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PC(USA) churches challenged to meet educational needs, choose curricula

In a world of suicide bombings, text messaging and living wills, Christian education is complicated stuff.

The kindergarteners and some of the adults need to learn the basics. In many Presbyterian congregations, new member classes are full of former Baptists and Catholics and Methodists and people who haven't gone to any church in many, many years.

Many congregations want a Sunday school curriculum that's straightforward and easy to use. They have to choose between material produced by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and what's available from other sources -- on the Internet and in catalogs and Christian bookstores. Some have trained Christian educators; others rely on volunteers and a gut instinct for what will work.

New Wineskins meeting June 15-18 faces questions, plans for future of PC(USA) in existing “disunity”

It's almost like standing in a nursery looking at a plant that's getting ready to bud. You have some idea what it might look like, but you're not exactly sure what color it will be, how big it will get, whether it will thrive or struggle when it's planted in the soil.

From June 15-18, a meeting will be held in Minneapolis of a group called New Wineskins, which is looking for ways to transform the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) These evangelical Christians are ready and willing to think outside the box -- they want a new way of being Presbyterian and figure it will take lots of change to get there.

Thompson inaugurated at Louisville Seminary

LOUISVILLE -- Dean K. Thompson, a longtime pastor, was inaugurated and installed as the eighth president of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary on April 23 and stressed, in his inaugural address, the importance of finding one's vocation in a particular context.

Migrant situation: The border crosses us

ALTAR, MEXICO -- This is a place where simple truths -- that migrants should not have to die in the desert in search of a way to feed their families -- and all the complicated nuances of international trade and immigration policy get woven up together.

Talk about immigration policy, and before long you're talking about terrorism and globalization and job supply-and-demand and lawbreaking and justice, and so much more.

Father Daniel Groody, a priest who's director of the Center for Latino Spirituality at Notre Dame University and has spent time along the U.S.- Mexican border interviewing migrants and Border Patrol officers and vigilantes and humanitarian groups, says each group contributes something worth listening to, that this is complicated stuff. But the bits and pieces also begin to add up to understanding -- and a determination, on the part of some Presbyterians, that some things need to change.

New Wilmington to celebrate centennial at July meeting; missionaries to be commissioned

It's about Jesus Christ making a difference in the world. It's about turning young people on to what mission is really all about--in their schools, downtown or overseas. It's about helping the Church move out into the world.

The New Wilmington Missionary Conference brings more than 1,500 participants and visitors together every year for just these reasons. Attendees spend a week on the campus of Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pa. to be challenged about mission needs here and around the world. The experience includes listening to speakers, sharing in small groups, praying late at night in the dorm halls, playing sports, meeting new friends, and eating breakfast with missionaries from Mozambique or Manhattan or Malaysia.

Joining Hearts and Hands missions Initiative reports progress to GAC

In the beginning, the concept was this: approach potential big donors, people whose pockets run very deep indeed, and convince them to give money to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) to support international mission work and church growth in the U.S. If there's anything Presbyterians can rally around, the thinking went, it would be that.

Models for new structure for GAC considered

There's a lot of talk at the General Assembly Council these days about new ways of thinking, new directions -- creative ways of rearranging the furniture, maybe even remodeling the house. And one of the things the council is being asked to consider rearranging is itself.

In April 2006, the council will be asked to approve a new structure for the council itself. If that happens, the plan would be submitted to the General Assembly in Birmingham in June 2006 for final approval.

New chapter for PHS Montreat facility

After months of discussion and hard work -- and a lot more passion than some might expect history to incite -- an agreement apparently has been struck to allow the Presbyterian Historical Society to continue to have a presence in Montreat, N.C.

Under a concept approved March 29 by the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly, the historical society's Philadelphia offices would serve as the main repository for archives of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

New procedures considered for stated clerk elections

Last summer's stated clerk election at the 2004 General Assembly was fair and in compliance with the assembly's Standing Rules. But such elections could be even more transparent if new guidelines were to be implemented.

Those findings were presented and discussed during a meeting of the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly (COGA) March 30 in Louisville. A COGA subcommittee, the State Clerk Election Review Committee (SCERC), reported its preliminary findings March 30. The finding that the stated clerk election was valid was approved by COGA to be forwarded to the General Assembly Council (GAC), which also is meeting in Kentucky through April 2.

Marion Harland: A “Martha” before “Stewart” (1830-1923)

Very few women and even fewer men still remember Mary Virginia Hawes Terhune, alias "Marion Harland." She was, however, a Virginian Presbyterian woman who, as a very young woman, helped shape the lives of American women, indeed, women of the world, long before Martha Stewart of recent notoriety. She did this as a storyteller and especially with her household advice, which she shared with other women around the globe. She was a biblical "Martha" as well as a "Mary."

Mary Virginia was born 175 years ago in Amelia County, Va., daughter of Samuel Hawes, a migrant to the South from Massachusetts, and Judith Anna Smith, daughter of well-to-do-planters. She received a first rate classical education from tutors, and at a Presbyterian girls seminary in Richmond where the Hawes family attended the Second Presbyterian Church and listened to the preaching of the noted Moses Drury Hoge. Precocious from the beginning, she began to write and publish stories for a denominational journal. At the age of twenty-four she published a novel entitled Alone under the pseudonym, "Marion Harland," by which she became known and we shall employ here.