A time capsule of worship resources used by Presbyterian congregations is currently being created and will be sealed and stored for 50 years. The General Assembly approved the project in 2006, and the committee on history with the help of the national archives, is administering it.
As a young girl, Pauline Brown dreamed of going to India. Years later, while a navy nurse, she met a man with gangrene who used to be a missionary in India. She told him of her dream to travel there, and his encouragement made the pull even stronger.
The Presbytery of P.E.I. is appealing an “unprecedented” decision by the province's human rights commission to pay more than $600,000 in damages to Rev. Gael Matheson — damages for which, the commission's executive director says, members of presbytery may be “personally responsible.”
Dr. Ernie Regehr's passion for his peace-building work was shown with tears while accepting the E.H. Johnson award for being “on the cutting edge of mission.” His emotions were evident when he recounted a conversation he had with a sudanese refugee during the north-south civil war — a time when outside aid was so non-existent that the thousands of squatters had no food, not even tea. The young man asked Regehr why no one had stepped in to help. “The desolation haunts me in a more visceral and immediate way than do the scenes of the inhuman physical hardship and deprivation that are strong and present there. The reality of utter abandonment was something that E.H. Johnson knew very well — and he refused to tolerate it.”
Are there women out there who actually enjoy reading books that target Christian women living cookie-cutter lifestyles where men are hopeless and helpless, and women must tend the family and keep the home fires burning? What about books like Alice Munro's Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, where a mind is challenged, lives are deep, dynamic and multi-faceted, and not everything has a happy ending? Even for those who like their fiction “lite,” surely there are plenty of worthy novels out there to entertain.
Rev. Ron Wallace remembers Japan well from the 1970s, when there were 2,000 missionaries working in that country. He calls those the glory days for mission work in Japan. He was a missionary there from 1976-1981 (and was one of nine Canadian Presbyterians there).
As I begin to discover this country of a billion people, it doesn't take long before my mind is whirling. India is full of complexities and contradictions, of old and new, of beauty and disgust, of excess and absence. I'm travelling with three Presbyterian Church representatives: Wilma Welsh, the moderator, has been here several times before. The warm embraces and knowing smiles she receives make it seem like she is returning home. Ron Wallace, associate secretary of International Ministries, has also visited in the past, often knowing what to expect at each destination and rhyming off historical facts during long and brutally bumpy drives. And Sarah Kim, director of the Women's Missionary Society, is an India first-timer like me, hesitant as we strike out to new places, yet still enjoying what the country offers. In two weeks' time, when Sarah and I get to go home, Ron and Wilma — a moderator's work is never done! — will head to the country's north for a partner's meeting in Kashmir, where border disputes with Pakistan make the area vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
“An increased education opens doors and opportunities,” said Debbie Burns, who had no prior experience as a teacher, before going to China last summer to teach English. “It can change lives. It can make a difference. Getting an education is a big benefit in rural areas.”
Though the wider church may know little about the Eastern Han-Ca Presbytery, the presbytery's members are eager to connect to other congregations and share their […]
The way Mission is organized and delivered, who is involved, and how the national office engages participants, will undergo a massive shift, according to a document discussed at the church's national mission agency committee meeting.
“You must be the change you want to see in the world” – Mahatma Gandhi The Presbyterian Church is one of the most vibrant and […]
A Senate report released in February paints a bleak picture of Africa's economic state and chastises a Canadian agency for dumping billions of dollars into the continent with little to show for it.
Plans for the first mosque in Newmarket, Ont., have raised a national ruckus. A connection to Zafar Bangash, a controversial imam currently serving a large mosque in Richmond Hill, has some residents of this town about 50 kilometres north of Toronto wondering what will be taught in the renovated building.
Canadians across the country took to the streets, hosted public forums and wrote their politicians during the week of March 22, World Water Day, to draw attention to a range of water justice issues, including Canada's refusal to ensure that access to clean water is a human right, and problems created by bottled water consumption.
Four years ago not one of the six charges and seven congregations in the Presbytery of Temiskaming had a full pulpit. One of the smallest presbyteries in the church, with 301 members in 2004, was having a near-death experience.
When ministers are on holiday or maternity leave, at home sick in bed, or when the pulpit is simply vacant, congregations are missing a main ingredient for Sunday service. Not content to leave congregations without worship each week, the Presbytery of Cape Breton, currently faced with six vacant charges, found a solution in lay worship teams — groups of trained, educated and commissioned lay persons who conduct worship services for congregations in need. “Equipped, enabled, empowered,” is their mantra.
Karuna Roy, this year's recipient of the E.H. Johnson award, has devoted her life to working with untouchables — people who are outcast from society, driven away, rejected. After 20 years working with the Leprosy Mission in India, Roy turned her attention to a new sort of untouchable. “People with HIV are driven from their homes, and suffer and die in the wilderness,” said Roy during an address to the assembly. “God is the power that is enabling me to serve in this role. The situation is grim and bleak, but God has planted us in the right place to serve such people under atrocious conditions.”
The Presbyterian Church's two Ghanaian congregations dedicated their new buildings in May, marking the years of hard work and determination it took to realize their dreams. “This came at the right time,” said Rev. Samuel Kofi Danquah of the Ghanaian Church in Montreal. “We thank God especially for the helping hand the head office has given us, and for giving us this opportunity.”
We're excited about the future and to make room for people to come and worship and to come to Christ,” said Rev. Sabrina Caldwell, associate minister at Oakridge, London, where nearly 600 people come to worship. The Presbytery of London's largest congregation, which already has two Sunday services and a contemporary Saturday evening service, is looking to expand its doors. “The more the merrier!”
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