Feature
Hanging Up Our Harps
On that Friday afternoon in late August, I had just finished outlining the church’s events for the upcoming program year, color-coding everything with permanent markers in our denominational calendar. I reread my sermon, printed it, and turned off the computer. The phone rang not an hour later.
by Laurie Kraus
Liturgy
Why Baptism Matters for the Work of Dismantling Racism
Claudia Aguilar RubalcavaClaudia Aguilar Rubalcava is serving as interim pastor at Park Hill Congregational Church in Denver, Colorado. Like the waterof a deep stream,love is always too much.1—Wendell Berry Perhaps my favorite definition of the word sacrament is...
Music
On Music: Our Community Pool
Remembrances of baptism liturgies are becoming more common in Presbyterian congregations. Staff and members who experience them at conferences carry the liturgies home and put them into regular rotation each year.
Preaching
On Preaching – 56.2
In keeping with the Directory for Worship, Kaela (not her real name) was presented for baptism with neither undue haste nor undue delay. She was thirteen years old, wearing her backpack and clinging to a stuffed animal as she walked to the baptismal font. Her mothers had been Presbyterian for a little over a year—they joined soon after visiting our church’s booth at the downtown Pride festival the year before.
The Arts
On the Arts: Unity and Diversity
As I write this column, we have just passed the fortieth anniversary of the publication of Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, the report of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches, finalized in Lima, Peru, in January of 1982. Its publication four decades ago represented an even longer span of the work for the commission, since it summarized agreements that began in 1927, more than fifty years earlier.
