we have made of the Earth.”

In “the most prosperous nation on Earth,” nearly 100,000 people have lost their lives to COVID-19, she noted. While because of the pandemic “we will be tempted to put aside the responsibility of climate action, that is the wrong action and the wrong choice.”

And as a response to the pandemic itself, “grab the hands of the unemployed and unacknowledged and unseen,” she said. “You have spent your lifetime building your community, block by block. The ministry of redemption requires us to demand what Esther demanded, to deny the destruction of our people.”

“The joy of our faith,” she said, “is the constant promise of renewal and revival — if we are willing to set ourselves to the task and never waver.”

 Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Let us join in prayer for: 

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Jeanie Schmuckie, Presbyterian Foundation
Eileen Schuhmann, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray:

Lord, we ask that you bring a great light into the land. Through dreams and visions and the lives of your followers, help those who do not yet know you have the opportunity to respond to your kingdom message of Jesus. Amen.

Medical Missions Live | MBF

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do."                                                    Mark Twain

Dear Ministry Partner, Medical missions is changing at an accelerating pace. Like many other things in our world in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought into even sharper focus how providing medical care and ministry is changing in developing countries, and forcing the North American church to reconsider its methods approach to international partnership completely. As Peter Greer remarked to us a couple of weeks ago, the church has to come to grips with combining word and deed – how do we integrate evangelism and church planting with benevolence.   This year, our quest continues towards discovering what the future of medical missions needs to look like to survive and thrive. Medical Missions Live continues its all-star lineup in November with several highly respected and very experienced physician leaders. These physicians have given their lives to serving some of the poorest of the poor and faithfully serving God. They have insight and practical experience that we absolutely need to be able to shape the future.   We decided that election night probably was not the best choice for our first interview in November. Therefore on Tuesday, November 10th, we will be honored to have Dr. Dennis Palmer join us. Dr. Palmer has worked in Cameroon for nearly 40 years and has lived there on a full-time basis for over 25 years. He is currently the Dean of the Baptist Institute of Health Sciences, Program Director, Christian Internal Medicine Specialization Program, and Clinical Supervisor, Mbingo Baptist Hospital.   Of special importance to us in looking forward, Dr. Palmer developed and continues to lead an innovative Internal Medicine residency program, the only one located in a mission hospital in Sub-Saharan Africa. He understands the enormous changes mission hospitals will face as they will be forced to address the change from communicable diseases to non-communicable diseases in the next 10 years.   Then on Tuesday, November 17th, we will get together with Dr. John Crouch,  Executive Director Emeritus, and Dr. Chris Place, Associate Residency Director from In His Image Family Medicine Residency in Tulsa, OK.   The In His Image Family Medicine Residency Program is a unique program focused on serving God through medicine. Over 290 doctors have graduated, and about 15%  of IHI graduates are currently serving as long-term global health workers. Another 10% are serving in Indian Health Service and in other underserved populations in the U.S. Most who live in the US are actively involved in domestic or short-term international health outreach, and many are involved in medical education as part of their careers.   IHI also believes that international family medicine residency training is crucial for the future and is currently partnering with 10 family medicine residency training programs, including Afghanistan, China, Cambodia, Egypt and Kazakhstan, and others.   Both of these leaders have extensive professional involvement in medicine internationally and have a deep understanding of where medical missions are today and where they are headed in the future.   Every week the interviews and insights get better than the week before. If you are part of a missions committee at your church or you have a personal interest in medical missions, you’ll benefit from the insight and perspective of where international missions are headed. However, the trends and changes aren’t just related to the medical arena. Everything in international missions is changing, and you will appreciate the 30 quick minutes of information and perspective.   You can join in by visiting the Medical Missions Live page on our website.   We look forward to having you participate in the growing conversation.   Blessings,   E. Andrew Mayo  President and CEO      Click Here to Visit the MBF Website

Copyright © 2020 Medical Benevolence Foundation, All rights reserved. We send special reports to all partners who have chosen to walk alongside us in medical missions. Our mailing address is: Medical Benevolence Foundation 9555 W. Sam Houston Parkway South Suite 170 Houston, TX 77099

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Finding the divine in moments of pandemic dullness

Even when it’s online, worship ‘pulls all the riches of the life of faith together’

October 29, 2020

The Rev. Dr. Ted Wardlaw and Eric Wall were the guests last week of the Rev. Dr. Lee Hinson-Hasty during a Facebook Live event. (Contributed photos)

A recent New York Times story tells of a Catholic priest in Queens who decided not to let the coronavirus-mandated closure of his church keep him from worshiping with, and ministering to, his parish.

“He decided that if people can’t come to church, the church ought to find a way to go to the people,” explained the Rev. Dr. Ted Wardlaw, president of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

As Wardlaw explained it, the priest put on vestments and a light blue surgical mask on a recent Sunday and walked down the streets of Queens, visiting his parishioners, encouraging them, praying with them and blessing people.

Wardlaw described the priest’s act as “a glimmer of grace that surprises the ordinary.”

The story is just one example of how worship and community have changed since the COVID-19 pandemic appeared in the United States earlier this year.

Wardlaw’s shared the story in a recent Facebook Live conversation about worship and community hosted by the Rev. Dr. Lee Hinson-Hasty, senior director for Theological Education Funds Development at the Presbyterian Foundation. They were joined by Eric Wall, assistant professor of sacred music and dean of the chapel at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

Worship is taking place at Austin, but primarily virtually and from homes, said Wall, rather than in the seminary’s magnificent chapel that Wardlaw says “demands worship.” The strong community of worship at Austin continues through virtual platforms, Wall said.

And, although he has experienced a sense of dullness and exhaustion during the pandemic, Wall has also experienced moments of “aliveness” — even while using Zoom.

“I have zero training in worship in this medium prior to March 11 or 12,” he said. Yet he finds that his use of Zoom has allowed him to discover “new ideas in unexpected places.”

Both men talked about how worship in the pandemic — no matter which platform is used gives us a sign of divinity in the midst of what can be seen as a bleak time when we’re dulled by the monotony of being sequestered in place.

Wardlaw mentioned bestselling author Barbara Brown Taylor and what she calls being “a detective of divinity.” Be on the lookout for signs of that, Wardlaw said.

Worship remains central to our faith and one of the few things some churches are able to do during the pandemic. Worship is paramount, Wall says, because it pulls all the riches of the life of faith together. It is a wellspring we return to, a place where we recall everything God does, where we listen for what God is saying, where we recommit ourselves to what God is doing and what God might do through us, he said.

Though many of the subtleties of worship — the friendly glances, the hugs, the handshakes — are missing, new ways of being connected are occurring. Wall cited the example of a recent worship service where prayer requests, which were added to the commenting feature on Zoom, were read aloud.

“It was extraordinarily rich. It was a great moment of connection,” he said.

Wardlaw echoed those sentiments. He said he is more of a pew sitter now than someone who stands in the pulpit, but he finds himself being more porous to the impact of worship.

“There’s something about worship that reorients and reminds us where we are appropriately located in the architecture of heaven and earth,” Wardlaw said. “That’s what it does for me.”

 Sally Scherer, Writer and Communications Consultant for the Presbyterian Foundation, Special to Presbyterian News Service

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Nicole Saunders, Board of Pensions
Ray Scaletti, Office of the General Assembly

Let us pray:

Eternal God, help us to remember that you are always with us to the end of the age. We want to be Christ’s presence to others. Remind us that you are beside us, as we are beside those in need. We ask for the opportunity to share your love with others this day. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Rejecting the quackery of politicians and preachers

To help heal the nation, the Rev. Dr. William Barber II calls for a balm rather than a bandage

October 28, 2020

The Rev. Dr. William Barber II

The COVID-19 pandemic has exploited wounds we never healed.

Once who knows that truth all too well is the Rev. Dr. William Barber II, president of the group Repairers of the Breach, co-chair (with Presbyterian pastor the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis) of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, and pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in North Carolina, where he preached a sermon as part of the Festival of Homiletics.

Barber, a towering figure in efforts to dismantle structural racism and eradicate systemic poverty, called his sermon “Real Healing, not a Band-Aid.” He drew from Jeremiah 6, which says in part, “They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace. They acted shamefully, they committed abomination; yet they were not ashamed, they did not know how to blush. Therefore, they shall fall among those who fall; at the time that I punish them, they shall be overthrown, says the Lord.”

Barber seasoned his sermon with sentences memorable for their simplicity as well as their prophetic power: “People can buy unleaded gas, but they can’t buy unleaded water.” “Service workers are called essential workers, but they are not given the essentials they need.” The nation has “great material wealth, but great moral bankruptcy.” People give health-care workers “a handclap at 6 o’clock, but how in the world in the midst of the pandemic can we not make sure that everyone has health care?”

Barber said he recently heard a politician say, “You don’t expect us to change the health-care system in the midst of a pandemic?”

“We yelled at the TV,” Barber said. “Yes! We had to change civil rights laws in the midst of Jim Crow!”

“This is no time for the church to be comfortable,” Barber said, “and to allow the comfortable to continue to be comfortable.”

“Jeremiah often found himself lamenting,” Barber noted. “We know he tried to quit, but there was a fire, a rage, a fury from God he said was like fire shut up in his bones. He says, ‘I am full of the fury of the Lord, and I am sick and tired of holding it in.’”

When God sees politicians and even religious institutions put a bandage on a deep wound, God too is furious, Barber said.

“We could have trapped this virus,” he said. “This (suffering and loss and death) is policy-based. Don’t blame God.”

As well, the United States “had chance after chance to deal with poverty and racism,” but chose instead to try economic theories, including trickle down and neoliberalism, he said. “We stopped talking about the poor and, for the most part, racism in the public square. … We should be the prophetic voice. It’s clear that this did not have to be.”

“God says it’s foolish to think a serious wound will just go away,” he said. “This pandemic isn’t going to stay on the poor side of town and in the prisons.”

Too many people today, he said, are “comfortable with too many people’s deaths. That’s why genocide happened to Native Americans, and it’s why slavery happened. That’s why we had World War II. People said, ‘Hitler’s just doing that to the Jews.’ We still have that mindset today, that social Darwinism still exists.”

According to Jeremiah, the people acted shamefully but were not ashamed. But God offers the prophet a ray of hope in verse 16: “Stand at the crossroads and look,” God instructs the prophet, “and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it and find rest for your souls.”

“We need healers now. We need wounded healers,” Barber said, referencing the work of Henri Nouwen. “We can’t get tired, because people’s lives depend on it. To be faithful to God in this moment is to be faithful in declaring a Band-Aid is not enough. It is our calling to fight and know that the wounds don’t have to exist like this.”

“We will not accept the quackery of politicians and preachers,” Barber said, “who would give us a Band-Aid when we need surgery.”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Let us join in prayer for: 

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Paula Sandusky, Presbyterian Mission Agency
Lee Sangik, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)

Let us pray:

Gracious God, we lift up those who work in ministry. Please give them strength and wisdom as they serve your people. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Bintou Jalloh crosses cultural, corporate borders on her way to the Board of Pensions finance team

‘At the Board, I get this family vibe’

October 27, 2020

Bintou Jalloh came to the Board of Pensions from the international accounting firm Ernst & Young. (Contributed photo)

Bintou Jalloh’s father was clear — education was a priority. “Your first husband is your degree,” he told her. “You get your degree first.” He wanted Jalloh to have the educational opportunity of America, so she left her home in Bamako, Mali’s capital, to study accounting at Temple University, in Philadelphia.

“It was tough,” said Jalloh, who is Senior Accountant, Financial Reporting and Analysis at the Board of Pensions. “The culture was so different. Everything was so different.” A native speaker of Bambara and French, she also faced the challenge of becoming fluent in English.

At one point, after graduating from Temple, Jalloh returned to Mali for almost three years, working as a budget officer with the United Nations. But after spending most of her adulthood in the U.S., “home really is here or Mali,” she said. “When I’m in Mali, there are things that I miss here and vice versa.”

She made a second cultural shift two years ago when she joined the Board from the international accounting firm Ernst & Young (EY). She was traveling widely to meet with EY auditing clients, away from home at least a dozen times a year. When son Samba, now 5, began to feel her absence, she looked for better work-life balance.

“At the Board, I get this family vibe,” Jalloh said. “At EY, I learned a lot, but I don’t think we actually talked much about our lives outside of work. In public accounting it’s just go-go. At the end of the day, it’s ‘how many chargeable hours did you have without blowing the budget?’”

The EY experience makes Jalloh particularly valuable to the Board and the employers and Benefits Plan members it serves. “It definitely helps coming from the Big 4, from public accounting,” she said. “having a tax and an audit background helps in my work at the Board. As a consultant, I worked with different clients; I saw each client do things differently.”

Jalloh applies the skills gained working for EY clients to her assignments with the Board’s Finance team, including ensuring that all administrative expenses are precisely recorded during the year and that all gifts received for the Board’s Assistance Program are classified and reported accurately. She also works with colleagues to prepare the monthly and yearly financial statements as well as financial information for the Board of Directors meetings.

Most of her work, like that of so many serving the Board, is behind the scenes, but she has one responsibility that has her on the phone with employers.

“Within my team, I’m responsible for making sure that the death benefit dues calculator, on pensions.org, is updated every year. This involves working with the Director of Financial Reporting, IT and Plan Operations,” Jalloh said. “I also address churches’ and organizations’ questions on the mechanics of the calculator. Sometimes, some of them ask for us to do their imputed income calculations, which I do.”

These days, Jalloh does everything remotely, whether speaking with an employer or a coworker, as COVID-19 has shuttered Philadelphia and sent Board employees home to work. Her latest challenge is working with a preschooler close by. “At that age, the concentration level is not there,” she said.

“I try to be positive every day,” Jalloh said. “I start with gratitude and I end the day with gratitude.” She recalled her mother’s wisdom: “Most people live in the middle. We don’t have it the best or the worst, but rather, somewhere in between — and there are countless blessings in the middle.”

As a youngster, Jalloh played soccer with children living on the streets of Bamako. “I would always bring someone home,” she said, for a meal or a bath. That experience led her to ACFA (A Child for All), founded by an American Malian woman to care for vulnerable Malian children. has served on its Board and raised funds for ACFA.

“It feels wonderful to be able to support the children of my home — even from here,” Jalloh said. “That’s very dear to me.”

 Lea Sitton, Agency Writer, Board of Pensions, supporting wholeness in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) community and care for Benefits Plan Members, Special to Presbyterian News Service, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us join in prayer for:   

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Elizabeth Sanders, Presbyterian Publishing Corporation
Sandy Sanders, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)

Let us pray:

O God, we pray that your Holy Spirit will guide and direct our paths. Open our hearts and minds to new opportunities to be your hands and feet in the communities in which we live. May we strive to embody, ever more fully, the character of your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Nebraska Presbyterian Foundation awards more than $137K in grants

Projects include food and flood relief, worship enhancement for the hearing impaired

October 26, 2020

Nebraska Presbyterian Foundation’s Board of Directors awarded grants totaling $137,211 to nine Nebraska churches or organizations in April to partially fund projects that support outreach activities to enhance or expand some aspect of their ministry. According to a news release from the Nebraska Presbyterian Foundation, grantees and their projects include:

• Hope Presbyterian Church (Omaha) for food and supplies to fill backpacks with food for distribution at their local elementary school
• New Life Presbyterian (Omaha) in support of its free neighborhood after-school enrichment and food program for children
• Presbytery of Missouri River Valley PDA (Omaha) for home rebuilding supplies for ongoing work weeks related to catastrophic flooding in the Midwest in 2019
• First Presbyterian Church (Gordon) to upgrade their technology and increase internet capacity to livestream their worship services
• Palmyra Presbyterian Church (Palmyra) for first aid kits to distribute community wide as an outreach project
• First Presbyterian Church (Lincoln) for installation of a hearing loop to enhance the worship experience for the hearing impaired
• Eastridge Presbyterian Church (Lincoln) to enlarge the existing food pantry and build an adjoining ADA compliant sidewalk ramp to address increasing food insecurity in the community
• Church of the Plains (Edgar) for an upgrade to the recording and livestream equipment
• Fairfield Community Presbyterian Church for improvements to the sound system and internet throughout the building to allow all areas to be used for community events.

Nebraska Presbyterian Foundation is proud to partner with all its grantees to help support their mission and be the hands and feet of Christ in our communities. In light of current restrictions and in response to increasing community needs, these projects are timely in providing technology to help congregations worship in new and creative ways, and projects that address food insecurity are needed now more than ever to help the most vulnerable.

Established in 1958, Nebraska Presbyterian Foundation makes annual grants to Nebraska PC(USA) congregations and related organizations to support their mission and share the love of Christ. More information about grant funding can be found on NPF’s website, nebpresby.org.

Nebraska Presbyterian Foundation, Special to Presbyterian News Service, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us join in prayer for:   

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Yvette Russell-Minor, Board of Pensions
Alicia Samuels, Presbyterian Publishing Corporation

Let us pray:

God of greatness, help us to be faithful servants where we live and thus praise you each and every day. Amen.

Minute for Mission: Reformation Sunday

October 25 2020

(Photo Credit: Presbyterian Historical Society

Two hundred years ago, William Dunlop, a professor of church history at the University of Edinburgh, published two volumes of confessions that had enjoyed “public authority” in Scotland since the Reformation. While the Westminster Standards (1647–48) filled the first volume, more than 10 earlier confessional documents — including the Geneva Catechism (1542), the Scots Confession (1560) and the Heidelberg Catechism (1563) — filled the second. By placing Westminster in the broader tradition of Reformed (“Calvinist”) theology, Dunlop honored a distinctly Reformed custom: He compiled a book of confessions.

The Reformation produced many catechisms and confessions. Reformed churches did not try to formulate one universal creed. They held to an earlier tradition that each faith community — be it in Zurich, Geneva or Edinburgh — should draft a statement unique to its time and place. Communities declared their solidarity with each other, not by adopting the same words, but by affirming that they heard in different words the same witness to Christ.

Reformed theologians believed that a kind reader could hear the voice of Christ speaking in each confession, and that this would provide the unity that any one confession lacked. And they allowed that the need for new confessions would not end, as the Theological Declaration of Barmen (1934), the Confession of 1967 and the Confession of Belhar (1986) — adopted by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assembly in 2016 — richly demonstrate.

Rev. Kenneth J. Ross, Philadelphia

Download Reformation Sunday resources, like the above church bulletin insert for 2019, from the Presbyterian Historical Society. Learn more about this year’s insert at the PC(USA) website.

Let us join in prayer for: 

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Jashalund Royston, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)
Cindy Rubin, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray:

Eternal God, we give you thanks for Reformation history and for the histories of all your people. Help us to learn the lessons of the past and to live in our time in faithful service to the Word.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Festival of Homiletics preacher: ‘I wasn’t sure what God wanted from me this time’

The Rev. Lenny Duncan uses Habakkuk text ‘to mourn the world we find ourselves in’

October 24, 2020

The Rev. Lenny Duncan

Saying he’d been dreading preaching as part of the Festival of Homiletics, the Rev. Lenny Duncan nonetheless did just that with precision and panache during a sermon broadcast — even though “I wasn’t sure what God wanted from me this time,” as he put it.

Duncan recently became mission development pastor at Messiah Lutheran Church in Vancouver, Washington. A co-pastor had this insight regarding the pandemic: “All it took for all of us to find the creativity we needed was to get all the pastors out of their buildings.”

Still unsure what to say to the Festival of Homiletics’ online crowd, Duncan turned to a favorite prophet: Habakkuk 1:1–4 and 2:1–4, which includes this command from the Almighty: “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it. For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay.” That’s in response to what the prophet had told God: “I will stand at my watch post, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint.”

“That’s why I chose Habakkuk,” Duncan said. “I often scan the horizon for what I think might be coming.” He said he has “long, protracted conversations when I take the Almighty to task. I use this text to weep with people” so we can “publicly mourn the world we find ourselves in.”

COVID-19 has “scattered and scared” people, Duncan said, “sent to flee by the wolf, and the shepherd appears to be nowhere around.”

But from this collective trauma, “we are left with the strange and ancient stories of love defeating death, a man from Nazareth who was executed and somehow lives. We proclaim love as the answer to death.”

“This whole ministry thing, the whole church thing — it just feels so fragile right now,” he said. What may be most needed in the present moment is rewriting “all the rules of the church, to do the most loving thing possible — not gathering, and not just for weeks.”

“The months ahead will challenge us in ways many of us did not sign up for,” he said. “I just want to take a moment to lament that with you.”

Faced not only with the horror of the pandemic but the sin of, for example, white supremacy, Christians might rightly question, “God, just what in the hell do you think you’re doing?” and “God, don’t you love us anymore?” and “Didn’t you say you’d be with us until the end of time?” and “How long until anything happens that seems like a win?” Duncan asked.

“That’s what makes Habakkuk so intriguing to me,” he said. “I will keep my watch to see what he will say to me. The prophet demands an answer: ‘Are you even real, God? Do you even care, God?’ This same God answers, ‘I am.’ That is the simple hope of Habakkuk. We worship the God who answers.”

Duncan admits he has “dragged unaddressed issues I didn’t want to work on into quarantine. But I know this: I worship a God who answers, and like you, I await the answer in faith. Not a Pollyanna faith — a faith in all the uncertainty and ugly rawness that’s been revealed about this country, myself, and just how ragged we can be.

“I await the God who answers. Amen.”

 Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Let us join in prayer for: 

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Marjory Roth, Presbyterian Foundation
Greg Rousos, Presbyterian Foundation

Let us pray:

Gracious God, thank you for the life of witness and ministry of those who have gone before us. We are grateful that the well of your Spirit never runs dry. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.