Today in the Mission Yearbook - ‘Songs in the Key of Resistance’

Song circles with Kairos Center leave no one behind

September 30, 2024

“Kairos is an ancient Greek word, describing a time of great change when the old ways of the world are dying and new ones are struggling to be born,” said Pauline Pisano, organizer for the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice. “It’s clear we are living through exactly such a time today.” Pisano called this time “full of grave danger and rare opportunity” and described the work of the center in lifting up leaders and activists to take bold, prophetic and imaginative action to break free from the “intolerable conditions of poverty, systemic racism, militarism, ecological devastation and more.”

Pisano spoke to a crowd under “The Tent of Make Believe,” a venue sponsored by PC(USA)’s 1001 New Worshiping Communities movement and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary at the Wild Goose Festival, a four-day event rooted in progressive Christianity that celebrates “spirit, justice, music and art.” Pisano was joined by other cultural artists and colleagues from the Kairos Center and the Freedom Church of the Poor, who together conducted a song circle and lifted up stories of the role of song in their political actions and peaceful protests.

Leaders of the Freedom Church of the Poor lead a workshop 

on protest songs at a tent sponsored by 1001 New Worshiping 

Communities and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.
(Photo by Beth Waltemath)

Pisano relayed how often the “unsung leaders emerging out of poor and oppressed communities have been the first to feel the pain of injustice and the first to strike out against it.” The Kairos Center works to raise up generations of these leaders and to form a community to help sustain their work.

One of the ways is by supporting the creative work of cultural artists in the movement. They share the work with other activists as they find connections in the struggles of the marginalized across the globe. Their “Songs in the Key of Resistance: A Movement Songbook” draws on a rich history of social movement music from spirituals, labor and freedom songs and celebrates the poetry and chants born out of human rights struggles today.

“In exchanging songs, we’re able to learn more about each other — build trust, build connection so that we can build strong communities,” said Ciara M. Taylor, strategist and educator for the Kairos Center.

Taylor and Pisano led the participants in songs written for various contexts. Most recently, these same songs have been used for peaceful actions taken by Kairos Center affiliates around the country to protest the war in Gaza. The songs are taught in a call-and-response style, with the overlap of vocals harmonizing as people find their voice within the collective.

“Just get in where you fit in,” Taylor said before introducing a song written on the way to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline. The songwriter, Te Martin, discovered how the song, “May This Body Be a Bridge,” resonated elsewhere when they were approached by a Palestinian comrade who made connections between the struggle of Gazans and that of Indigenous people to protect their lands and keep them sacred.

Another story Taylor shared was about a song written on the one-year anniversary of Michael Brown’s killing in Ferguson, Missouri. Taylor said the Flobots penned the song “We Remember You” to remind oppressed communities how important they are and “how important it is for us to struggle for one another. Those who are taken from us due to state violence, militarism and poverty, we will never forget them.” Taylor then recited the poem “In Jerusalem” by the late Palestinian poet laureate emeritus, Mahmoud Darwish as Pisano led those gathered in the simple lyric, “We, we remember you.”

“It’s important to ground ourselves in who we are struggling for,” said Taylor. “There are still people alive whom we have to be fighting for.”

Other songs shared came from the “We Cry Justice Cultural Arts Project,” a companion piece to a book by the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, co-founder of the Poor People’s Campaign, called “We Cry Justice: Reading the Bible with the Poor People’s Campaign.” Some of the musicians are featured in special quarterly gatherings of the Freedom Church of the Poor.

Beth Waltemath, Communications Strategist, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Today’s Focus: Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Nicholas Skaggs, Record Archivist II, Presbyterian Historical Society 
Eva Slayton, Mission Specialist, 1001 New Worshiping Communities, Presbyterian Mission Agency 

Let us pray

Father, thank you for the joy of being shared by you, in all our diversity and brokenness, with those you love. Grant us grace to embrace your blessings as we journey with others in this amazing adventure of life. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Synod Schooler who’s 101 is thrilled to be back where she belongs

Mary Conklin of Winnebago, Minnesota, contributes to worship back home by playing the organ

September 29, 2024

Mary Conklin of Winnebago, Minnesota, is attending Synod School along with her granddaughter, Elizabeth, and greatgrandchildren Orion and Rosemary. (Photo by Kim Coulter)

Even though she’s 101 years old, Mary Conklin of Winnebago, Minnesota has not attended every edition of Synod School, which debuted in 1954. But she has been a part of most of the past 50 or so versions of the beloved gathering, put on each year by the Synod of Lakes & Prairies and attended by about 540 people this year, ranging in age from 5 months to 101 years.

“I taught [at Synod School] almost every year until 2009,” Conklin said. The children “kept me on my toes.”

A retired educator, Conklin still works as the organist at First Presbyterian Church in Winnebago, the church her late husband, the Rev. Robert Conklin, served from 1974 through 1984.

Asked to identify what she likes best about Synod School, Conklin hardly knew where to start. When she called to request a buggy — the Synod School name for a golf cart — to take her from, say, class to lunch, it was there in minutes.

“There are people I don’t see often who are special people” who attend Synod School, like Conklin does, year after year. This year, she’s accompanied by her granddaughter, Elizabeth, and Conklin’s great-grandchildren, Orion and Rosemary. It was Elizabeth who got her grandmother to return to Synod School after Conklin missed a few years during the pandemic.

Elizabeth and her children live in Blue Earth, about a dozen miles from Winnebago. Conklin lives alone, “but Elizabeth takes care of me. She comes by once a week and does what I can’t manage. I don’t do ladders anymore, so she takes care of the windows.”

“We brought Elizabeth to Synod School when she was little,” Conklin said. “That did something for her that makes her want to come back.”

Jill Emery, a commissioned ruling elder, recently began serving First Presbyterian Church after it had been without a pastor for about five years. “We are a small church. Many pastors don’t want to go to a small town far away from a big city, which we are,” Conklin said. “But we have maintained ourselves very well, which I think is remarkable.” The gift of a farm allowed for the renovation of the sanctuary “to update it to get us to the 21st century,” Conklin said with a smile.

“When I go home, I share the whole experience. I always tell people they need to come to Synod School,” she said. Each year the church offers scholarships to help members and friends attend.

Asked to dig into her memory bank for meaningful events of Synod Schools past, Conklin recalled adding her voice to the alto section in the choir. “You learned so much new music because the director would bring it” to try it out, she said. “It was fantastic to sing with that group.”

Conklin marvels at the care Synod Schoolers show one another, herself included. “I am so well cared for, and I don’t think that’s unique to me,” she said. “I think they help everyone. They’re a fantastic support. You see little groups of people having conversations and making new friends — some of them you’ll never see again.”

“There are no strangers here,” she said. “Once you’re here, you’re part of the group.”

Conklin attended the University of Dubuque and completed her studies at what was then Dickinson State College in North Dakota. Then her husband heard God’s call to attend the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary and serve in the ministry.

She started her teaching career at a country school in North Dakota, where she had 18 pupils in seven grades. Later, she taught high school English and grade school music. She was the education specialist for the Presbytery of Minnesota Valleys during the 1980s.

She and her husband retired to Arkansas, but retirement didn’t take for Conklin, who went to work at the University of the Ozarks, teaching Christian education halftime for a couple of years. She also was a Christian education director at a church in Fort Smith before moving back to Minnesota to be closer to her beloved family.

“All that education paid off,” she said, again with a smile.

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Today’s Focus: Mary Conklin plays organ at Synod School at age of 101

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
T. Clark Simmons, Senior Church Consultant, Atlanta GA, Board of Pensions
Alex Simon, Multimedia Specialist, Communications Ministry, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) 

Let us pray

Lord Jesus, you are the vine, we are your branches, feed us, nourish us prune us that we might grow stronger, bearing fruit for you. Let the fruits we bear bring glory to you. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Presbyterian Historical Society revisits Tucson Indian Training School records

Staff repair harmful language and enhance description of student experiences in the collection

September 28, 2024

Tucson Indian Training School students, 1937. Pearl ID: islandora:

362723

In the winter of 2023, a team of archivists at the Presbyterian Historical Society began the process of reparative description on the records of Tucson Indian Training School. Over the next six months, they worked not only to remove outdated and harmful language, but to enhance the descriptions of students so that their full names, tribal affiliations and experiences are better represented in the collection.

Reparative description is the practice of critically examining and ultimately adjusting the way an institution describes or characterizes marginalized groups, paying particular attention to instances where our description inflicts harm, spreads false narratives, or minimizes past and ongoing injustices. This work began in earnest at the Society at the beginning of 2023, when the Reparative Description Committee formed and committed to developing policies and workflows for a more inclusive approach to describing collections.

After first testing their workflow on the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Board of Christian Education Department of Colleges and Theological Seminaries and National Japanese American Student Council Records, the committee began reviewing additional collections that might be candidates for reparative description work. When they read the collection guide (a document that provides historical background and describes collection material) for the Tucson Indian Training School, the committee immediately recognized that outdated terms were used to refer to the Akimel O’odham (Pima) and Tohono O’odham (Papago) people. Upon further reflection, the group noted that the lived experiences of these Indigenous groups were erased and misrepresented through omission and under-description rather than through outdated language alone.

Throughout the 19th century, Christian denominations and the United States government worked together to enact their agendas of cultural assimilation, conversion, proselytization and evangelization upon American Indian/Indigenous peoples. Building upon the Rev. Charles H. Cook’s proselytization and missionary efforts in Sacaton, Arizona, and in the Pima Agency, the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Board of Home Missions (BHM) moved to open a contract mission school (a federally supported Christian boarding school) in Tucson, Arizona, targeted at converting “Papago” (Tohono O’odham) and Pima (Akimel O’odham) children to Christianity and assimilating them into white American society.

Page from one of the last issues of “Escuela News,” 

a Tucson Indian Training School periodical, 1960. 

Pearl ID: Pearl ID: islandora:370335

The Tucson Indian Training School — originally the Indian Industrial Training School — opened at a temporary location in early January 1888, then moved to a permanent location later that year. The records of the school, originally transferred to the Presbyterian Historical Society in 1967, were first arranged and processed by Society archivists in 1973.

Fifty years later, members of the Reparative Description Committee began their work to recontextualize the history of the school and lift up the experiences of the students in the collection’s descriptions.

Knowing that Indigenous students’ names had been inconsistently and inadequately recorded, sometimes under aliases or with traditional names misspelled, staff verified and transcribed the students’ full names and tribal affiliations from their original applications, added date ranges for materials contained in each folder, and noted the presence of photographs and personal correspondence, when applicable, on the physical folder titles and in the collection inventory online.

During this process of repairing the Tucson Indian Training School records, the committee also came across over 300 photographs pertaining to the Tucson School in a separate collection (the Support Agency photographs). These photographs have been digitized and made available in the Society’s new online collection, Indigenous peoples of North America history. Along with the photographs, which document student life at the Tucson Indian Training School, the online collection includes student registers and an issue of “Escuela News,” a Tucson Indian Training School periodical.

In the wake of repairing the Tucson Indian Training School records, the Committee has created a process to evaluate connections between repaired collections and other PHS collection guides, catalog records and digital archival content. They hope this process will guide them when they begin reviewing additional collections for repair this fall.

Read an in-depth analysis of the Presbyterian Historical Society’s work repairing the Tucson Indian Training School records. Visit the Indigenous peoples of North America history collection in Pearl Digital Collections.

Presbyterian Historical Society Staff, Special to Presbyterian News Service

Today’s Focus: Presbyterian Historical Society revisits Tucson Indian Training School records

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Rheannon Sicely, Director, Implementation & Continuous Improvement, Board of Pensions 
Manuel Silva-Esterrich, Manager, Call Process Support, Ordered Ministry & Certification, Office of the General Assembly 

Let us pray

Lord, may we be inspired by the beautiful witness of our sisters and brothers who in faith have developed disciplines of family, prayer, reading and reflecting on your Word. Amen.

Minute for Mission: Native American Day

September 27, 2024

Tutuilla Presbyterian Church, est. 1882, Confederated 

Tribes of Umatilla reservation, Pendleton, Oregon. (Irvin

Porter)

Jesus was asked, “… And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29)

America’s history with Indigenous peoples hasn’t always been neighborly. In the past five years, the General Assembly has taken actions to change that legacy, and to be neighbors, not conquerors. Those actions have included:

• An Apology to Native Americans, Alaskan Natives and Hawaiians for Presbyterian cooperation with the Indian boarding school experiment.
• Repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery.
•  
• Expanding the Response on the Doctrine of Discovery.
• An Initiative to Repair Infrastructure of Native American Churches and Properties.
• A Report on Native American Church Properties.
• A Report from the Native American Coordinating Council.

More needs to be done  on each of these issues. A good start has been made, however.

I work with the 97 Native American Presbyterian congregations. Our leadership has been very busy giving presentations and workshops informing Presbyterians about Native issues.

After more than three centuries, Elona Street-Stewart, of the Delaware-Nanticoke tribe, became the first Native American to be elected in 2020 as a co-moderator of our denomination’s highest elected position.

We are not a numerous constituency. Our first congregation was formed in 1741, making a difference and working to help Presbyterians understand who we are, our issues and inviting “neighbors” into partnership with mutual respect and trust.

Get more information about your Native American congregations. Seek a relationship with those who have been your “neighbors” for centuries.

Irvin Porter, Associate for Native American Congregational Support, Racial Equity & Women’s Intercultural Ministries, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Today’s Focus: Native American Day

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Natalie Shilstut, Director, Programs & Services, Presbyterian Historical Society 
Victoria Shircliffe, Social Media Specialist, Communications, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) 

Let us pray

Creator of all that we are and will be, give us hearts to be neighbors who care, listen and support each other. We seek to “rejoice and be glad” in this day you have granted to us. Make sunrise in our hearts now and forevermore. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Gamers can help us see and shape the future

Synod School convocation speaker: Four tools employed by gamers can be helpful for faith communities, too

September 26, 2024

Photo by Samsung Memory via Unsplash

A longstanding practice at Synod School is to offer a talk-back session with the convocation speaker each evening. At the start of his talk, Dr. Corey Schlosser-Hall, this year’s convocation speaker, shared some of what he learned during the previous evening’s talk-back.

One participant said we might consider attaching our FOMO — the fear of missing out — to what God’s doing right now.

Another noted that much of discipleship formation is built around conserving and preserving. “I wonder if more can be built around what Jesus said in John 20: “Peace be with you. Now go,” said Schlosser-Hall, the deputy executive director of Vision, Innovation and Rebuilding in the Presbyterian Mission Agency. “Then [Jesus] breathes the Holy Spirit on them.”

He said he also heard from people who want faith communities to grow better and more attuned to “memorializing and sacramentalizing when something has completed its lifecycle,” he said. “Could we do better with honoring, blessing and letting go?”

“It was a good, robust conversation,” Schlosser-Hall said.

Turning to the day’s material, Schlosser-Hall showed a couple of TV ads to help spur discussion. The first examines the calamities that can occur when one’s cable goes out. “It’s catastrophizing,” Schlosser-Hall said. “How do you see that lived out in your life?”

“It’s a slippery slope,” said one Synod School-goer. “If we let them in, who else will come?”

“People assume your ideas are bad even before you try them on,” said another.

Then the 540 or so people gathered at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa, viewed a second ad, one for a handheld computer that celebrates people who are filled with passion. “What kind of future is this depicting? Schlosser-Hall asked.

“A sense of possibility, hope and anticipation,” said one.

Jane McGonigal, who wrote “Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything, Even Things that Seem Impossible Today,” develops social games about relating to the future. One of McGonigal’s concepts, Schlosser-Hall pointed out, is time spaciousness, which encourages people, faith communities and organizations to plan and dream in 10-year windows, rather than next month or next year or even five years from now.

Dr. Corey Schlosser-Hall (Contributed photo)

Schlosser-Hall asked Synod Schoolers to take a brief McGonigal quiz using a rating scale of 1 to 10:

• Over the next 10 years, do you think things will mostly stay the same or that most of us will dramatically rethink and reinvent how we do things?
• Are you mostly optimistic or mostly worried?
• How much influence do you feel you have in determining how the world and your life will change over the next 10 years?

“We live in a VUCA world,” Schlosser-Hall said, an acronym for volatile, uncertain, chaotic and ambiguous. But so did the people who lived in gospel times, he said.

“Hope is not a feeling you hope lands on you one day,” he said. “It’s a choice we seek to live into. It’s less something that happens to us and more about what we might choose.”

McGonigal says gamers are good at seeing and shaping the future. They employ four tools to help them do that.

• Urgent optimism, the desire to tackle an object combined with the belief there’s a reasonable chance of success. “It’s worth trying, and trying now,” is their approach.
• Social fabric. “They are virtuosos at weaving a tight social fabric,” Schlosser-Hall said.
• Blissful productivity. “When they’re engaged, they lose themselves,” he said of gamers. “They’re happier working hard at the game than relaxing and just hanging out. It can be a deeper kind of energizing. We need to relax and renew, but we also need to be engaged in blissful productivity,” he said.
• Epic meaning. Schlosser-Hall held up The Legend of Zeldaand World of Warcraft as examples. As for The Legend of Zelda, “the depth of meaning this invites people into is almost a spiritual experience. It’s pretty profound,” he said.

“What better place for these qualities to show up than in our congregations, our presbyteries and our communities? It’s about finding our identity in something way bigger than ourselves and doing it better,” Schlosser-Hall said. “Maybe we can get really darn good at the future. Amen?”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Today’s Focus: Gamers can help us see and shape the future shares Dr. Corey Schlosser-Hall at Synod School

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Effie Shipp, Associate for Lending Services, Presbyterian Investment & Loan Program 
Elaine Shilstut, Cataloging & Metadata Librarian, Presbyterian Historical Society 

Let us pray

God, thank you that you are a God of peace and love. We pray for those who need healing from confusion, pain and despair. We ask your blessing that we might bear rich fruits. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Try ‘shalomify’ next time you’re playing Scrabble

Dr. Corey Schlosser-Hall coins a word and leads a thoughtful discussion during his first talk at Synod School

September 25, 2024

Photo by Clark Tibbs via Unsplash

Few Synod School convocation speakers can get away with birthing new words on the spot the way Dr. Corey Schlosser-Hall did.

The word was “shalomify,” as in the way God asks us to build places of shalom, justice, peace and well-being in the places where we live and work and worship. “You can have projects of shalomification,” Schlosser-Hall, the Presbyterian Mission Agency’s deputy executive director of Vision, Innovation and Rebuilding, told those attending Synod School, which is offered each year by the Synod of Lakes and Prairies at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa.

Although he lives in the Pacific Northwest, Schlosser-Hall has roots in the Synod of Lakes and Prairies, having been born in Fort Dodge, Iowa, and having spent his formative years in Aberdeen, South Dakota, and Bismarck, North Dakota.

He showed a slide of a line sliding downward from left to right, and many people guessed it represented the PC(USA)’s membership trend: about 4 million in 1970 and about 1.2 million in 2020. But what if, as one Presbyterian told Schlosser-Hall and others present on a Zoom call a while back, that represents a line of possibility?

“God is doing more than we can ask or imagine,” he said, picking up on the Synod School theme during its 70th year. “We might want to be part of it.”

Schlosser-Hall has seen the T-shirts with the four qualities spelled out during ordination questions: Do you promise to serve the people with energy, intelligence, imagination and love?

Dr. Corey Schlosser-Hall (Contributed photo)

“We want to escalate the role of imagination to create new stories and [employ] imagination’s cousin, innovation,” which someone once defined as “imagination applied,” Schlosser-Hall said. “My hope [this week] is that we will see our circumstances in an ecosystem of possibility.”

Schlosser-Hall, a PC(USA) ruling elder who’s married to a pastor, shared photos of some of the places in Eugene, Oregon, that mattered to the couple when they were younger.  The Koinonia Center, a former Victorian home where Schlosser-Hall worked as a janitor, is now a towering apartment building. Hayward Field, a beloved place for track fans, was leveled in 2018 and rebuilt in time to host the world championships in 2022. But the church where the two used to worship has remained largely unchanged.

He wondered — and he asked those present to think along with him — whether there’s something going on that makes it more difficult to exercise “that blue-sky imagination, to take steps with great risk and great possibilities.”

He asked the crowd for their ideas. Among them:

• People are invested in their past accomplishments.
• Comfort means complacency.
• We’re scared of the chaos that can occur between the former and the future.
• A group of churches told one pastor, “We welcome new ideas that will help us keep on doing what we’ve always done.”
• There is a fear of loss, and we don’t like fear. Even when it’s good change, change always involves loss.
• We forget that God calls us to be resurrection people.
• What we let go of might be a faith anchor for some people.

“Discipleship is being able to hold more than one emotion, reality or observation at the same time. That creates maturation as disciples,” Schlosser-Hall said. “It’s not one or the other. It’s grief and newness together.”

But “if we rush in with new zeal saying, ‘This is what we’re going to do. Get on board or get off the bus,’ that can be harmful for people,” Schlosser-Hall said. “We need that influence, but we need to find a way to take good steps out of good Spirit-led choices.”

Our job is to find out what innovation God is already orchestrating, he said. He quoted from Dr. Linda Hill, who along with three others wrote “Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation.”

“Ordinary people can do extraordinary things,” the authors wrote. “Everyone has a slice of genius. The innovative leader’s role is to unleash it, harness it and use it for the collective good.”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Today’s Focus: Dr. Corey Schlosser-Hall speaks at Synod School

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff

Ellen Sherby, Associate Director, Global Connections, World Mission, Presbyterian Mission Agency 
Alejandra “Alex” Sherman, Executive Assistant, President’s Office, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)

Let us pray

Lord God, we lift up all who work to spread your love, made known to us through Jesus Christ. May congregations and clergy touch more lives with the good news of the gospel. May they be an inspiration for us as we work to spread the message of Christ in our own communities. Amen.

Save the Date: Evangelical 360° Podcast Launches October 9, 2024!

Exciting news — something big is coming this October! We’re thrilled to announce that evangelical 360°, a brand-new podcast which I host, is launching next month. This unique podcast is set to be a global meeting place where the evangelical movement is explored through rich discussions, engaging with prominent Christian leaders, theologians, and influencers from around the world. As the evangelical church has grown from 90million to over 600 million in just a few decades, evangelical 360° will delve into this extraordinary rise, tackling key issues such as faith in a secular world, the challenges of religious persecution, and the movements shaping Christian life and witness today. Mark your calendar for October 9, and get ready for conversations that tackle the tough questions central to today’s faith journey. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel here and join us as we prepare for this powerful new venture. Coming to all your favorite podcast platforms! Sincerely, Brian C. Stiller is the Global Ambassador of the World Evangelical Alliance, serving a global community of over 600 million Christians since 2011. Born and raised in Canada, Brian holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Toronto and a doctoral degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. His career began in 1967 with Youth For Christ (YFC), eventually becoming President of YFC/Canada, the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, and Tyndale University College & Seminary in Toronto. He is the author of 12 books, including Evangelicals Around the World: A Global Handbook for the 21st Century (General Editor) and An Insider’s Guide to Praying for the World. Visit him at brianstiller.com and follow his blog at dispatchesfrombrian.com. Over two billion Christians in the world today are represented by three world church bodies. The World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) is one of those, serving more than 600 million evangelicals belonging to churches that are part of 143 national Evangelical Alliances in 9 regions. Launched in London in 1846, the WEA unites evangelicals across denominations for prayer, evangelism, mission, theological education, religious freedom, human rights advocacy, relief, and engagement in a wide range of social issues. It speaks with one voice to United Nations, governments, and media in public or through behind-the-scenes diplomacy on issues of common concern to the Church. For more information, visit worldea.org WEA has been a charter member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability since 1980. WEA is audited annually by an independent public accounting firm. WEA is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. In the United States, your contribution is tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. © Copyright 2024 World Evangelical Alliance