Ash Wednesday 2022
Baked Potato and Salad Luncheon on March 6, 2022
2022 Scout Sunday – February 20
New Race Book Study Begins Tuesday, January 18
There’s still time to sign up. Email RUC Chair Bill Keesler at wkeesler@triad.rr.com. We are currently out of books in the church office but will gladly find copies for additional readers registering in these last few days.
The book is “America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America” (2016), by Jim Wallis, a white evangelical preacher, pastor, university teacher, bestselling author, and magazine founder who has worked on racial issues for more than 50 years.
A total of six discussion sessions are planned for the book. Discussions will be held on the first and third Tuesdays monthly from 6 to 7 p.m.
The discussions, open to the entire congregation, offer an opportunity for combined discovery. All participants are encouraged to share their own thoughts and personal stories.
The discussions will be led by three RUC members – Walt Rouse, Ken Davis, and David Durrell. David will lead the first discussion session, which will focus on the Preface, Introduction, and Chapter 1.
The first discussion follows the celebration of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday on Monday and coincides on Tuesday with the National Day of Racial Healing, an outgrowth of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) efforts.
RUC to Start New book Study in January 2022
A Thank You from Brady Coltrane

I greatly appreciate the overwhelming support for my Eagle Scout project. I was able to complete my project and had a generous amount leftover to donate to the Domestic Violence Shelter. The final result consisted of 4 dividers with a shelf on top with extra storage on top of the shelf. The finished project is depicted below. Again, thank you for your support and donations. Without you, my project would have not been possible. I appreciate the generosity from each and every one of you.
Brady Coltrane
Worship Schedules for the First Two Sundays of Advent 2021
Christmas Family Night Returns!
2021 Chicken Pie and Baked Spaghetti Sale to Benefit Local Missions
Payment is due at the time orders are placed. Checks should be made payable to First Presbyterian Church.
Orders may be picked up Saturday, November 6 from 10:00 am-2:00 pm and Sunday, November 7 12:00-1:00 pm in the church fellowship hall.
Wake Forest Divinity School Dean to Preach October 10
He was invited by First Presbyterian Church’s Race Unification Committee (RUC), with valuable help from Pastor Nancy.
Walton has served as dean of the School of Divinity, the holder of the Presidential Chair in Religion and Society, and the Dean of Wait Chapel at Wake Forest in Winston-Salem since 2019.
He grew up in Atlanta and earned a bachelor’s degree at Morehouse, a Historically Black College in that city, in 1996, the same year he was licensed to preach. He then earned a master’s in divinity degree and a Ph.D from Princeton University Theological Seminary, on whose board of trustees he now serves. As a Princeton student, he served as pastor of a Presbyterian church in nearby Newark, New Jersey.
In 2006, he became an assistant professor of religious studies at the University of California. In 2010, he was hired as an assistant professor of African American religions in the Divinity School at Harvard University, where in 2012 he became Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in Harvard’s Memorial Church.
Walton, a social ethicist, is the author of “Watch This! The Ethics and Aesthetics of Black Televangelism” (NYU Press, 2009). His second book, “A Lens of Love: Reading the Bible in Its World for Our World” (Westminster John Knox Press, 2018), explores the Bible from the perspective of the most vulnerable and violated characters toward developing a Christian social ethic of radical inclusion and human affirmation.
He sometimes quotes longtime Morehouse College President Benjamin Elijah Mays on the concept of “One Love,” arguing that loving God and loving one’s neighbor are really the same love.
He has been an outspoken advocate for civil rights and social justice and is often quoted as an expert in documentaries about religion and race and by national and international news media.
Among other activities in the Triad in the past 15 months, he has met and shared ideas with Salem Presbytery’s Peace and Justice Task Force; served as keynote speaker for High Point University’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Worship Service; and interviewed Isabel Wilkerson, author of the book “Caste” on American racism, on Wake Forest’s Face to Face Speaker Forum.
He is married to Cecily Cline Walton, a children’s book author, with whom he has three children.