A Boston church is showcasing the works of artists, musicians, writers, photographers and others as a way to glorify God and God’s grace.
When the pandemic stopped her choir from singing, Kathie Mades used her creativity to write a children’s book to teach empathy and compassion.
Reviving Negro Spiritual music in its choir, the American Spiritual Ensemble performs to enthusiastic churches and audiences.
In the fall of 2018, youth at Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Center (BAJCC) in Chesterfield County, Virginia, asked to start a gospel choir. The request reached the Rev. Lauren Ramseur and the Rev. Ashley Diaz Mejias who, along with friends, collaborated to support the initiative. Ramseur and Mejias soon discovered that they were “doing church” — gathering twice a month at the correctional center for a community of worship. The group named themselves the Voices of Jubilee.
Congregations are continuing to look for creative solutions to engage their members musically without the health risks of communal singing.
The bold vision and invitation of Matthew 25:31-46 to be the hands and feet of Jesus, serving people who are hungry, oppressed, imprisoned or poor, is awakening compassionate faith to new possibilities in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
Creative endeavors — music, painting, baking, writing — can be a powerful outlet in times of crisis to free the mind from routines and foster growth.
of Nebraska in 1949, Lois Kroehler heard about a short-term opportunity to travel to Cuba to work as an English language secretary for a Cuban church executive. She had planned to teach Spanish after college and reasoned that a couple years of translation work would improve her Spanish, particularly grammar and vocabulary. “After those two years, the Cuban church invited me to stay,” Kroehler said in a 1998 interview with Democracy Now!, an independent nonprofit news organization in Washington, D.C. “So, I actually became a missionary at the invitation of the Cuban church.” Missionary, music teacher and composer, choir director, Christian educator … Lois Kroehler embraced Cuba, and accompanying the Cuban people became her passion. Kroehler died Aug. 4 at age 91.
What do you sing in stewardship season? The following hymns and songs — found both in Glory to God (GTG) and in the 1990 Presbyterian Hymnal (PH) — offer clear expressions of key themes in the Reformed tradition: giving our lives with gratitude for God’s grace, serving others with Christ-like love, sharing the gifts of the Holy Spirit, tending the creation entrusted to our care, and offering all to the glory of God.
It is hard to believe that it has been five years since the release of the Glory of God hymnal to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Ever since its release in 2013, the “new hymnal” has become very popular across the denomination.