Horizons: Summer 2025
Summer 2025
Legacies and Histories
What are the stories that are central to your life? Is there a book on your shelf that captured your imagination as a child? A bit of often-recounted family lore about an epic cooking fail or pet antics? A parable that you re-read in times of frustration?
We turn to some stories for assurance. We know the plot and the characters. Whether we’re the ones reading, telling or listening to the story, even particular phrases and cadence just make it click. These stories never feel old or stale.
And yet we can also meet these stories in new ways—through a different lens, with new insights or simply a mindset of curiosity. ( Just within the last decade, Wicked and Hamilton have successfully reframed two very different stories that we all knew!) Of course, as people of faith, many of us have experienced this. A pastor or Bible study author presents a Bible passage that we’ve read or heard multiple times, but connects it to another scripture, or draws a parallel to a contemporary event. And it’s like a brand-new story.
It’s in this spirit that this issue of Horizons examines histories and legacies. Let’s revisit our shared stories, and consider anew what they tell us about who we’ve been and who we want to be. We will consider Bible stories—the way the story of God’s love has been passed to us, and how we’ll pass it to others. We’ll celebrate the long history of women (including Presbyterian Women) as keepers of the history and sharers of the faith. We’ll reacquaint ourselves with PW’s sister organizations that have committed themselves to growing in faith while maintaining strong cultural roots, and the richness they bring to PW. We’ll learn about how to keep our faith story and community meaningful for people with memory loss. And of course, we’ll rejoice in all the ways that Presbyterian Women shares God’s love with the world!
—Sharon Dunne Gillies, managing editor
Subscribe.
Already a subscriber? Log-in to read this issue.
Buy this issue.
Features
What’s Your Story? Seeing Ourselves in the Word of God
C.J. Godwin invites readers to consider the different styles of storytelling in beloved Bible stories—everything from whispers to shouting, and memorable messages that appear once or many times. And she asks us, as people of God, what our stories are and how we’ll share them.
Engagement and Connection: How Church Communities Can Support People with Dementia
Kathy Fogg Berry shares ways that PW groups and congregations can adapt and expand programs to meet the needs of people with dementia. She highlights practices that engage senses, emotions and deep memories to ensure people with memory loss are still part of the beloved community.
Preserving Our Presbyterian Women Histories
Caitlin Reeves Greenamyre describes how Presbyterian women have been vital to preserving church histories as well as our own PW group histories. She offers tips on what to record and how to add to the historical record of PW in the Congregations.
Woven Together—Threads of Herstories, Looms of Legacy: Celebrating the History of Presbyterian Women’s Sister Organizations
Kelsey Law highlights the “herstories” of PW’s sister organizations and the ways that these networks have been spaces where women of color can worship, work and grow in faith. She also explores the ways that PW’s sister networks embody distinctive expressions of PW’s Purpose while shaping the shared life of PW.
PW Resources
A PW Love Story: Faithful and Loving Intention
Carissa Herold
2025 Thank Offering Recipients
Behold, I Am Doing a New Thing
2025 Thank Offering Dedication Service
Anita Betts
Anna H. Bedford Bible Study Resource
Rev. Dr. Shannan R. Vance-Ocampo offers reflections and questions for use in studying Lessons One and Two of the 2025–2026 PW/Horizons Bible study, Finding Resilience, Joy, and Our Identity in Jesus Christ, by Rev. Dr. Rhashell D. Hunter.
Departments
Devotion
Unexpected Legacies
Cecilia Amorocho Hickerson
Unpacking the Theme: Scripture Study
Pass It On: The Calling of Our Foremothers
Rev. Susan Carter Wiggins
What One PW Is Doing
Why History Matters
Dr. Alice-Catherine Carls
Working for Justice and Peace
Let Justice Roll Down
Rev. Dr. Patricia K. Tull
Supporting Mission
Our Community Kitchen
Rev. Donna Elia and Elder Mary Anne Davis
Books
Pages Worth Turning
Stories from the Ages
The Stars in Our Skies and Our Sanctuaries
Hillary Moses Mohaupt
Mosaic
News and Information about Presbyterian Women and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
Faithful Parenting
Tradition, Future and the Holy Spirit
Rev. Melanie Marsh
After the Offering
Future Ambulance for Higgins Brothers Surgicenter for Hope
Ted Higgins, MD
