LOUISVILLE – Heres’s some of what the General Assembly Mission Council of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) wants to be known for:
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The General Assembly Mission Council of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is considering changing its name – something it needs to do to comply with the denomination’s new Form of Government, which reserves the use of the word “council” for actual governing bodies.
LOUISVILLE – The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) continues to feel the international rumblings from its controversial decision earlier this year to allow the ordination of sexually-active gays and lesbians.
The Presbytery of San Francisco did not commit any doctrinal errors when it voted to allow the ordination of Lisa Larges, and it does not need to conduct another examination of her, the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Synod of the Pacific has ruled.
Berlin (ENI) Pope Benedict XVI, on his first state visit to his native country, arrives in Berlin on Sept. 22 in what many see as a unique opportunity for increased understanding between Catholic and Protestant churches.
Nairobi, Kenya (ENI) As a new international initiative seeks to stop child marriages, church-based centers in southern Kenya are an example of faith organizations providing a haven for girls and educating communities about the issue.
LOUISVILLE – A special committee is poised to recommend restructuring General Assembly meetings in ways intended to allow the assembly to blend worship more fully into its work and to focus more energy on fewer items of business.
The old wisdom: The more educated you are, the less likely you will be religious. But a new study says that, rather than driving people away from God, education gives them a more liberal attitude about who’s going to heaven.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (General Assembly Mission Council) The Rev. Mienda Uriarte will begin duties this month as coordinator of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s mission work in Asia and the Pacific.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (Office of the General Assembly) Picture it: A candidate for ordination as a teaching elder (minister of the Word and Sacrament) taking all of the standard ordination exams online on a flexible schedule and receiving the results in a matter of days.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (PNS) The Association of Presbyterians for Cross-Cultural Mission (APCCM) ― founded in 1984 to give Presbyterian mission workers a larger voice in post-reunion conversations about global mission in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) ― has ceased operations, effective Sept. 1.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (PNS) The new Presbyterian hymnal, to be published in the fall of 2013, has a title.
LOUISVILLE (General Assembly Mission Council) In the decade since the September 11 attacks exposed fissures in America’s patchwork of religions, the number of Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregations involved in activities with other faiths has increased. One-quarter of congregations, up from 16 percent, are now involved.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (Office of the General Assembly) Last month I attended the Fellowship of Presbyterians gathering in Minneapolis. I think it’s fair to say that the organizers of the event are driven by concerns over the effect of the new ordination standard in the Book of Order – G-2.0101b – as well as by how the church in general can proclaim the gospel both effectively and with integrity in the 21st century. With nearly 2,000 in attendance, obviously the issues and concerns raised by the organizers struck a chord in many.
Warsaw, Poland (ENI) Local government officials in Hungary are handing state-owned schools over to churches, unable to afford their upkeep during the economic recession, according to church sources.
The organizers of the NEXT Church group – Presbyterians who are involved in conversations about the future of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) – have written an open letter to the church, in the wake of the Fellowship of Presbyterians recent gathering in Minneapolis on Aug. 25-26.
John Stott, an English evangelical who helped introduce the world to the global scope of the Christian movement and is considered one of the most influential evangelicals of his generation, died July 27 in Lingfield, Surrey, England.
Many small Presbyterian congregations struggle to afford trained pastoral leadership. And many gifted students graduate from seminary, excited to be serving in ministry — and are frustrated by the difficulty of finding a first call to serve a congregation.
A church in Africa may have become be the second Presbyterian denomination outside the United States to end its partnership with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in response to the U.S. church’s decision to allow the ordination of sexually active gays and lesbians.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (PNS) Presbyterians are invited to join their voices in a denominational sing-along for the next few months.
Nairobi, Kenya (ENI) As the smoke dies out at the bombed United Nations headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria, faith leaders are seeking urgent government action to end a recurrent and bloody cycle of religious violence in Africa's most populous nation.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (Office of the General Assembly) Cynthia Bolbach, moderator of the 219th General Assembly (2010), Gradye Parsons, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly, and Linda Valentine, Executive Director of the General Assembly Mission Council, have released a call to prayer for all those impacted by Hurricane Irene:
Louisville, Ky. (PNS) The Church of Christ in Thailand is hoping to recruit several hundred native English speakers to serve as volunteer teachers in its 25 schools and eight hospitals, said two leaders of the church Aug. 23.
LOUISVILLE, Ky (PNS) Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assembly Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons has condemned the Aug. 26 terrorist attack on the United Nations compound in Abuja, Nigeria, that killed or injured a number of people.
On Aug. 25-26, about 1,900 people came to Minneapolis to learn more about what the Fellowship of Presbyterians is proposing, and to help sort through their own decisions about whether to stay in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) or to leave.
Those attending included pastors and elders, as well as some presbytery and synod executives and national leaders of the denomination. While no details were released on demographic factors such as age, race, and gender, the crowd included people from all 50 states and 3 countries beyond the U.S., and appeared to be predominantly white and male. The list of speakers was somewhat more diverse.
This was a meeting primarily for discussion of ideas – not for voting on a particular course of action. Here are some of the highlights:
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