Salem Matters

News of What Matters This Week in Salem Presbytery

Dear Clerks of Session in Salem Presbytery:

Here, at long last, is some information to assist you in completing year-end reports for the Presbytery:

1. Go to the following website: Resources for Clerks & Sessions — Salem Presbytery and then click on the Annual Statistical Report button.

2. You will find four tabs here:

David Vaughan, Stated Clerk

statedclerk@salempresbytery.org

336-766-3393 (never hesitate to call and always leave a message!)

If you are not the current Clerk of Session,

please forward this email and notify me of the new clerk as soon as possible. Thanks!

A Word from the Hunger Committee

Dear siblings in Christ, as 2025 has now come to completion, your Salem Hunger Committee is preparing to do some of its work awarding Hunger Grants to regional ministries and fulfilling obligations to our international partners. We humbly request you to make sure your congregation’s Q4 gifts are submitted to the Presbytery by the end of January so we will have a strong accounting for what we are able to allocate through your stewardship benevolences. Thank you to all who have contributed, and please continue to push for strong 2026 collections, as we have many mouths still to feed.

Churchwide Special Offerings News

Changes are coming to the Churchwide Special Offerings program in 2026. You may already be seeing information about these updates through actions taken at the last General Assembly or through correspondence from the Office of Special Offerings. Beginning in 2026, the program will move from four Churchwide Offerings to three Special Offerings: One Great Hour of Sharing, the Christmas Joy Offering, and the new World Communion Offering.

• The Pentecost Offering will no longer be received. The work previously supported by the Pentecost Offering will continue through gifts to the Christmas Joy Offering. In 2026, if a gift is submitted and coded for the Pentecost Offering, it will be recorded as a gift to the Christmas Joy Offering.

  
  

• The Peace & Global Witness Offering will also no longer be received. A new offering will take its place. The World Communion Offering will begin in 2026. If gifts are remitted in the new year as Peace & Global Witness—or its predecessor, the Peacemaking Offering—they will be recorded as gifts to the World Communion Offering.

If you would like more information about these changes to the Churchwide Special Offerings, please visit the following website: https://pcusa.org/giving/special-offerings.

Presbyterian Office of Public Witness

The Presbyterian Office of Public Witness (OPW) is the public policy information and advocacy office of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Its task is to advocate, and help the church to advocate, the social witness perspectives and policies of the General Assembly. The church has a long history of applying these biblically and theologically based insights to issues that affect the public — maintaining a public policy ministry in the nation’s capital since 1946.

Their website is HERE, if you want to find out more about them.  

When they have a national policy issue for which we should be advocating.  They have a technical system that sends your emails directly to your member of Congress, so that you don’t have to figure out how to do that.

Click Here to sign up for alerts (Sign up is on the Right)

Their most recent Action Alert Is below

Urge Congress to Prevent Unauthorized War - Support the War Powers Resolution

Click HERE to read the full alert and contact your members of Congress.

The office of Public Witness has also released the following statement this week:  The Office of Public Witness Remembers Renee Good

Just a friendly reminder that Salem Presbytery’s office is no longer located on the campus of Clemmons Presbyterian. Please send all mail to PO Box 1763, Clemmons, NC 27012.

Contact info: Rev. Ron Shive, 336-263-1884, ronald.shive@gmail.com

New Study Guide Brings Bold Palestinian Christian Document to Congregations

Three Christian organizations will soon jointly release a new congregational study guide for the confessional document A Moment of Truth: Faith in a Time of Genocide, the recently issued Kairos Palestine II statement from Palestinian Christian leaders. (Issued Nov. 2025).

Developed by The Palestine Justice Network (PJN) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), United Methodists for Kairos Response (UMKR), and Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA), the study guide will be a free digital download. It will be available at their websites in mid-February, for use as a 2026 Lenten Study and throughout the year.

This resource invites congregations into a sacred dialogue with the Kairos Palestine II document—a living confession born from the heart of Palestinian Christian suffering. To study it during Lent, that ancient season of preparation and renewal, is to walk the path of baptism once more: to rediscover what it means to pledge our faith in Christ and to boldly renounce the sin and evil alive in our world today.

The study sessions ground the confession in current realities in Gaza, the West Bank, and within the wider Palestinian diaspora, where church leaders describe an ongoing time of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and forced displacement. The guide situates the new Kairos Palestine text within the long arc of ecumenical concern for Palestine/Israel and invites congregations to receive it as a cry to the global church for help and hope.

A Palestinian Christian Lens

The Kairos Palestine II document describes itself as a renewed “word of faith, hope, and love” and a “moment of truth” for the whole church; this study guide is offered as a tool for congregations to listen carefully to that word and to discern how God is calling the church in the United States (and beyond) to respond.

Throughout the guide, questions are framed to engage the wide spectrum of opinions present in church pews and leadership, from deep concern for Jewish–Christian relations to long-standing commitments to Palestinian human rights. Each session invites participants to ask, “How might this issue look when viewed through the eyes of Palestinian Christians who confess Christ in a time of genocide?” Further, how might we as Christians let that perspective challenge and deepen our own discipleship?

Contents:

• Leader's Guide

• Lesson Plans

• Worship Liturgy

• Children’s Sermon

• Text of Kairos Palestine II

• Readers' Theater

• Palestine 101

• Glossary

• Current Denominational Policies

The study guide is intended to equip Christians to speak the truth about Palestinian realities while rooting that truth-telling in a theology of social justice and the traditions and positions of their church. …

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For more information and to download the guide in mid-February 2026, please visit the Palestine Justice Network at thepjn.org, UMKR at kairosresponse.org, or FOSNA at fosna.org.

Position Opening at Highland Presbyterian, Winston-Salem

Highland Presbyterian in Winston-Salem is currently seeking a part-time Business Administrator. For more information and a Job Description, click HERE.

Position Opening at John Calvin Presbyterian, Salisbury

John Calvin Presbyterian Church is seeking a full-time pastor.  For more information, please contact the PNC members at sammieshinshaw@gmail.com or millssabra@gmail.com

You can als find us in the PCUSA Church Leadership Connection (CLC), MDP ID 12152

Position Opening at Speedwell Presbyterian, Reidsville

Speedwell Presbyterian Church in Reidsville is presently searching for a half-time Stated Supply Pastor.

For more information and a Job Description, click HERE.

Position Opening at Logan Presbyterian, Scotts

Please refer to the link below to the Job Description for the position of Transitional Pastor at Logan Presbyterian in Scotts, NC

To view the Job Description click HERE.

View the Logan Website HERE.

January Prayers for:

Budget & Finance Committee;

Campus Ministry Leadership

Please Hold the Following in Your Prayers



We will list these prayer requests for two weeks unless we are notified that they are to be continued. You may submit prayer requests through the link below.

Submit Prayer Requests Here

Ordination Anniversaries

Please pass along congratulations to the following who are celebrating anniversaries of their ordinations:

• Richard Cox ordained January 23, 1950  

• Wes Pitts ordained January 26, 2020

• Phil Gehman ordained January 30, 1972