Minute for Mission: World Communion Sunday/Peace & Global Witness Offering

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Romans 14:19: “Pursue What Makes for Peace”

The church was created to be connected.

Like the classic hymn reminds us, “All who follow Jesus, all around the world. Yes, we’re the church together!”

We can feel the power of the connectional church at work whenever individuals, congregations, mid councils, and our national and global partners serve together to the glory of God, creating a uniquely interconnected tapestry that reflects both the unity and diversity of God’s beautiful Creation.

This tapestry is not only a reflection of the distinctiveness of each person but also embodies the strength, resilience and powerful force — God — who connects us, even as it simultaneously demonstrates the importance of each individual thread.

Our connectional church is rooted in none other than Christ’s clear call to harmonious living. The apostle Paul tells the Romans that we are to pursue what makes for peace, to build each other up, and to not cast judgment on those who are different from us or have different customs or needs than our own.

Paul is inviting the Romans — and us — to break down the neat and orderly worlds we create for ourselves and experience the fullness of our diversity. This means leaving our comfort zones and seeing our neighbors, both around the corner and around the world, not as “them” but as “us,” friends and siblings in Christ. Whenever we welcome and embrace one another in this way, we respond to Paul’s invitation to pursue what makes for peace.

The Peace & Global Witness Offering helps to pursue peace in a variety of ways. Gifts to the Offering are combined with others to support Presbyterian mission and ministry around the world. Congregations and presbyteries keep a portion to be peacemakers in their own communities by meeting needs and ensuring every person can flourish. Our participation in supporting this Offering helps us see the face of God in all people.

This World Communion Sunday, let us pray for Christian unity and remember we are one in the Spirit and the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Rev. Wilson Kennedy, Associate Director of Stewardship and Funds Development, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff:

Omar Chacon, Mission Specialist, Migration Accompaniment Ministry, Interim Unified Agency
Omar Chan, Project Manager, Unification Management Office, Interim Unified Agency

Let us pray:

Loving God, help us as we work to pursue peace. May we see your face in those we meet in our neighborhoods and around the world. Show us how we might be bringers of peace to the rich tapestry you created for all of your people. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Minute for Mission: World Communion Sunday/Peace & Global Witness Offering

October 6, 2024
“Sowing the Seeds of Peace” (Zechariah 8:12)

We’ve all witnessed it, haven’t we?

Flowers miraculously blooming across a ravaged landscape. Children holding hands and smiling in the face of war.

We’ve all seen it and wonder how it’s possible. Such scenarios seem unlikely when we’ve all but given up hope.

And yet …

The prophet Zechariah casts a vision for peace. He shows forth a world where each person — old and young, all genders and races, people from north, south, east and west — lives without enmity, fear and destruction. In Zechariah’s vision, there is “a sowing of peace” where the world is restored, made whole and abides in peace. People in Zechariah’s prophecy bind themselves together in love for one another, imbued in them by God, where all people have dignity and worth.

The Presbyterian Confession of 1967 invites us, the Church, to be “emissaries of peace.” It also reminds us that “with an urgency born of this hope, the Church applies itself to present tasks and strives for a better world.”

Peacemaking is central to the gospel and the mission of the Church. Peace is possible, and it begins with us sowing the seeds of peace in every interaction and decision we make.

The Peace & Global Witness Offering is one way we can begin to bring peace. Through our support, the Central America Migration Mission Network seeks solutions to the root causes of migration and offers support for those who have had to flee their homelands; the Presbyterian Church of Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, began their “Loads of Love” laundry program (not being able to keep yourself clean robs people of their dignity); and after members from Second Presbyterian Church in Richmond, Virginia, attended a Peacemaking Travel Study Seminar to the Native Lands, the church voted to send funds to help with necessary repairs and improvements to Native American churches.

This World Communion Sunday, let us remember the Christ who we meet at the Table of Grace and affirm that in Christ all Christians are one, regardless of nationality, race or ethnicity.

 We are the Church. Together.

Special Offerings

Today’s Focus: World Communion Sunday/Peace & Global Witness Offering

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Barbara Soete, Ministry Specialist for Special Offerings, Ministry Engagement & Support, Administrative Services Group (A Corp) 
Samuel Son, Manager, Diversity & Reconciliation Associate, Advocacy, Presbyterian Mission Agency 

Let us pray

God, you are the bringer of peace. We recommit ourselves to you as you bring peace to our world. May the works of our hands, the marching of our feet and the meditations of our hearts join with you as we sow the seeds of the peace only you can bring. In your name we pray. Amen.

Sunday, October 2, World Communion Sunday

You shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace.
Isaiah 55:12a (ESV)

While the legal community may anxiously await the first Monday in October when the Supreme Court begins its new term, those of us who follow the liturgical calendar look forward to the first Sunday in October — World Communion Sunday.

There is something truly special about having a day where Christians around the world are all coming to the table. Of course, it can get dicey in that the table of Jesus Christ is like so many other things in the church — we don’t all agree on who gets to participate. So even on World Communion Sunday, we’re not of one accord.

Communion only makes sense for me if everyone is welcome at the table. Jesus instituted the ritual at the Last Supper and said, “Do this in remembrance of me.” No qualifiers (or disqualifiers, for that matter). Just do this. It grieves me every time I hear stories of people not being invited to participate or flat out turned away from the table of Jesus Christ.

Even on World Communion Sunday, not everyone is welcome at every table. But for me, the day is a promise of what we could be … what we should be as a community in Christ. A reminder that all over the world, people who don’t look like us or talk like us or live like us are all coming to the table. They are all invited, just as we are.

If Jesus included the one who was to betray him, who are we to decide who does and doesn’t belong?

Action: Gather round the table of Jesus Christ with people you love and even people you dislike. Get a glimpse of the kingdom. Be nourished for the journey ahead. Go out with joy and be led forth with the peace of the One who always welcomes us to the table in your heart.

Prayer: God of welcome and inclusion, may we go forth with great joy, spreading the Good News that all of God’s children have a place at the table. Amen.

 

Anne Russ is an ordained pastor with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). She has a heart for small church ministry, Christian camping and the power of the Web to spread the Good News of the Gospel. Anne is a fiercely supportive theater mom, a loud laugher and a lover of good stories. She is a displaced Southerner living in New York who pastors through her online platform, DoubtingBeliever.com.

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This year’s Path of Peace reflections are designed to help participants explore peacemaking efforts addressing some of the major issues of our time. The theme for the 29 days of the 2022 A Season of Peace is Led Forth in Peace: Critical Areas of Engagement for Peacemakers. With these daily reflections, we are invited to reflect upon ways to practice peace by engaging the following critical areas:

1. 1. 1. Climate change
      2. Nonviolence
      3. The intersection of poverty and racism
      4. Immigration/migration

Minute for Mission: World Communion Sunday/Peace & Global Witness Offering

October 2, 2022

“For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace.” Isaiah 55:12

The prophet Isaiah invites us to imagine God’s peace in unlikely places. Trees clap their hands. Joy grows where sorrow once reigned. A world torn by enmity, strife and despair blossoms back to abundant life. Lions lie down with lambs, and nations once at war with each other come together in peace.

Whenever the church gathers for worship, we are assured of Christ’s peace. We celebrate that we are connected, we are loved and we are not alone. We worship together and are fed from Scripture and at Christ’s table of peace.

After the feast God has prepared for us, we are sent out carrying the joy rekindled in worship and challenged to take the peace of Christ into our world. No matter how large or small the world we inhabit, the joy of God’s presence empowers us to live joyfully within our communities and to bring peace to all around us.

Peace empowered by joy is at a premium in our world. It is difficult to find and even more challenging to maintain. In our polarized world torn by war, famine, and marginalization of the poor and disenfranchised, we are in desperate need of joyful and brave people willing to ask the hard questions and live the difficult solutions that make peace possible. One person, one situation, one step at a time.

As we go out into the world in joy and are led forth in peace, we are called to take decisive and bold action. We take action today by offering a blessing of our own. Through our participation in the Peace & Global Witness Offering, our church is extending Christ’s peace throughout our communities, our regions and our world. 

On World Communion Sunday, we celebrate that Christ’s peace extends throughout all Creation. We celebrate that we are all connected at the table, in God’s house. We celebrate that we are offered what we need to continue the work of building the household of God with active peacemakers here at home and around the world. 

God’s peace, empowered by God’s joy, reminds us that we are connected to each other. We are not alone. You are not alone. Peace begins with each of us. Thanks be to God.

William McConnell, Interim Director, Special Offerings

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff

John Glenn, Network Operations Manager, Information Technology, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)
Thomas Goetz, Mission co-worker  serving in Japan, World Mission, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray

O God, you are our peace. As you have gathered us to feast at your table, lead us into this world you love so much with the joy that only you can give. Amen.

Minute for Mission: Peace & Global Witness Offering/World Communion Sunday

October 3, 2021

Study Seminar participants help prepare sandwiches for an open table lunch after worship with The Border Church. (Kristi Van Nostran)

“May the God of Peace … grant you peace at all times in all ways.”

It was a daring prayer, all things considered, to ask the Thessalonians to pray — and it is also a daring one for us, I imagine. The second letter to the Thessalonians arrived at a time of turmoil, strife and confusion. The Christian community was experiencing persecutions so severe that some believed the time of judgment had come, while others took advantage of their doubt, spreading misinformation and sowing dissent. The letter ends with a benedictory prayer: for God’s peace to be granted at all times in all ways. It might have been daring enough to consider asking them to imagine peace at “any time,” much less at “all times,” or to imagine peace in some sort of way at all, much less in all of them. Have you ever felt so far from God’s peace that you couldn’t even imagine it?

Peace is so often a daring prayer and so often provoked in the imagination first. Artistic expression and movements for justice and peace often dance together. In turmoil, strife and confusion, visual artists and theatrical performances can point us to God’s peace-creating presence in our midst. We can listen for God’s voice in lamenting or angry poems, and in songs of freedom from those most vulnerable to violence and oppression. And the Church can dance with all whom God loves.

Artistic expression can light up our imaginations and lift our spirits. A church choir is a shining example of this, as I am sure you will agree. Art may help imagine peace, as it has in Lebanon where effects of war have been a daily reality for far too long; or at the southern U.S. border, where Presbyterians are imagining a season of peace with those who flee from violence; or it might join in songs of hope and inner peace with those considering taking their own lives. The Church joins with those imagining a new world, so we can create it, together.

The Peace & Global Witness Offering helps us imagine and create in each of our individual expressions, and together as a whole Church, a witness to the God of Peace. The Offering helps us work with our denominational partners so that our witness to peace is extended, and we help fulfill the daring prayer in 2nd Thessalonians: that the God of Peace is known “at all times in all ways.”

There is so much peace we are only beginning to imagine, and so we pray hard, with our minds, our gifts, with our Church and all those who inspire a sense of God’s peace.

On this World Communion Sunday, let’s celebrate our oneness in Christ with our siblings.

For when we all do a little, it adds up to a lot.

Bryce Wiebe, Director of Special Offerings and Presbyterian Giving Catalog

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Thomas Abraham, Finance & Accounting Technical Project Manager, Administrative Services Group (A Corp) 
Bob Abrams, Volunteer, Presbyterian Men

Let us pray

O God of Peace at all times in all ways, grant us your peace and help us to imagine a world where your justice and peace are ever known. Amen.