TEMPE, Ariz. -- The General Assembly Council has affirmed and commended for churchwide use a paper, "Hope in the Lord Jesus Christ," written in answer to a request by the 213th General Assembly.
TEMPE, Ariz. - Members of the General Assembly Council are getting the word that Mary Holmes College, a two-year, historically African American school in Mississippi, is in big trouble and the problem is lack of money.
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is testing the waters to see what kind of support there might be for embarking on a proposed $39.5 million fundraising campaign to pay for the denomination's mission work internationally and also new church development and redevelopment in the U.S.
TEMPE, Ariz. -- The Congregational Ministries Division Committee is recommending that the PC(USA) discontinue further development of the third year of the church's Covenant People curriculum.
TEMPE, Ariz. --The uncertainty facing the world in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon was reflected in the opening of the General Assembly Council's Executive Committee meeting here Wednesday morning.
With students less willing to pick up and move across the country in order to attend seminary, and with technology blasting innovation into everyday life, schools of theological education are learning some new digital tricks. And they are struggling with the question of how the human aspects of theological education
Presbyterian News Service
Robert McAfee Brown, 81, celebrated Presbyterian writer and educator, died on Sept. 4, in a nursing home near his summer house in Heath, Mass. Brown, whose health had deteriorated in recent years, suffered a broken hip in a fall about a month ago.
MONTREAT, N.C. -- Mary Elva Smith, the new director of the Women's Ministries Program Area of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), said here recently that she'd like to see the denomination push for another global women's conference that she said will restore the validity of feminist theology in the church.
The magazine Monday Morning -- which for 66 years provided a place for Presbyterian pastors to shout out on matters in the church and the world -- is ceasing publication at the end of this year, for financial reasons.
Updated 3 p.m. EDT Aug. 16 to include additional information.
A curriculum produced "by Presbyterians for Presbyterians" is continuing to have financial problems -- in part because so few congregations in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) are using it -- so the denomination has decided to suspend development of the next phase of the curriculum to try to contain the losses.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- This is high-voltage worship many young people love: the kind where you clap your hands and stomp your feet, shouting over and over, "God will, God will, rock you!"
And this is what they expect when they go back home.
As July comes to a close, some of those who believe the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) made a big mistake in June, when the 213th General Assembly voted to recommend lifting a ban on ordaining those who are not married and not celibate, will gather in Denver to strategize about the future.
A few weeks ago, with the 213th General Assembly of the PC(USA) fast approaching, Bill Hawley knew what he had to do. He didn't think he'd survive the agony of another Assembly fractured over the question of ordaining gays and lesbians. His blood pressure was sky-high.
It would cost him his job, but it was time to come out of the closet.
MONTREAT, N.C. -- Rhashell Hunter stepped to the podium for the Thursday night communion service. Then she stepped out of it right to the center of the Anderson Auditorium stage, preaching away, with slides popping up on a screen behind her, a deliberately off-key duet with the pianist and interplay with a planted trio in the audience.
The Library of Congress and Montpelier, Va., are holding 250th birthday celebrations this year for James Madison, fourth President of the United States. Although not as well-known as more deistic celebrities Washington and Jefferson, the Virginian deserves attention as the chief architect of the Constitution and Bill of Rights of the new United States of America. 
Readers ought to take note of this occasion because of Madison's Presbyterian connections as pointed out in G. W. Sheldon's recent brief but suggestive book, The Political Philosophy of James Madison (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins, 2001).
Although short physically, Madison stood tall intellectually with a lifelong appetite for knowledge and wisdom. He was nurtured by his Anglican family and Presbyterian ministers Donald Robertson and John Witherspoon, Scottish Presbyterian transplants to the New World.
In 1763 at the age of 12, Madison began five years of study at Robertson's Virginia boarding school. His teacher introduced him to languages, the Bible, with a Calvinist twist probably from the Westminster Confession, Greek and Roman historians and philosophers, and more contemporary greats such as Locke and Montesquieu.
Congregations angered by the 213th General Assembly's controversial recommendation to lift a ban on gay and lesbian ordination are expected to protest with their pocketbooks in the coming months, withholding contributions to the Presbyterian Church's per capita budget.
When Faith church in Medford, N.J., decided to start a new church in Romania, its members prayed hard and went to work. They didn't ask the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) for money or permission. They used their own contacts to track down a South Korean missionary working in Romania, a Presbyterian who helped them find a pastor for a new church in Timisoara, Romania's second-largest city.
John Sonnenday says he hit a "turning point" in his spiritual life when he figured out that just because he had a blank spot on his calendar, he wasn't obligated to fill it.
Sonnenday, a pastor from McLean, Va., said he gradually began to realize that unless he made more time for God and for rest -- unless he said "no" to some of what other people wanted him to do -- he could not do his best at doing God's work.
The season is upon us when all our hopes are trained on the inexhaustibility of a particular event in time and space, the coming of Jesus Christ. It is a season in which we remember that the gospel is received in the mode of anticipating and awaiting a promise.
I have on my desk a map of the United States that shows how every county voted in this year's presidential election. Counties in red voted for Bush, counties in blue for Gore. The red and blue appear in different gradations of color, so that according to the intensity of the color one can tell by what margin the favored candidate won.
When seen through human eyes, truth comes divergently. On three separate days, just a couple of weeks before the presidential election, I happened to have back-to-back conversations with three friends of impeccable sincerity and insight.
Editor’s note: This is the latest in a series of stories on congregations committed to “Grow Christ’s Church Deep and Wide.”
The General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission -- in sidestepping the question of exactly how deeply a session should be required to probe into the private life of a gay elder who has acknowledged being in a committed, life-long relationship but has declined to say whether he is sexually active -- has put the question off but has not put it to rest.
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