The Office of Ministry is holding a continuing education event on the opening day of National Older Adult Conference (NOAC) titled “Labor Day Sabbath Rest.” The event on Monday, Sept. 2, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., at the Atkins House at Lake Junaluska, N.C., is open to ministers and spouses and all laity. The 50-plus age requirement for NOAC does not apply. Ministers may earn 0.6 continuing education credits.
“The earth shook and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened…” (Matthew 27:51). NEWS 1) Planting potatoes, harvesting choirs in Rwanda2) Office of Peacebuilding and Policy signs on to letter about Syria3) EAD 2019 stirs up ‘good trouble’ for healing of national and global problems PERSONNEL 4) Gimbiya Kettering resigns from Intercultural Ministries
Registration begins May 1 for National Older Adult Conference (NOAC) to be held Sept. 2-6 at Lake Junaluska Conference and Retreat Center in western North Carolina. The theme is “Reaching Across Generations, Beyond Differences, Through Conflict, into Joy.”
Over the first weekend of April, members of various Christian churches gathered in Washington, D.C., to learn about and advocate for political action. This national gathering, called Ecumenical Advocacy Days (EAD), is a three-day conference headed by leaders of many Christian denominations and attended by Christians from across the United States. This year’s theme was “Troubling the Waters for the Healing of the World,” and participants were encouraged to stir up “good trouble” to initiate positive change.
On April 20, 1999, Tom and Linda Mauser joined a club that no one wanted to join: the parents of a child victimized by gun violence. Their son, Daniel Mauser, was a victim of the Columbine High School shooting in Littleton, Colo.
In this issue: Celebrating love feast in Rwanda, correction, remembering George Kreps and Jay Stevens and Janet Flory Flaten, job opening, Clergywomen’s Annual Conference Breakfast, Donnels Creek celebrates 210 years, 46th annual Brethren Bible Institute, Mother’s Day Gratitude Project, and more news by, for, and about Brethren.
The Church of the Brethren Office of Peacebuilding and Policy has signed on to a letter to President Trump regarding Syria. The letter signed by seven faith-based denominations and organizations, some of whom are engaged in providing support for peacebuilding efforts in Syria and humanitarian assistance to displaced Syrians, called for the complete withdrawal of US troops from Syria. It also urges the US administration to address root causes of insecurity in the region.
Brethren Volunteer Service (BVS) has announced the dates and locations of orientation units for the rest of the year. BVS offers orientations to train prospective volunteers to serve fulltime for one or more years at projects across the United States and in several other countries around the world. For more about BVS go to www.brethren.org/bvs .
In 2012, the Global Food Initiative (GFI) began supporting a potato project of Evangelistic Training Outreach Ministries of Rwanda (ETOMR) among the Twa people in the village of Bunyove in northwest Rwanda.
Brethren Benefit Trust and its affiliate, Brethren Foundation Funds, on April 4 signed the Turkmen Cotton Pledge to show opposition to unacceptable human rights conditions in Turkmenistan, as the government there has been using forced labor to harvest cotton. Turkmenistan is the 11th-largest exporter of cotton in the world, but produces its commodity by threatening adult citizens with dismissal or salary deductions from their regular jobs if they do not assist with the annual cotton harvest.
