5 Peacemaking Affirmations to Guide the Peacemaking Witness of the Church
After a 6-year study and discernment process, the General Assembly approved 5 affirmations that are being used to guide our work. They are:
1. We affirm that
peacemaking is essential to our faith
in God's reconciling work in Jesus Christ, whose love and justice challenge evil and hatred, and whose call gives our church a mission to present alternatives to violence.
2. We confess that
we have sinned by participating in acts of violence
,
both structural and physical, or by our failure to respond to acts and threats of violence with ministries of justice, healing, and reconciliation.
3.
We follow Jesus Christ, Prince of Peace and Reconciler, and reclaim the power of nonviolent love
evident in his life and teaching, his healings and reversals of evil, his cross and resurrection.
4. Learning from nonviolent struggles and counting the costs of war, we draw upon the traditions of Just War, Christian pacifism, and Just Peacemaking to cultivate moral imagination and discern God's redemptive work in history.
We commit ourselves to studying and practicing nonviolent means of conflict resolution, nonviolent methods for social change, and nonviolent opposition to war. Even as we actively engage in a peace discernment process, we commit ourselves to continuing the long tradition of support by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) for our sisters and brothers who serve in the United States military, veterans, and their families. We promise to support materially and socially veterans of war who suffer injury in body, mind, or spirit, even as we work toward the day when they need to fight no more.
5. We place our faith, hope, and trust in God alone. We renounce violence as means to further selfish national interests, to procure wealth, or to dominate others.
We will practice boldly the things that make for peace and look for the day when 'they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore
.
|
|
Confirmation Robes NEEDED!!
|
Friends,
We have found ourselves in a bit of a spot. We ordered them from Herff-Jones, but we haven't received them, and we can't get any response from them.
I'm just wondering if any of you have or know of churches that may have their own white confirmation robes we might borrow. We will return them cleaned and pressed.
Thanks,
Alan
Alan Brehm, Pastor
Hickman Presbyterian Church
832-865-9354
|
|
Click to Image above to download
Fifty years after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, his vision of the Beloved Community is still a dream. People of good will and faith continue the fight ... preaching, challenging, protesting, marching, striving, and hoping.
In honor of MLK's life and legacy, Chalice Press is releasing a
free e-book gift for you, The Beloved Community Today: Voices of Justice and Hope Honor Martin Luther King, Jr. In this stirring collection of excerpts from Chalice Press authors who are also faith leaders and activists, you'll hear echoes of Dr. King's legacy inspiring your own work.
|
|
Faith Reflection-How much is enough?
|
by: Rev. Laura Dunham, Graceful Living: Your Faith, Values, and Money in Changing Times
How do the people of God define 'the good life' and compare it to our dominant culture's definition? How much is enough
for each of us so that all inhabitants of this good earth may share in the abundance God offers?
G.K Chesterton, the nineteenth century British author, suggested that there are two ways to have enough: one is to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less. Graceful living is about finishing an answer to the question, 'How much is enough?' The answer grows out of our love for God, neighbor and or all of God's creation. It means letting our faith and the values derived from that faith drive our consumption patterns-not advertising or the spread of global capitalism that seem to put the dream of 'the good life'-measured by material possessions and social status-within easy reach.
While most of us will continue to experience the tension created by living in a consumer society while trying to live as he people of God, it is possible to deal with that tension and resolve it to a large extent in the decisions we make about our lifestyles. How we spend, save or give away our money, our time and our God-given gifts reflects our faith and values.
Graceful living begins with an alternative vision of how you'd like to live. Now is the time to dream a dream of your own. What is 'the good life' for you and your loved ones? How much of what you want for yourselves is part of the American Dream and how much is related to the Dream of God?
What would it be like to opt out of excessive materialism and develop a lifestyle that reflects the core values of your faith?
To help in your ongoing search for a lifestyle consistent with your faith and values. I want to suggest seven key graceful living concepts that grow out of faith in a gracious God. These concepts are abundance, frugality, simplicity, generosity, sustainability, justice, and Sabbath.
Creating a lifestyle based on these core values challenges our cultures's most basic assumptions about what constitutes a life well lived, and yet taken together, they are consistent with God's dream that we all shall have enough.
|
|
