Welcome to this week's edition of our e-letter, Presbytery Matters. | | | |
Holy Hospitality!
Church Becomes Food Pantry's Temporary Home
| | Jamesville Community Church will be the temporary new home for the Jamesville Dewitt Ecumenical Food Pantry this summer while the town remodels the old fire house. It all fits! | | |
We want to hear about the mission stories from our Presbytery's worshiping communities. What mission work are you involved in? How are your members working in the community? What story would you like to share with others in the Presbytery?
Send any mission stories from your congregation that you would like to share to: CaySyrNews@gmail.com.
Deadline is 12 p.m. on Wednesdays for the current week's edition of
Presbytery Matters.
We want to share your stories, missions, activities and more. Also, make sure to like our Facebook page by clicking the "Facebook" icon at the top of this newsletter.
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We are asking our churches to share this newsletter with your members each week. Click the button below to forward the email or to obtain the newsletter link.
Thank you!
| | Joys and Concerns around the Presbytery | | |
In our prayers together this week:
- Join us in prayer as we pray for the victims and the families of the recent violence in the city of Syracuse, including four children being shot and one 15-year-old losing his life to gun violence.
- Pray for all those impacted by severe weather in our region and the loved ones of those who died in the recent tornado in Oneida County.
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Please pray for everyone who are negatively impacted by the recently heat wave.
- A Prayer for Farmworkers and Immigrant Families in the Wake of ICE Raids
- Please keep Camille Bach (Whitelaw Presbyterian) in your prayers during her breast cancer treatment.
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Please pray for Jerry Armstrong (Whitelaw Presbyterian) Jerry is 15 years old with recurrent bone cancer.
- Let us pray together for justice, peace and unity, especially during these times of turmoil and uncertainty.
- Prayers for peace for the people and country of South Korea.
- Pray for those who are grieving the loss of a loved one.
- The voiceless.
- All those who have been separated from their families.
- All those in America.
- Our brothers & sisters in Haiti.
- All those in Sudan.
- All those in Ukraine.
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All those in Lebanon.
- All those in Israel and Gaza.
- All displaced people.
- All those who are homebound.
- All those who battling addiction and their loved ones.
- Keep all those who battling cancer and other chronic illnesses in your prayers. Please ask God to be by their side and to be with their doctors and families.
- Please pray for all those who are dealing with the painful grief of losing a beloved family pet.
In the cycle of prayer our Presbytery, please pray for these congregations, faith communities, and individuals: Columbian, LaFayette; First, Liverpool; First, Marcellus; First, Mexico; Morrisville Community Church
| | On short notice Monday evening, more than 160 Presbyterians and others gathered online to pray for the nation. The Rev. Jihyun Oh, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly and Executive Director of the Interim Unified Agency, welcomed those in attendance to “a place of hope and love." Read more about the gathering here. | | Palestine Solidarity Working Group | | |
Dear Friends,
Greetings on behalf of Presbyterian Peace Fellowship' (PPF) working group on Palestine Solidarity.
We invite you to join us this summer in a series of three online worship services. The series, Hope and Sumud: Voices from Palestine, will take place on July 6, August 3 and September 7 at 4pm PT, 5pm MT, 6pm CT, 7pm ET. This series is hosted by Lost & Found Church, a program of PPF. Register to get the Zoom link.
Stay in touch with us as we learn from -- and work in solidarity with --Palestinians. If you’d like to receive our occasional Email newsletter, sign up here for the mailing list (you will need to scroll down the page to find the list of PPF newsletters).
May we be encouraged by these words of Omar Haramy, Director of Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center.
"In Palestine, we live Sumud, a steadfastness that embodies resilience, patience, and an unwavering commitment to justice and dignity. For us, Sumud is not just resistance, it is the courage to live in the light of Christ's example, even when the weight of oppression feels unbearable.”
Gratefully,
Palestine Solidarity working group
Beverly Brewster, Geoff Browning, Christine Caton, Ben Daniel, David Ensign, Dexter Kearny, Tricia Lloyd-Sidle, Bob Ross, Elizbeth Simpson, Schaunel Steinnagle, Monica Styron, Barbara Swartzel
| | Westminster’s Deacons lead a bi-monthly service in the church’s chapel at 17 William Street in Auburn to offer prayers for peace, healing, and wholeness for individuals in our church, our community, our nation, and the world. The service is open to all church and community members, and is a beautiful offering of hope. The next service is Wednesday, July 9, at 5:30 p.m. Please come, and invite others who are seeking peace in our fractured and hurting world. | | CELEBRATORY SUGAR: United Ministry of Aurora welcomed new members on Sunday. "We’ve been blessed with so many new members these past four years bringing with them their talents, wisdom and energy!" the church wrote on its Facebook page. | | |
JOIN PRC's ONLINE BOOK CLUB
THE FROZEN RIVER by Ariel Lawhon
July 12, 2025 11:00 am – 12:00 pm
Maine, 1789: When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death. As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of every birth and death, crime and debacle that unfolds in the close-knit community. Months earlier, Martha documented the details of an alleged rape committed by two of the town’s most respected gentlemen—one of whom has now been found dead in the ice. But when a local physician undermines her conclusion, declaring the death to be an accident, Martha is forced to investigate the shocking murder on her own. The Frozen River is a thrilling, tense, and tender story about a remarkable woman who left an unparalleled legacy yet remains nearly forgotten to this day.
Click here to register
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How to contact our Stated Clerk, the Rev Ben Fitzgerald-Fye
Office Phone: 315-291-0360 (call or text)
Email: statedclerk@cayugasyracuse.org
Mail received at:
Scipioville Presbyterian Church
Attn: Pastor Ben
3428 State Route 34B
Scipio Center NY 13147
More staff contact information is linked below.
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Our Address: PO Box 438, Syracuse, NY 13214
Click Here for Staff Contact Information
Click Here for a list of Live Streams from our churches
Click Here for a list of Past Editions of Presbytery Matters
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Are you hiring?
If your church is hiring, please send an announcement and job description to Communication Coordinator Sarah Buckshot at caysyrnews@gmail.com
Please Note: Hiring announcements will run in Presbytery Matters for 3 weeks and then moved to our website. If you have a hiring announcement from 2023 and are still looking to fill it in 2024, please send a new announcement.
Thank you, Sarah Buckshot, Communications Coordinator.
| | Around the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) | | |
Is a world with less gun violence a pipedream, or the church’s alternative witness?
Office of Public Witness offers a webinar on ending gun violence
Educator, author and activist Parker Palmer says that violence is what happens when we don’t know what else to do with our suffering. A webinar offered last week by the Office of Public Witness on gun violence and Christian ethics sought to explore, in the words of presenter the Rev. Dr. Brent A. Strawn, “how Scripture gives us something to do with our suffering.”
Strawn is the D. Moody Smith Distinguished Professor of Old Testament at Duke Divinity School, with a secondary appointment at the Duke University School of Law. Thursday’s webinar was part of a series lamenting gun violence and giving Presbyterians tools to advocate for an end to it. In 2022, the 225th General Assembly declared 2022-32 the Decade to End Gun Violence.”
“The best questions can’t be answered, but they have to be asked,” Strawn told those on the call. “Denial is not an option and despair is not inevitable.”
Strawn identified mass shootings in recent years that are etched in his memory, including the 1984 mass murder at a McDonald’s restaurant in San Ysidro, California, near where the then-13-year-old Strawn was living. Following the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, Strawn appeared on CNN the following day to offer commentary from a perspective of faith. “I remember the heaviness of it, thinking about the gravity of the young victims,” he said. “Even that wasn’t enough to catalyze a massive overhaul” in the nation’s gun control laws.
Among the data surrounding guns in the United States, as Strawn pointed out:
- 44% of Americans, and 57% of African Americans, know of someone who has been shot
- Two-thirds of U.S. residents identify protection as a major reason to own a gun
- Guns are 11 times more likely to be used in a suicide attempt than in self defense
- 85% of suicide attempts by gun are successful; 5% of other methods are successful
- A person stands a 244% increased risk of suicide if they have a gun
- More Americans die by a shooting as by an auto accident
- The nation has 60 million more guns than people
- 4.6 million children and teens live in homes with unsecured loaded guns.
Read more...
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P.O. Box 438, Syracuse 13214
(315) 632-5698
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"I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them
bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing." John 15:5
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