01/06/2026
Presbyterian Women - 💓 I N S P I R E S U M M E R 2 0 2 6 💓
Your Summer Inspire has arrived and is packed full of brilliant articles for all! From inspirational stories, bible study, Quick Fire Questions, to global mission and so much more!
We are grateful for our Editor, Rebecca McConnell who gives us a flavour of what to expect in this issue of Inspire. She writes;
‘Weather wise, it was one of the best days that summer had seen. Ordinary people were doing ordinary things on an ordinary day. In one fateful moment, this was changed forever’.
These are the words etched into the memorial plaque/stone that sits in the Omagh Bomb Memorial Gardens. I read them a few weeks ago on a Bank Holiday Monday. Whilst having some lunch in a cafe on the main street, I was struck seeing babies, children, adults and pensioners enjoying themselves and I thought back to how the town was shaken and torn apart that summer’s day.
Many of us can recall where we were when we heard the dreadful news in August 1998. Coming just months after the Good Friday Agreement was signed, the bomb was the largest single atrocity in over thirty years of violence known as The Troubles. For Gen Z (those born after the millennium), they have, thankfully, grown up in a more peaceful society. But many whose lives were irrevocably changed continue to carry the hurt and the pain. There is also a generation denied knowing their family members because of the conflict. A new PCI resource for congregations was launched in the springtime, Considering Lament, and we hear from one of the members of the regional focus groups, Eileen Gallagher, about how we need, as a church, to lament the loss and how the resource can help us to do that together:
“Some young people are living with transgenerational trauma, carrying echoes of pain they didn't personally experience, but which still shape their families. Others simply don't know the depth of what happened here. Creating space for conversation and truth helps both groups.”
Generation to generation was launched at our recent Annual PW Conference and many of our articles take up this important theme. It allows us to step back and see the bigger picture of our role as Christians in families and also collectively as believers in churches.
We are grateful to Rev Jane Nelson, the minister of Omagh Presbyterian Church, for leading the roll out of our new theme in a devotional that is both challenging and practical. What might you do differently in your PW Group as a result of reading it?
Valerie Adams helps people trace their ancestors and is also passionate about sharing the good news of Jesus with the next generations as she serves in Castlewellan Presbyterian Church.
Gill Marrs gives us an update on the colourful and vibrant celebrations held in Nairobi, Kenya, for the Presbyterian Church of East Africa’s centenary celebrations.
We have a bumper edition of Grateful Heart with all your news as well as our regular Group Focus.
May this edition be a blessing to you and please pass it on to another generation for them to have a read too!'
Rebecca McConnell
