Preaching to an online congregation of about 85 people during the Chapel service held on Juneteenth, the Rev. Keion Jackson leaned on the account found in Deuteronomy 31:1-6, which depicts Moses, on the precipice of leading God’s people into the Promised Land, instead turning things over to his successor Joshua, at God’s command, and instructing the people to be strong and bold.
On Monday the Presbyterian Writers Guild celebrated the work of three authors during an awards presentation all too familiar over the past 2½ years: via Zoom, rather than the in-person General Assembly venue that members much prefer.
In the past year, growing tensions between the federal government of Ethiopia and opposition groups led by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) have erupted into open clashes between Ethiopia’s army and rebel forces.
The spreading conflict has left thousands dead, displaced an estimated 2 million people, and pushed hundreds of thousands to the brink of famine. Recently, a joint United Nations and the Ethiopian human rights commission report found all of the combatants guilty of “appalling levels of brutality,” including extrajudicial killings, sexual violence and attacks on refugees.
Ever since discovering their church was built a century ago partly through funds donated “for the white race only,” the 1,200 or so members and the leadership of Knox Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, have worked hard not to duck the church’s history, but to learn from it and to, in tangible ways, reach out and make connections that make it clear where the church is headed during the next 100 years: ending the sin of systemic racism.
Honored through many miles of social distance earlier this year for their selections by the Presbyterian Writers Guild as the David Steele Distinguished Writer Award winner and Best First Book winner, Jane Kurtz and Caroline Kurtz have responded with an audio thank-you card that connects growing up as missionary kids with the literacy and other work to which they’ve been devoted as adults.
The Rev. Sharon Stewart of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the Rev. Dr. Melodie Jones Pointon, senior pastor and head of staff at Eastridge Presbyterian Church in Lincoln, Nebraska, recently served as co-conveners of one of the first virtual mission network meetings.
Caroline Kurtz, a missionary kid who from age 5 grew up in Ethiopia with her parents and siblings, has been named winner of the Presbyterian Writers Guild’s biennial Best First Book Award for the best first book by a Presbyterian author written during 2018-2019. The Best First Book Award is co-sponsored by the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation and comes with a $500 cash prize.
Caroline Kurtz felt exiled to a foreign country — not when she traveled with her parents and sisters to Ethiopia, but when she returned to the United States to attend college in Illinois.
Ed Pollock, the son of longtime Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) mission co-worker Ted Pollock, is a man on a mission.
Representatives from the Howard University School of Divinity (HUSD) have traveled to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to return a sacred 14-15th century manuscript to Debre Libanos Monastery, one of Ethiopia’s holiest sites.