Presbyterian Peace Fellowship - Holding Hope Together

Dear Peacemakers, I’m glad to be back with you all as we move through this season of waiting, wondering, seeking, and hoping. These are holy things best done in good company. It’s a slippery thing, hope. Maybe it always has been. It certainly is right now. It’s fragile. We can be tempted to betray the hope we claim as peacemakers who follow Christ. We get drawn into the culture of treating hope as a sweet idea that is meaningless without our stridency, anger, even aggression to move the world toward justice. Certainly the work of justice requires much of us — our creativity, time, energy, attention, and work. And sometimes our anger is absolutely necessary. Yet I think we are denying ourselves something important when we set aside the power of hope itself, in all its unlikelihood and all its fragility. Fragility is an incredible gift. It means we’ve stayed soft in a world that so often insists on malice and revenge. It means we are willing to let our hearts be broken for hope in what God has done, is doing, and will do. In a broken world, what a remarkable thing to acknowledge our brokenness and our hope in the same breath. The thing is, the story of Jesus of Nazareth has always been under the rubble. He was born into a broken, violent world and died at the hands of that same broken, violent world. That didn’t diminish the hope His friends and followers lived by, and the rubble piled on their lives was unimaginably high. It was hope that carried them. That same fragile hope is what keeps Him alive in the world today. And this is the hope we are choosing together this Advent. It’s the hope beneath our theme, Advent Under the Rubble, and the hope that sustains the work PPF is called to do in accompaniment, abolition, gun violence prevention, and building communities of care. This shared hope is made real through your prayers, your presence, and yes, your financial support. I’m thankful to each of you for investing in hope with the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship in this season. You are a necessary part of this community of hope and we are glad to share the journey with you. If you are able, I invite you to make an Advent gift to help us continue this work into the year ahead. With hope unbroken, Laurie This season our theme is Advent Under the Rubble. Each week you will hear reflections from members of our community on hope, peace, joy, and love in the places where they are most needed. My prayer is that these reflections help us see where Christ is being born right now and call us to respond with courage, imagination, and steadfast love in the face of empire. We are entering this season with a real need. To keep grounding our work in accompaniment, gun violence prevention, abolition, and the daily labor of showing up where God already is, we need to raise $81,000 by the end of the year. If you are able, I invite you to make an Advent gift today. Picture taken at 2025 James Atwood Institute. Kelly Latimore’s Christ in the Rubble Donate Today   Our Company | Contact Us | FAQs | Privacy Policy

Presbyterian Peace Fellowship | 17 Cricketown Road | Stony Point, NY 10980 US

Mission Yearbook: Gun violence prevention training set for Sept. 24–27

As the White House dismantles gun violence prevention programs, the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship forges ahead to nourish the fortitude and skills of congregations for saving lives. If you and your congregation are distressed by more than 40,000 Americans dying from gun violence each year — and you want to do something about it — then register for the Peace Fellowship’s Atwood Institute for Congregational Courage.

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Presbyterian Peace Fellowship has hosted many Guns to Gardens events (photo courtesy of Presbyterian Peace Fellowship)

This annual gun violence prevention training for clergy and lay leaders will be held Sept. 24–27 at Massanetta Springs Camp and Conference Center near Harrisonburg, Virginia. The event welcomes churches of all denominations. Learn more, register and find the Institute schedule here.

Forging ahead will also include portable forges as participants gain hands-on opportunities to learn about Guns to Gardens and to beat unwanted guns into garden tools. “The Atwood Institute is an immersion in a community of clergy and lay, newcomers, activists and experts — a kind of baptism for faith-based gun violence prevention,” says the Rev. Margery Rossi, the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship’s Minister for Gun Violence Prevention. “It offers practical learning and continuing education from how to preach on this issue to how to foster congregational education and action to how to offer pastoral care at times of gun violence.”

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The Rev. Sharon Risher (photo courtesy of Faith and Leadership)

Hosted by the Massanetta Springs Camp and Conference Center, the Institute honors the late Christian prophet of gun violence prevention, the Rev. James Atwood. The Institute’s faculty this year will include Joshua Horwitz, Atwood’s long-time colleague and now co-director and 

Distinguished Professor of Gun Violence Prevention and Advocacy at the Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Gun Violence Solutions at Johns Hopkins University. The Rev. Jimmie Hawkins, the PC(USA)’s director of advocacy, will offer the send-off sermon for the Institute, as participants commit to taking faithful action. Other faculty will include Quaker artist and blacksmith Scotty Utz of RAWTools South, who will lead training for Guns to Gardens, and Rev. Rosalind Hughes of the Episcopal Archdiocese of Cleveland and the author of “Whom Shall I Fear?”

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Massanetta Springs Camp and Conference Center will host the 2025 Atwood Institute (photo by Colleen Earp).

The Institute’s keynote speaker, the Rev. Sharon Risher, will mark 10 years since her mother and other relatives were killed at the Mother Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina. The author of “For Such a Time as This — Hope and Forgiveness after the Charleston Massacre,” Risher will demonstrate the need to tell our stories, rather than rely only on statistics about gun violence. She will lift up a call to courage in the face of a political climate where recent gains in saving lives are now all at risk. Risher’s address on the evening of Sept. 24 will be open to the public and area churches.

Each year, the Atwood Institute trains clergy and lay leaders in Gun Violence Prevention practical skills for congregational use, including managing trauma and opposition and engaging congregations in practical GVP education and action, including legislative advocacy, secure storage efforts and other steps to protect children from gun violence. Participants have an option to follow up the event with quarterly online gatherings with their Atwood Institute community to encourage one another over time. The first Atwood Institute was held in 2024 at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico with a community of 72 faith activists. They returned home to offer action strategies learned at the Atwood Institute, as well as pastoral care after two mass shootings.    

Costs for the 2025 Institute will be a $180 registration fee per person, plus participants are responsible for their own travel and lodging at Massanetta Springs. There is a commuter option. Thanks to sponsors, some scholarships are available. To sponsor, contact the Rev. Jan Orr-Harter, moderator of the Peace Fellowship’s Gun Violence Prevention Working Group, at gvp@presbypeacefellowship.org.

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

Let us join in prayer for:

Melaina Wilson, Marketing Program Assistant, Presbyterian Foundation
Miatta Wilson, Associate, Christian Formation, Theology, Formation & Evangelism, Interim Unified Agency 

Let us pray:

Lord of all peoples, you are continually gathering your people together in surprising and creative ways. We celebrate your call to find our unity through faith and your transformative power. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: Online Lost and Found Church service for Presbyterian Peace Fellowship shares prayers for those who are incarcerated

Lost and Found Church, an online ministry of Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, recently featured numerous insights from the Rev. Dexter Kearny, of the One Parish One Prisoner program offered throughout the state of Washington by Underground Ministries. Kearny is also a member of Presbyterians for Abolition Working Group.

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Photo by Charles Rabada via Unsplash

One Parish One Prisoner trains faith communities “to be welcoming spaces for those coming home from prison,” Kearny explained. Scripture “has a lot to say about prisons,” in passages including Matthew 25 and Hebrews 13. “Paul wrote nearly all his letters from prison,” Kearny noted. “Nearly all the disciples were imprisoned, as were many from Presbyterian Peace Fellowship as they stood up for their beliefs.”

Nearly 2 million people are incarcerated in the United States, more than any other country. About 79 million people in the U.S. have a criminal record, and 113 million have someone in their immediate family who’s been incarcerated. Over the past five decades or so, populations at state and federal prisons in the U.S. are up 800%. “Prisons are a sickness in society,” Kearny said, “one which we have been unwilling to heal from.”

He asked those gathered for the online service: What are things you find difficult to bring up in church settings? Kearny went first. He and his spouse, also a teaching elder, had been serving a congregation in the Evergreen State for a few years before they connected with a person who’d been incarcerated. When that occurred and the church welcomed the person, a woman “whose son had been in and out of prison for several years” opened up about that reality, saying that before this person arrived, she didn’t feel she could bring up her son’s history in church. Another woman shared that she herself had been incarcerated as a younger person. “She felt safe because we had engaged with a formerly incarcerated person,” Kearny said.

“We’re all sinners. We’re all on a journey toward Christ’s example of unconditional love,” Kearny said. “People trust us with their stories and their struggles, and it makes us a more honest and healing community. It can be a person formerly incarcerated or a person brave enough to say, ‘I don’t have it together.’ It opens up the space to participate more broadly in the body of Christ.”

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The Rev. Dexter Kearny

One Parish One Prisoner uses John’s account of the resurrection of Lazarus to get faith communities to talk about how to welcome those who were formerly incarcerated. As a discussion starter, Kearny displayed two works of art: “Jesus Raises Lazarus to Life” from the JESUS MAFA Project in Cameroon, and “The Resurrection of Lazarus” by Giovanni di Paolo.

The Lazarus story “lines up really well with the way a lot of people coming home from prison feel,” Kearny said. “They have been cut off from community and now they’re getting a second chance. Are they celebrated and welcomed?” Or, like Lazarus, “are they told [even by family members], ‘You’re too stinky. Get over it and get a job, and don’t cause any trouble.’”

In John’s gospel, Jesus orders the stone removed and for Lazarus to come out. It’s as if Jesus is saying, “All right, community, we’re going to do this miracle together,” Kearny said. Jesus then orders those gathered to unbind Lazarus and let him go. “Jesus says, ‘Get closer. Get so close you could smell him and hug him, and unbind the layers holding him tight,’” Kearny said.

We may consider the “inner work needed to do the healing” among the formerly incarcerated, Kearny said, healing from mistrust, addiction, anger, co-dependency, resentment and running away from problems. Then he smiled. “Of course, in our churches we don’t have any of those problems,” he said. What we do find is this: “When we get close enough to smell and hug, it opens up healing and our own transformation.”

Kearny closed the service by praying for “for those in our prisons, for those who have no hope of release and for those who are moving to their release date.”

“Surround them with a community who will walk alongside them,” Kearny asked the Almighty, “not as someone who stinks, but as someone who’s worthy of a hug.”

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

Let us join in prayer for:

Josh Park, Manager for Korean-Speaking Councils, Interim Unified Agency  
Sung-Joo Park, Relationship Manager, Presbyterian Investment & Loan Program 

Let us pray:

Lord God, open our hearts so that we hear your call. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: Former General Assembly Moderator leads Lost & Found Church worship for Presbyterian Peace Fellowship

The Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow (contributed photo)

Presbyterian Peace Fellowship’s Lost & Found Church used an introspective approach on the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration, with the Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow leading online attendees in a Lectio Divina encounter with Romans 12:9–21. “Bless Your Enemies: The Challenge to See Humanity in Inhumane Times” was the theme of the gathering.

Reyes-Chow, Moderator of the 218th General Assembly (2008), is a speaker, coach and the author of six books, most recently “Everything Good About God Is True: Choosing Faith.” Using the Common English Bible, Reyes-Chow read the Romans passage through three times, asking worshipers each time to select a word or phrase to ponder for two minutes. 

“I’m so glad you’re here considering the turmoil of the times,” Reyes-Chow said. “Everyone needs to find ways not only to resist, but — in  body, mind and spirit — find joy and meaning together.”

“For me, there is a natural inclination to repay evil acts with evil acts. There is often an urge to escalate,” Reyes-Chow said. “But today we are going to hear in Romans not to escalate conflict, but to bless our enemies. God’s still asking us to bless them, and I think that’s a prophetic word for all of us.”

Angela Steiner, music director and conductor at Asolo Repertory Theatre in Sarasota, Florida, provided piano and vocal music during worship, including Ingrid Michaelson’s “Keep Breathing” and the Beatles’ “Let It Be.” 

When Reyes-Chow asked for words or phrases from the Romans passage that stirred people in worship, attendees lifted up these:

• One noted “be happy with those who are happy.” “I spend a lot of time talking to very serious people who are very anxious right now," this worshiper said. “I find it hard to be happy with people who are happy right now — people who are aware of what’s going on in the world and are fine and even happy.”
• Another selected “defeat evil with good.” “Is that even possible?” this person wondered. “I can’t have vengeance, but is it OK to pray for God’s vengeance? I don’t know.”
• Yet another focused on “leave room for God’s wrath.” This pastor juxtaposed that phrase with leading worship that morning, focusing on the letter white clergy wrote to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that led King to write “Letter From a Birmingham Jail.” “It was extremely uncomfortable to think about what promoted that letter [from the white clergy]” this pastor said, a letter signed by the Moderator of the Synod of the Alabama Presbyterian Church in the United States, a forebear of the PC(USA). “‘Leave room for God’s wrath’ — what is it we are still holding and dealing with as a nation and as a church? There’s this discomfort about what we’re going to face for the sin of racism and all the violence that took place because of it.”
• A seminary student focused on “don’t think that you’re so smart” and “don’t hesitate to be enthusiastic.” “Sometimes we get caught up in our own brains,” this student said, calling King’s statement that “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that” a “paraphrase of Scripture.”

Reyes-Chow asked those in worship to voice their prayer concerns, which included praying for people who are tending to the spirits of other people.

“For the community that’s been built across the technology that can be frustrating but has brought us together in amazing and unimaginable ways, we give you thanks,” he prayed. “Move with us as we struggle with so much, and as we find moments of joy with others, in Creation and in the surprising moments of each day.”

“We’ve got each other, friends,” said the Rev. Dr. Laurie Lyter Bright, PPF’s executive director.

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service, Interim Unified Agency (Click here to read original PNS story)

Let us join in prayer for:

• Paul Grier,  Vice President, Project Regeneration, Presbyterian Foundation
• Laurie Griffith, Associate Director, Constitutional Interpretation, Interim Unified Agency

Let us pray:

Open our eyes, O God, to see your way. And if our eyes aren’t ready to see, open our hearts to the movement of the Holy Spirit. Keep pointing us in the right direction. We want to answer your call, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: Presbyterian Peace Fellowship hosts Virtual Peace Church service

Advent services are offered as a ‘sanctuary for those who may have felt isolated or disconnected from traditional places of worship’

Presbyterian Peace Fellowship held its “Lost and Found Virtual Peace Church” gathering online on each Sunday during Advent plus Dec. 29. The first night of the service featured Scripture, music, Communion, meditation and a thoughtful homily by the Rev. Dr. Laurie Lyter Bright, PPF’s executive director.

The Rev. Bill Davis, senior director of Theological Education Funds Development at the Presbyterian Foundation, offered up musical selections for Advent on both cello and guitar. Scripture lessons came from Job 3:1–10, Romans 12:9-16 and Luke 1:46-55.

“Our church is a sanctuary for those who may have felt isolated or disconnected from traditional places of worship, offering an opportunity to reconnect with God and each other,” Lost and Found Church states on its website. “We are deeply committed to fostering an inclusive Christian community where all people — regardless of their past experiences or identities — can find belonging.”

Marissa Gutierrez-Vicario led a mindfulness exercise by asking those gathered to find a piece of fruit and reflect on it. “Study the color and shape. Look at the lines and the contours,” Gutierrez-Vicario suggested. “Close your eyes and imagine where you think the fruit might have grown. Imagine feeling the same warm sun that piece of fruit felt.”

As they peeled the skin, worshipers were asked to notice how the smell changed. “Take a bite, and pay attention to how it tastes,” Gutierrez-Vicario said, then wondered: “How did it feel to eat a piece of fruit with intentionality in a space together?”

During her reflection, Lyter Bright opened with a poem by Warsan Shire, which includes this stanza:

“I’ve been praying, 

and these are what my prayers look like;

dear god

i come from two countries

one is thirsty

the other is on fire

both need water.”

Lyter Bright started Advent by reading Job “because Job gets it. He gets fear. He gets the way things fall apart. I don’t know a single peacemaker who isn’t feeling a level of despair” over the fighting and human suffering in places including Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, she said, places where “empire is stretching out and reaching in.”

“Like Job, like Mary, we are just here, lost and found, together in this not-yet space — not one in which the weary world is rejoicing, but just weary,” Lyter Bright said. “Some of us are weary of aspects of church life. … Some of us feel ambivalent about church. Some of us feel good about church and are simply seeking something more.” Then she asked, “What do we do in our weariness and our waiting?”

One thing we can do is lament. “It’s not a traditional Advent practice, but Scripture gives us many models for our soul to cry out when we need to,” she said. “The expectation is God is there, and the community is listening and able to hear.”

We can also hold each other, committing to create “pockets of community where it is absolutely fine to not be fine right now,” Lyter Bright said. “Our lamentations are never solos. Lamentations are a chorus, and a very long one — ancient and future and now.”

What remains is the work of peacemaking, she said. “It reminds us that the story of humanity is so much bigger than me or you. That is maybe where hope lives on — hope that doesn’t rest on the easy reassurance that everything will turn out fine.” In our cries, our laughter, our joy and work, “we belong to each other, and we hold on to each other. We wait, and sometimes we weep, sometimes we sing, and sometimes both — and we do it together.”

To close, Lyter Bright quoted Padraig O Tuama’s Narrative Theology #1, a teaching that includes these words:

“You will find meaning where you give meaning.

The answer is in a story and the story isn’t finished.”

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

Let us join in prayer for:

• Amanda Dunphy, Business Administrator, Finance, Board of Pensions
• Sarah Dunne Pickrell, Mission Associate II, Executive Director’s Office, Interim Unified Agency

Let us pray:

Living God, you are a God on the move, and you call us to follow you. Give us courage and strength during times of worry so that we may share your love and grace with all people. Help us to hear your call and respond in faith by bearing good fruit and growing in the knowledge of you. Amen.

Happy Holidays from PPF

Lost & Found Virtual Church Peace-ing It Together Podcast 2024 Annual Appeal New Staff!

Presbyterian Peace Fellowship | 17 Cricketown Road | Stony Point, NY 10980 US

Today in the Mission Yearbook - James Atwood Institute for Congregational Courage set for Ghost Ranch Aug. 22–25

Presbyterian Peace Fellowship honors a gun violence prevention prophet by multiplying courage

July 13, 2024

The Rev. Jim Atwood (Photo by Della Orr-Harter)

With every event of gun violence, does the Spirit tug at you to do something? Yet what? And how? And do I have the courage and skill to do it? Or… I’ve been working on this — how do I become more effective?

If these questions call to you, the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship invites you — and perhaps others from your church — to attend the inaugural James Atwood Institute for Congregational Courage at the Ghost Ranch Education and Retreat Center in Abiquiu, New Mexico, Aug. 22–25. Honoring the late Presbyterian prophet of gun violence prevention, James Atwood, the Institute will offer intense continuing education for clergy and lay leaders in a range of educational, pastoral and action strategies for gun violence prevention mission in the local congregation.

“In the church we speak of energy, intelligence, imagination and love,” said the Rev. Margery Rossi, acting coordinator of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship’s Gun Violence Prevention Ministry. “To that list, Jim Atwood urged the cultivation of courage. None of those spiritual gifts matters unless we have the courage to act on them.”

The purpose of the Atwood Institute is to cultivate this courage by providing new skills and an ongoing community to overcome the sense of frustration, helplessness and isolation that church leaders can feel on gun violence prevention and other difficult issues.

Occurring annually, the Atwood Institute will train clergy and lay leaders in Gun Violence Prevention (GVP) practical skills for congregational use, including preaching on and discussing GVP effectively, managing opposition and trauma, emergency response to gun violence, and engaging congregations and communities in practical GVP education and action.

The institute is ecumenical, welcoming all denominations. It will offer hands-on training for Guns to Gardens events, including the opportunity to transform a gun into a garden tool. Additionally, participants will have the option to follow up the event with quarterly online gatherings with their Atwood Institute community, with a goal of encouraging one another over time.

Father John Dear

At 7 p.m. Mountain Time on Thursday, Aug. 22, Father John Dear will offer a keynote address for the Ghost Ranch event, speaking on the faith basis for courage to prevent gun violence. A Catholic priest, author of 40 books and a globally recognized activist for Christian nonviolence, Dear’s latest book is “The Gospel of Peace: A Commentary on Matthew, Mark, and Luke from the Perspective of Nonviolence.”  Congregations in the area are invited for Dear’s address.

The cost for the 3½-day Atwood Institute will be a $180 registration fee per person. Participants are responsible for their own travel and lodging at Ghost Ranch. Family members are welcome to come for daily Ranch activities or a time for renewal.

Download a brochure about the Atwood Institute at Ghost Ranch here.

Space is limited. Register for the Atwood Institute here. For questions about the Atwood Institute, send an email here.

Thanks to sponsors for the event, some scholarships will be available. In addition to the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, sponsors include First Presbyterian Church of Santa Fe, The Presbyterian Outlook and New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence. To participate as a sponsor, please contact Rev. Jan Orr-Harter, Moderator of the Peace Fellowship’s Gun Violence Prevention Working Group, here.

Jim Atwood was a Presbyterian missionary, pastor, author and avid hunter whose life was re-directed when a member of his Virginia congregation was murdered with a $20 handgun in 1975.  For nearly 50 years, he called the church of Jesus Christ to take action to balance the rights of responsible gun owners with the right to live free from an epidemic that now takes over 43,000 lives in our country each year.

Established in 1944, the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship is a nationwide community of Presbyterians committed to the nonviolence of Jesus Christ. Learn more here.

The Presbyterian Peace Fellowship Activist Council Gathering is set for Aug. 25–28 at Ghost Ranch. Atwood Institute participants are welcome to stay for these days of worship, training and community. For questions about the Peace Fellowship Activist Council Gathering, contact Christa Galvin here.

Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, Special to Presbyterian News Service

Today’s Focus: James Atwood Institute offers continuing education on gun violence

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Steve Maier, Network Support Engineer, Information Technology, Administrative Services Group (A Corp) 
Raymond Manuel, Facilities Technician, Stony Point Center, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray

Lord, bless us with renewal. We pray our community would be blessed with one mind and spirit in feeding your flock. By your Holy Spirit, inspire and enable foolish moves leading to the flourishing you have promised. Jesus, you call us to feed, by the power of your Holy Spirit. May we answer. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Presbyterian Peace Fellowship launches new Gun Violence Prevention Congregational Toolkit

The completely updated toolkit is available both online and in print form

May 10, 2024

The new Presbyterian Peace Fellowship Toolkit features 

a photo of a volunteer at the chop saw on Guns to Gardens

Day at La Mesa Presbyterian Church in Albuquerque, New

Mexico. (Photo courtesy of Presbyterian Peace Fellowship)

The Gun Violence Prevention Working Group of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship (PPF) has been hard at work. The team of 15 Working Group members has completely retooled its primary resource, the Gun Violence Prevention Congregational Toolkit. One of the few comprehensive resources for congregations on this issue, the prior toolkit editions have been accessed by more than 2,500 Presbyterians and others from all 50 states. It was time for an update!

“The Presbyterian Peace Fellowship offers this new toolkit,” says the PPF’s executive director, the Rev. Dr. Laurie Lyter Bright, “as an answer to our calling as Christians today. Our contribution to the Presbyterian Decade to End Gun Violence, PPF’s toolkit is unique in the landscape of gun violence prevention work. It empowers local congregations with the resources they need to learn and to take action to save lives, a task that is sacred and essential.”

The 2024 toolkit edition offers 80 pages of educational, pastoral, emergency and worship resources, and suggestions for action and advocacy. The Action section offers case studies and color photos of local congregations engaged in projects such as Guns to Gardens, the Be SMART for Kids Campaign, advocacy for gun sense regulation and more. More than 200 links take the reader to additional resources, including PC(USA) actions and gun violence prevention national groups and local contacts in all 50 states.

One highlight of the new toolkit edition is an all-new six-session study created by the PPF Working Group for Congregations, “Courageous Conversations on Gun Violence Prevention.” Designed to help a congregation move from initial concern about gun violence to in-depth learning to practical action, the Courageous Conversations study includes these topics for small groups: “The Citizen’s Test on Gun Violence in America”; “Getting Real about Suicide and Gun Violence”; “Guns and Domestic Violence — A Taboo Topic”; “Gun Violence, Race and Racism”; “Unmasking the Powers: Guns and Money”; and “Action: Creating a New World.”

In the toolkit’s introduction, PPF dedicated the new toolkit to the late Rev. Jim Atwood and the Rev. Deanna Hollas. Atwood was a prophetic voice for many decades, calling the church to take action to prevent gun violence and to balance the rights of responsible gun owners with the right to live free from an epidemic that takes over 43,000 lives in our country each year. Hollas was the first clergy in the United States ordained to the ministry of Gun Violence Prevention. She has recently stepped away from that work to attend to family medical needs. Also on the introduction page is a beautiful color photo of Niagara Falls on “Wear Orange Weekend.” It’s an image of healing waters and hope for a nation under the daily threat of gun violence.

The toolkit PDF is available as a free download to store on a computer desktop, or it can be ordered in the new print edition for $12 per copy, including postage. The Working Group encourages congregations to order both the print version for easy browsing and the online version for easy links and copying pages. Each toolkit order includes a free monthly Gun Violence Prevention Congregational E-News subscription with updates on education, pastoral care and action. Find the online and print toolkit here.

Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, Special to Presbyterian News Service

Today’s Focus: Presbyterian Peace Fellowship launches new Gun Violence Prevention Congregational Toolkit

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Tom Harvey, Long term volunteer serving in England, World Mission, Presbyterian Mission Agency  
Robert Hawkey, Director, IT Strategy & Transformation, Information Technology, Board of Pensions  

Let us pray

O God, how are you at work in the world? Show us today. Guide us to the ones you can reach through us. Not of our own doing, but through your grace, let us be a part of what you want to do next. We pray in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus. Amen.