LOUISVILLE – Once a year, moderators and moderators-elect of the presbyteries and synods of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) come together for a weekend of training, worship, and connecting with the denomination’s national staff. Through the course of the Moderators’ Conference, being held in Louisville Nov. 21-23, these 120 Presbyterians will learn the nuts-and-bolts of parliamentary procedure and get a sense of the big picture from J. Herbert Nelson, stated clerk of the PC(USA), and Diane Moffett, president and executive director of the Presbyterian Mission Agency. After dinner at the Moderator’s Conference Nov. 22, these church leaders had time to ask a few questions of the co-moderators of the 2018 General Assembly, Vilmarie Cintrón-Olivieri and Cindy Kohlmann – the answers to which might offer guidance to people who may be sensing a call to stand for moderator at the next General Assembly, which will commence in Baltimore in June 2020. Cintrón-Olivieri and Kohlmann … [Read more...]

So many people are just one car accident, one slip on the ice, one complicated pregnancy, one bad diagnosis away from a tsunami of medical debt. So many people live paycheck to paycheck, with rent due and student loans to pay back and a balance on their credit cards so big it hurts to look at it. They’re barely making everyday life work financially, much less able to pay for a trip to the hospital. What if churches could do something about that – by using their resources to pay off a chunk of their community’s unpaid medical debt? Or what about individual Presbyterians, or a group of family or friends? Here’s a story about two women from New York state, a retired chemist and a psychoanalyst, who raised $12,500 to erase medical debt for people in their region. Marci Glass, pastor of Southminster Presbyterian Church in Boise, Idaho, understands something about people with huge medical bills and no ability to pay them. She knows a young man from the church she serves who has … [Read more...]