In mid-January, the Synod’s highly energized Committee on Representation met to review fourteen Robert Washington Scholar applications and to select the first Scholars. This was an extremely competitive process. Getting to three Scholars was not easy. The Scholars program will cultivate executive leadership training by providing resources for robust discernment regarding the Scholar’s vocation, call and...
We also investigated the important role that our own complicity in systems of oppression present, and the need for majority-white communities in mainline congregations to engage in significant pre-discernment and power analysis before beginning Sanctuary in all its forms. Communities who are directly affected by policing, anti-immigrant, religious and racial bias need to be given primary...
Turns out, God is doing a new thing. Of course, Isaiah, one of our favorite Advent voices, told us to look and see the new thing God is doing, but I never dreamed I would find myself in the middle of one of those new things. Would you join me in doing the new thing that...
I was inspired by the intelligence, experience, knowledge and spiritual insight of our Presbyterian Women leadership. The meeting improved my understanding, affirmed my worth and purpose, focused my attention on mission and service objectives, and provided opportunities for all to share their challenges and accomplishments.
Our emotions fill a wide range, from weeping and deep grief to strident anger. We continue to search for meaningful ways to respond to what we know to be a deep and devastating dysfunction throughout our nation and within our local communities. Calls come looking for ways to mobilize the witness of our regional Presbyterian community...
Since the beginning of the YAV program, there have been 10 YAVs who have built partnerships in Boston. The YAVs have gone on to live their faith in a variety of ways, from attending seminary to working for Americorps, to being a children's advocate at the Virginia Poverty Law Center, to enrolling in nursing school, to working...
After using the April Synod Mission and Ministries meeting for a retreat in which we reflected upon the synod’s foundational text Isaiah 43:19, the Commission went back to business the last weekend in June. We began with the unveiling of our new synod video, which in many ways is an expression of the Isaiah text. If you haven’t had...
For a first discussion and vote at General Assembly our overtures did very well. The overture proposing to amend the Book of Order so that Sessions can ordain Ruling Elders for service beyond their congregation such as in a presbytery or a synod received much discussion both in committee and on the GA floor. This overture which...
1) And now, the number-one thing this Assembly did was to complete the process of adding the Belhar Confession as the twelfth confessional document contained in the Book of Confessions. While this was pretty much a foregone conclusion — since more than three-fourths of the presbyteries have already given their required assent — still, it is...
A message from Thia Reggio, our Synod Moderator: Suddenly, there is death in the midst of life. Again. There is pain, shock, grief, too much familiarity, and too little hope of change. Then come the labels, the meaning making, attempts to understand, but more than that, attempts to create distance between ourselves and the shooters, between...