Member Church News: Honors, Prayers, Identity

Today, 3 May, is the 2024 Pacific Day of Prayer, organised each year by the Pacific Conference of Churches. This year’s worship liturgy has been prepared by the Etaretia Porotetani Maohi Protestant Church in French Polynesia/Tahiti.

Budapest honours Scots Holocaust heroine who died in Auschwitz: A Scot who refused to abandon Jewish school girls in her care and died in Auschwitz has been honoured in her adopted city. A brass plate Stolpersteine in memory of Jane Haining has been embedded in the pavement at the entrance of St Columba’s Church of Scotland in Budapest, Hungary.

WCRC Interim General Secretary Setri Nyomi attended the Reformed Alliance Assembly this last week. During his time there, he was interviewed and spoke to the assembly about Reformed identity.

Kenyan churches open places to pray and shelter for flood survivors: Churches in Kenya are opening places to pray and congregate for thousands of people displaced by floods that have killed more than 200 people.

At Indigenous people’s forum, land rights take center stage: The World Council of Churches (WCC) brought insights to the 23rd session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples, which ran in New York 15-26 April.

WCC general secretary to Methodist General Conference: “Christian unity matters”: “What is God calling Christians and the Christian Church to do today? Whose and what voices are we listening to?” asked Jerry Pillay, WCC general secretary in his sermon at the ecumenical worship of the General Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Lecture on religion and violence urges Christians to engage in more self-questioning and self-criticism: The former head of the WCC office for Interreligious Dialogue and Cooperation, Clare Amos, offered the David Goodbourn lecture on Religion and Violence on 1 May for Churches Together in Britain and Ireland.