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The Giving Spoon: Caring for those facing food insecurity one meal at a time

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BRYSON CITY, North Carolina – This winter’s night, there was a bit of good news. After being homeless for six months, Christy and Jason had finally found a place to live, a trailer to rent halfway up a North Carolina hill – hard to come by in a market in which affordable rental housing is scarce and goes fast. For the first time in a long time, the couple could sleep with a roof over their heads. There was bad news too. “It’s rough,” Christy said, shaking her head. “Really rough.” Describe rough. “It’s got rats in there – big as possums,” she said. The toilet worked, but the bathroom was “disgusting,” she said – with mold on the walls, dirt, a potent stench. The kitchen lacked a stove. As Christy worked to clean up the place, her foot sank through a rotten spot in the floor and she fell onto her back, staring up at “holes in the ceiling you can see right out,” at broken windows, stuck in the floor up to her knee. She lay sprawled there for a minute, thinking of the $400 … [Read more...]

Tagged With: food insecurity

A snapshot of food insecurity

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BRYSON CITY, North Carolina – What does food insecurity look like? First, it’s often invisible, unless you’re paying attention. When you have enough, it’s easy not to notice when other people are hungry. Also it’s pervasive, reaching every part of the country. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that food insecurity affected more than 37 million Americans in 2018 – more than 11% of all Americans, or about 1 in 9. The USDA defines food insecurity in this way: lacking consistent access to enough food for a healthy, active life. In other words, food-insecure people don’t have enough money on a regular basis to afford the food their families need. Food insecurity is tied to economics, to inequality and to systemic public policy issues such as a lack of affordable housing, high medical costs, the adequacy of funding for addiction recovery and mental health care, low wages. The Presbyterian Outlook is writing about food insecurity because Presbyterians and other people … [Read more...]

Tagged With: food insecurity

What’s there and what’s not: Moving Forward Implementation Commission approves recommendations to General Assembly

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The Moving Forward Implementation Commission has approved the recommendations it will send to the 2020 General Assembly – work the commission hopes will lead to greater collaboration at the top levels of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and that calls for a unified budget without structural realignment. The 2018 General Assembly created the 12-person commission when it adopted the recommendations of the Way Forward Commission, giving the new commission the authority to take “any and all administrative actions as necessary” to implement the Way Forward Commission recommendations. The Moving Forward commission approved nine recommendations during conference calls Feb. 18 and 20. The commission has another call scheduled for Feb. 21 – the deadline day for submitting the report – to tweak the final language, but has already voted to approve the nine recommendations. Here’s more on those decisions. Recommendation: Mission Engagement and Support. The commission is recommending … [Read more...]

Tagged With: GA224 • Moving Forward Implementation Commission

Per capita and funding committee will send five recommendations to General Assembly, including one calling for denominational restructuring

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The Special Committee on Per Capita Based Funding and National Church Financial Sustainability has voted to send five recommendations to the 2020 General Assembly. For roughly the past 10 months, the committee has been holding consultations with presbytery and synod leaders, digging through financial records of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and talking to denominational leaders – hoping to get a sense of the PC(USA)’s fiscal future and scrutinizing the wisdom of a per-person based funding system in an era of declining membership. Here’s what the committee voted Feb. 19 to recommend (with some minor wording changes still possible before the final report is submitted by the Feb. 21 deadline).  The recommendations Recommendation: Engagement campaigns. The committee recommends that the 2020 General Assembly instruct the Presbyterian Mission Agency (PMA), in coordination with other agencies and mid councils, to “establish on-going campaigns to resource and equip mid-council … [Read more...]

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2020 Vision Team drafts recommendations to GA

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The 2020 Vision Team has agreed on draft language for four recommendations to the 2020 General Assembly in Baltimore. That means some revisions are possible by the Feb. 21 deadline – but this is likely to be close to what the final recommendation will say. One of those recommendations asks the assembly to approve a guiding statement for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) for use by the church “until a time in which the church deems it prudent to form a new guiding statement.” That guiding statement says that God calls the denomination to be “prayerful, courageous united, serving, and alive” – with those words spelling out the acronym PC(USA). A second recommendation asks the assembly to commend the guiding statement and additional resources to PC(USA) agencies, seminaries, mid councils and congregations for study, conversation, spiritual growth and formation. And it asks the assembly to mandate that the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation develop curriculum with a focus on the … [Read more...]

Tagged With: 2020 Vision Team • GA224

Equity and inclusion: PMA Board considers issues of migration and Native American properties

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BALTIMORE – Equity and inclusion: How well is the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) doing? That question was like a bright thread running through the discussions as the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board met Feb. 12-14 in Baltimore. Some of it came directly, in presentations on assessments underway. And sometimes it surfaced in questions about how the PC(USA) deals with issues involving immigrants and people of color. Migration. Board member Michelle Hwang outlined recommendations that the Racial Equity Advocacy Committee(REAC) will be bringing to the General Assembly in June – saying the theme of REAC’s efforts this year will be migration, forced or voluntary. REAC held its meeting in January in El Paso, and also traveled across the border to Ciudad Juarez to meet with asylum seekers who are being forced by the policy of the Trump administration to wait in Mexico as their asylum claims proceed. Those conversations were powerful, Hwang said – and REAC wants to work to strengthen … [Read more...]

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