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The watchword for the week: Sing to the Lord, bless God’s name; tell of God’s salvation from day to day.   Psalm 96:2 We thank you, dear God; let the people shout their joy. We praise you for your freely given love and the gift of your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. May we live our praise […]

A United Methodist project provides 50 young people in Ugandan refugee settlements with hands-on digital literacy training.

Building on 141 years of shared missionary heritage, leaders of The United Methodist Church and the Korean Methodist Church signed a new covenant committing their mission agencies to regular dialogue and deeper cooperation.

World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Jerry Pillay extended congratulations to Rev. Éric Hébert-Daly, recently appointed general secretary of The United Church of Canada (UCC). 

The Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRCNA) has named Geena DeWeerd as its new director of communications. In this role, DeWeerd will oversee the denomination’s communications staff and work across the agency communications teams of Thrive, Resonate, and ReFrame. “The CRCNA is an organization with a lot of important ministry priorities in the communications and marketing space. We believe Geena is well equipped for this role and will bring a breadth of experience, both professionally and as a devoted member of the CRCNA,” said Brian Geers, director of Resonate’s marketing and communications team, who has also been serving as the denomination’s interim communications director. Professional Background DeWeerd brings 10 years of experience in communications and public relations. Most recently...

Nicola Morrison reflects on why it's crucial to cultivate a spirit of patience in a world that refuses to wait

The World Council of Churches (WCC) hosted a panel at the annual Geneva Peace Forum on 15 October that explored the role of faith-based actors in peacebuilding. “What Faith Brings to the Dialogue Table” was co-organized with ACT Alliance, Arigatou International, and Caritas Internationalis.

[Episcopal News Service] The Episcopal Church is in the middle of a three-year celebration of the 50th anniversary of women’s ordination, and this weekend, the Diocese of California will host a panel discussion featuring the church’s first female presiding bishop, the Rt. Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori. The event, “Celebrating Audacity,” is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. Pacific Oct. 18, at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. Jefferts Schori, who served as the church’s denominational leader from 2006 to 2015, will be joined on the panel by the Rev. Stephanie Spellers, priest-in-charge of St. Gregory of Nyssa, San Francisco, and the Rev. Liz Tichenor, rector of the Church of the Resurrection, Pleasant Hill. The panel discussion and an Evensong will be livestreamed on the cathedral’s website and on YouTube. “The commemorations help us learn and preserve valuable history about the many ordained women across the church who brought creativity and persistence to their ministries, sometimes at great cost in doing so,” the Rev. Paula Nesbitt, a co-chair of the “Celebrating Audacity” planning committee, said in a written statement to Episcopal News Service. “Inevitably, they have widened the path for others to pursue their own ordained or lay vocations.” The first women to be ordained as priests in The Episcopal Church became known as the Philadelphia Eleven, after their 1974 ordinations at Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Four more women were ordained in 1975 at St. Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., before General Convention voted the following year formally to allow women to serve as priests in the church. Tributes to the Philadelphia Eleven and broader celebrations of women’s ordination on the 50th anniversary began in 2024. The church that year also designated three years of celebration, as outlined in a resolution passed by the 81st General Convention. “This General Convention encourages and supports churchwide events and programs commemorating the 50th anniversary of the ordination of women to the priesthood and the 50th anniversary of the first time a woman priest presided at the Eucharist,” the resolution said. “In doing so, the church celebrates both the historical and contemporary significance of increased gender diversity in the three ordained Orders, more closely reflecting that of the church overall.” In the Diocese of California, its convention passed a resolution in October 2024 establishing a timeline for diocesan commemorations related to women’s ordination and calling for the formation of a bishop’s advisory committee to lead the planning of those commemorations. “A commemorative triennium of the ordination of women to all orders of ministry provides a means to communicate and celebrate these significant events as well as to acknowledge the history of mutually supportive efforts by people of all genders, ordained and lay, to create a more just and demographically representative structure of ministry in the church,” the Diocese of California said in its resolutions supporting documentation. The diocese specified that its milestone commemorations are intended to convey the full scope of the women’s ordination movement, which it dated from 1944 to 2006, when Jefferts Schori was elected to the church’s highest-ranking ordained role 20 years ago. “Bishop Jefferts Schori will help us celebrate the audacity of pathbreaking women in The Episcopal Church, continuing the process of widening the gates of ministry for all,” the diocese said in announcing the panel discussion. Afterward, Jefferts Schori will preach at the 4 p.m. Evensong, and all ordained women in the diocese have been invited to process. The event is intended not only to mark the barriers broken down by Jefferts Schori, but also the way her election paved the way for others to step up, including LGBTQ+ Episcopalians. “I remember where I was in June 2006 when I learned of Bishop Katharine’s election –reading the news at my dining room table, absolutely electrified,” said the Rev. Cameron Partridge, a co-chair of the “Celebrating Audacity” planning committee and a transgender priest who is active in the group TransEpiscopal. Jefferts Schori’s “steadfast, courageous leadership has broken trail for women and for people of all genders in the Episcopal Church. I very much look forward to celebrating her ministry here this Sunday.”

World Council of Churches general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Jerry Pillay delivered an address on 15 October during a gathering of the Association of Protestant Churches and Missions in Germany. He focused on “Decolonizing mission: from mission to mutuality.”