Tag Archives: newsletter
PNews – 9/3/2020
News From Pittsburgh Presbytery Shaken to the Core. Over recent months we have been shaken to the core – by the pandemic, by police shootings, and by resultant protests and counter-protests. There’s a whole lot of shaking going on in …
PNews – 8/27/20
News From Pittsburgh Presbytery What’s Your Story? Last year our presbytery voted to enroll as a “Matthew 25 Presbytery,” joining in our denomination’s national Matthew 25 Initiative, encouraging and equipping congregations to: 1. Strengthen congregational vitality, 2. Dismantle structural racism, and …
PNews – 8/20/20
News from Pittsburgh Presbytery When Should We Embrace Fear, and When Should We Resist It? Stoking fear and resentment is a powerful way to gain a mass following. But not all fear is bad. We do our children a great …
PNews – 08/13/20
News from Pittsburgh Presbytery How Do We Truly Become Unified? Mark 3:25 says “If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand.“ Divided we are easily manipulated to resentment, anger, superiority, and distrust. Where and how do we …
PNews – 08/06/2020
News from Pittsburgh Presbytery Are We Going to Atrophy or Adapt? A titan of our age was laid to rest last week. John Lewis kept going moving forward undeterred throughout his life, no matter how much resistance he faced. Likewise, the …
PNews – 7/30/20
News from Pittsburgh Presbytery Which Denials Underlie Our Affirmations? If we are to be Christ’s faithful followers and authentic ambassadors, we must be a people marked first and foremost by saying “Yes!” Yet beneath every “Yes” we utter lies a …
PNews – 7/23/20
News from Pittsburgh Presbytery Is the Familiar Gone for Good? We are all waiting for “life to go back to normal”. But what was normal doesn’t exist anymore. And we have no idea what the “normal” we’re headed for is going …
There Is No Place Like Home
A Letter to Pittsburgh Presbytery from Rev. Brian R. Wallace Associate Minister July 23, 2020 There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home. These iconic words from Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz …
PNews – 07/16/2020
News from Pittsburgh Presbytery Has God Forsaken Us? “How could a good, all-powerful God let bad things happen to good people?” This ancient question, which philosophers call “the problem of evil,” gets asked anew wherever trauma occurs. It presses hard …
PNews – 07/09/2020
Are We Compassion Fatigued? It is oh, so easy to succumb to weariness when doing the right thing – especially when it’s something we’d rather not be doing or might be uncomfortable for us. Like wearing masks or in our quest …
PNews – 6/25/2020
Oakland Interfaith Vigil for Black Lives on July 1 This peaceful demonstration on Wednesday, July 1, from 12-1:00 PM, is to remember Black lives lost and honor those still living by standing up for justice and dignity. We will start …
PNews – 6/11/2020
How Can We Be Actively Anti-Racist? The PC(USA) Store stands in solidarity with the protesters who are crying out for justice. Additionally, they believe that in order to fully support people of color, white individuals must educate themselves, have conversations with each …
PNews – 6/4/2020
How Do We Respond to Racism Amid a Pandemic? There is a time to dance and there is a time to mourn. Today we mourn. In the fifth of the Church’s six “Great Ends,” Presbyterians affirm that one of the our core …