Comings and Goings is a blog written by Theology, Formation, and Evangelism Director Charles B. "Chip" Hardwick as he travels throughout the church. God is on the move out and about in the world, working to redeem all things in Jesus Christ. As we join this mission, by the power of the Spirit we see God on the move. This blog contains glimpses of how Chip finds this to be true in his comings and goings.
You can follow Chip on twitter (@chiphardwick) or find him on Facebook (Chip Hardwick).
The Dallas II global mission consultation brought together more than 200 grassroots and national mission leaders from across the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), as well as ecumenical and global partners. Together they determined that Presbyterian mission work should be centered on the critical global issues of addressing the root causes of poverty, engaging in evangelism, and working for reconciliation, and refined core values and priorities for responding strategically to those issues with concrete, measurable, global initiatives.
Bethany Furkin of the Presbyterian News Service writes about the process and outcomes of the Dallas II mission consultation.
Both Dessa and Cobbie Palm, mission co-workers to the Philippines, were born there as well. In her keynote at Dallas II Friday, she spoke about how the Filipino word “kapwa” literally means “fellow human being,” but actually bears a more profound moral kinship. Kapwa informs the way Christians should treat one another.
Dessa spoke about how, in the 1930s, an accord was signed by the U.S. and the Philippines on sugar trading, engraving the Filipino economy in a triple dependency: on monocrop culture, on sugar trading and industry, and on the U.S. as a single market. Fifty years later, the …
"My great-great-grandfather was on the Council of Elders in his village, and when they saw the missionaries coming, they said, 'Those people do not look like us. They are ghosts. We should kill them!'"
Standing before a gathered group of Presbyterians and global partners, brought together by the common desire to discuss not just mission but the ability to do so more effectively, Cyprian Guchiendo tells of the historic roots of the Church in Kenya. Long before the Presbyterian Church of East Africa existed, there were two Christian groups there to do mission - The GMS (Gospel Missionary Society), and …