Mission Yearbook: Presbyterians join with Church World Service partners to fight hunger

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has endorsed a statement from Church World Service — and 16 CWS partners — calling for a renewed effort to fight hunger.

The ecumenical statement, which has more than 60 organizational signatories and more than 800 individual signatories, is a display of faith and an answer to the call in Mark 12:31 to “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

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Contributed photo

“As people of faith, our vision is a world where everyone has access to enough nutritious food to thrive,” the statement reads. “We believe that, by standing shoulder to shoulder, our vision can become reality, around the corner and around the world.”

The statement refers to hunger as “an affront to justice” and notes that hunger is surging despite an abundance of food in the United States and other parts of the world.

Hunger is sometimes fueled by conflict, such as the Israel-Hamas war that has led to famine in Gaza, and systematic issues, such as racism, as well as economic policy decisions that undermine people struggling to make ends meet.

The ecumenical statement notes that hunger robs health and opportunity from millions of people, especially those without access to clean water and safe sanitation, and disproportionately affects vulnerable populations, such as people who are homeless, those who are immigrants or refugees, and those affected by disasters.

“By bringing together our skills, experience and passion to this vital shared mission,” the statement notes, “we can heed God’s call ‘to loose the bonds of injustice … to let the oppressed go free, to break every yoke and to share your bread with the hungry.’” (Isaiah 58:6-7)

The help of individuals and churches will be particularly important in the coming months as people begin feeling the effects of federal policy decisions that could make life tougher for people in need of food assistance.

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The Rev. Rebecca Barnes

In 2025, “major federal policies passed will drastically cut federal funds being provided to state food assistance programs, children’s feeding programs, and small local and family farmers,” Barnes said. “Most experts expect hunger to surge greatly as a result of these policy changes. Churches and charities cannot address the overwhelming need, regardless of the immense generosity and donations of well-meaning individuals. We need structural, systemic and policy change in our food and farm systems in order to ensure root causes of hunger are addressed in our communities.”

That makes advocacy all the more important. “We aren’t sure yet if there will be a ‘skinny’ Farm Bill (since so much of the food aid was already cut in earlier legislation) or an extension of the current Farm Bill,” Barnes said. However, “people of faith can lift up our voices to continue to demand that we reverse some of the worst impacts of cuts to USAID, SNAP, and other food and farm policies.”

Rick Santos, president and chief executive officer of Church World Service, said addressing hunger is critical not just for the people of today but also the future.

“Ultimately, hunger justice efforts cannot only aim to fix the social safety nets of today but must seek to safeguard those of tomorrow,” Santos said in a news release. “This generation needs to be the last to know the pain, suffering and indignity of watching their children fall prey to hunger in a world where food is abundant.”

To read the ecumenical statement on hunger or for more information, go here.

Darla Carter, Communications Strategist, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Nora Baez, lead reservation specialist, Stony Point Center, Interim Unified Agency
Amber Baker, Donor Advised Fund Specialist, Operations, Presbyterian Foundation

Let us pray:

Generous God, as you have given so freely to us, we give you thanks that as possible, we are able to freely give to others. May your Spirit sustain the many helping hands, and may your blessings abound for those being served. Through Christ we pray. Amen.

2025 Path of Peace reflections - Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025

The Harrisburg Seven

Psalm 7:6–11

During the Vietnam War, as bombs fell abroad and unrest simmered at home, a group of religious activists took a stand against what they saw as a moral and spiritual catastrophe. Among them were the Revs. Neil McLaughlin and Joseph Wenderoth, two Presbyterian pastors who joined priests, nuns, and peace advocates to challenge the systems that sustained war and injustice. Together, they became known as the Harrisburg Seven, indicted in 1971 under false charges of conspiracy, including a fabricated plot to kidnap Henry Kissinger and blow up the U.S. Capitol.

Their real offense? Bold and nonviolent protest: pouring blood on draft files, burning records and speaking out as people of conscience. For these activists, their faith was not separate from their resistance. It was at the very root of it. Like the psalmist, they trusted in God as the righteous judge, crying out not in hatred, but in a deep yearning for justice and peace.

Psalm 7 is the prayer of someone unjustly accused, crying to God for help, for the wickedness of the violent to be stopped and for the righteous to be upheld. The Harrisburg defendants placed their hope not in acquittal alone, but in a higher moral order born out of reverence.

Ultimately, they were found not guilty of the fabricated conspiracy. But their true vindication was deeper: a public testimony that peace rooted in faith has the power to confront empires. Their legacy reminds us that God’s judgment is not about wrath but about righteousness. Conscience matters, and sometimes to follow Christ is to disturb the peace of the world for the peace of God.

Prayer:

Come, Holy Spirit, into our tattered hearts and minds. Fill us with your divine imagination, strength and hope, as we shoulder the burdens of our struggling world. Amen.

Optional resource: time.com/archive/6639341/trials-battle-in-harrisburg

Alex Pickell is a candidate for ordination in the PC(USA). Born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, Alex received her B.A. in History and French from the University of Arkansas before attending Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, where she graduated with a Master of Divinity degree in 2024. This summer, Alex is serving as a Peacemaking Fellow in the Office of Public Witness.

2025 Path of Peace reflections - Monday, Sept. 29, 2025

Hunger

Matthew 6:25–26

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?

As Jesus speaks, he places in the hearts and minds of those listening an alternative vision of life that trusts that God is actively involved in all things, as seen in the birds of the air. Sometimes we claim that we are God’s hands and feet in this world — which we are in many ways. Ultimately, though, God is actively summoning us to clasp hands in community with those known and unknown, visible to us and invisible, to join God in God’s unfolding plan for Creation.

For several years I served as an associate pastor at Palms Presbyterian Church in Jacksonville Beach, Florida. During my time there, we had the opportunity to partner with a group of churches in Cité Soleil and Port-au-Prince, Haiti. As our relationship grew, we were very aware of the food shortage evident in so many Haitian communities. When World Communion Sunday approached, our leadership began considering how we might extend Christ’s Table to our sisters and brothers in those churches. The Palms congregation invited other churches in the Beaches area to join in making food packets to be shipped to Haiti. The nearby Episcopal church and the synagogue joined in. Thousands of packets were made and shipped, beginning a many-year tradition of Extending the Table.

War, natural disasters and the climate crisis have brought incredible worldwide need for nourishing food. May we join others on the path of extending God’s generous table set before us to those who hunger and thirst.

Prayer:

Gracious and loving God, through Christ, you set a table before us that reminds us that you are present in and among all Creation. Guide us and lead us to extend your generosity in nourishing ways to those who hunger to be seen, heard, restored, and fed by the nourishing of their bodies and souls. Amen.

The Rev. Dr. Carol DiGiusto is honorably retired and living in Jacksonville, Florida, following pastoral calls to several churches in the Presbytery of St. Augustine.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - What we share with the hungry

We might ask, ‘What is separating us from those who have the need to begin with?’

September 28, 2021

“Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul and no one said that any of the things that belonged to [them] was [their] own, but they had everything in common.” (Acts 4:32, English Standard Version)

Bryce Wiebe, director of Special Offerings and the Presbyterian Giving Catalog, makes bread dough while preaching an online sermon for the Synod of the Covenant. (Screenshot)

Sharing food is one of my great joys. I know, I know … that isn’t altogether unique, and definitely not unique for Presbyterians I know. We gather around tables for myriad reasons, and in lots of different ways. But the act of sharing food can remind us of other things we share: namely a need for food — hunger — and the interdependence it takes to make a meal possible. I think it is true that we never eat alone. Not really. Even if we sit at the table by ourselves, we are eating with each and every person who finds a part to play in this interconnected food system that helps bring food to table.

Soon after the shutdown orders began in March 2020, some of us came to a new, or refreshed, awareness of the fact that many people in that intricate system have limited resources for keeping their tables filled. There’s beauty in the truth that “we never truly eat alone,” but it is tragic when we see so many of those with whom we “eat” — essential farm, transportation, restaurant or grocery workers — barely have enough themselves, if they’re able to eat at all.

Christians are called (and often do) give generously to meet human need. The sentence above from Acts 4 keeps working on me, though. Seeing and meeting the need are essential actions in the story, but this sentence pushes my reflection further.

What I see in this breath of Acts 4 (and it’s only a breath) is a practice of unity’s truth in the face of a separation lie. Seeing the need, they give to meet it, but also embrace a more challenging suggestion: We cannot eat alone, and no one will hunger alone, either. “Ownership,” in the story, was surrendered as a sign and symbol of disunity, of a world where some eat on their own and some do not eat at all. The next story, where believers decide to hold back a portion and are dishonest about it, would teach us not to be dishonest in our speech, but also to reject the lie that affluence, ownership, and control can sustain us, when all they do is sort, stratify and separate, with death-dealing results for ourselves and for others.

The next time we recognize a need in someone else, we would do well to give to meet it. We might do better if we ask what is separating us from those who have need to begin with.

Questions on which to reflect:

In what ways to I separate myself from my neighbor-in-need?

In what ways do I embrace the lies that affluence, ownership and control can save me?

In what ways do I fail to face the needs of another because I wish to hide from that need within myself?

The work of the Presbyterian Hunger Program is possible thanks to your gifts to One Great Hour of Sharing.

This piece was originally published on “Where Your Heart Is…A Weekly Offerings Stewardship Blog.”

 Bryce Wiebe is director of Special Offerings and the Presbyterian Giving Catalog. This reflection comes from a sermon Wiebe recorded for the Synod of the Covenant. Click here to watch the sermon.

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff

Angela Wyatt, 1001 Apprentice, 1001 New Worshiping Communities, Presbyterian Mission Agency
Yun Kyoung Yang, Editorial Assistant, Korean, Presbyterian Publishing Corporation

Let us pray

Holy Lord, may our words, our work and our hearts welcome all your children into the broad and beautiful kingdom of God. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - All ages fight hunger at First Presbyterian Church in Winchester, Virginia

On a recent Saturday, congregants packed 28,000 meals in two hours

May 26, 2020

Dr. Terry Sinclair and his wife, Diane Sinclair, package meals together at the First Presbyterian Church in Winchester, Va. They have been members of the church for almost 46 years. (Photo by Jeff Taylor)

Packaging thousands of meals to feed the hungry goes a lot faster when music is playing.

As feel-good hits from Creedence Clearwater Revival, Neil Diamond and Michael Jackson played from a loudspeaker in a corner of the Fellowship Hall, volunteers at First Presbyterian Church in Winchester, Virginia, packed more than 28,000 bags of rice, soy protein and dried vegetables in about two hours on a recent Saturday afternoon.

It was the second time First Presbyterian had participated in Rise Against Hunger, an international relief organization with the mission of eliminating hunger by 2030.

“First Presbyterian Church is a hunger action congregation,” said Rev. Dr. Dan McCoig, pastor of First Presbyterian. “We take seriously Jesus’ teaching to feed the hungry. Rise Against Hunger is one of our many hunger action ministries. It’s an opportunity for members of the congregation to learn more about hunger in the world and to do something concrete about it, such as making and packing meal packets for shipment to food insecure regions of our world. We get a sense of following Jesus and serving our neighbor.”

As the music played, teens and able adults stood shoulder to shoulder to fill bags with uncooked food. Other volunteers, some in wheelchairs or hooked up to oxygen tanks, handled sedentary tasks such as sealing or weighing each bag. Children, barely tall enough to see over the tables, carried large buckets filled with food from one station to another.

“I think it’s a good project for us because it brings together different generations,” said Rev. Amanda Maguire Thomas, the church’s associate pastor, as she looked at the dozens of volunteers. “The last time we did it, the youngest was 4 and the oldest was 84. We really feel it’s good for all ages and all ability levels.”

First Presbyterian, with about 840 members on the books, is located on a pedestrian mall in Winchester, a small city 75 miles west of Washington, D.C. With its prime downtown location, the church regularly hosts outreach programs, including a Thanksgiving dinner that feeds thousands and Jubilee Kitchen, which has provided a hot lunch every Saturday to community members in need for 25 years.

But the church’s mission statement calls for it to serve “Winchester and beyond,” Thomas said. Rise Against Hunger, established by a Methodist minister in 1998, helps with the “beyond.” The packaged meals are sent to places that need emergency relief during droughts, floods or political unrest. Meals are also delivered to impoverished communities that require a steady safety net of food.

Rise Against Hunger supplies the food and equipment. The church was responsible for paying for the shipping costs. “It’s really a credit to this church and this congregation with their faith and ministry. We’re not a budgeted item. It’s all donations,” said ruling elder Patrick Pearson. “The church is really big into hunger relief.”

First Presbyterian’s first Rise Against Hunger event was in June 2019 during a fifth Sunday when the church typically rolls its three services into one, often making time to complete a service project. More than 200 people showed to help that first time, and none had been assigned to a station. The line was out the door. Plus, all the packaging was completed during the regularly scheduled worship service. “I preached a sermon and then we packed the meals,” Thomas said. “This time, we said, ‘Let’s just have a dedicated time to do this.’”

Despite the slow start, the volunteers managed to get more than 14,000 meals — or one pallet of boxes — packed in one hour the first session. “I thought we should be able to do two pallets this time no problem,” said Pearson, adding that he hopes to make Rise Against Hunger a yearly event.

First Presbyterian will find out in a couple of months exactly where its packaged meals are going. Whether the meals stay close by or are shipped thousands of miles doesn’t matter to 71-year-old Jan Smith, who has attended First Presbyterian her entire life. The reason for helping doesn’t change with geography, she said.

“We do it because Christ tells us to,” Smith said. “That’s what it boils down to — this is what Christ tells us to do.”

Robyn Taylor, Reporter and Writer, The Winchester Star, Winchester, Virginia, written for the Presbyterian Foundation

Let us join in prayer for: 

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Dave Dinkel, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)
Carla Dobson, Presbyterian Foundation

Let us pray:

Most powerful Creator and gracious God, be our guide. Inspire us to build unity and trust among your people. Teach us to live as you would have us live. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.