{"id":201645,"date":"2026-05-25T02:52:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T02:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/201645\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T02:52:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T02:52:07","slug":"reading-congregation-city-leaders-honor-church-mother-on-her-105th-birthday-reading-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/201645\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading congregation, city leaders honor &#8216;church mother&#8217; on her 105th birthday | Reading Area"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>READING, Pa. &#8211; A church congregation in Reading is honoring one of its members who recently celebrated a very special birthday.<\/p>\n<p>On Sunday, Saint James Church of God in Christ celebrated their &#8220;church mother&#8221; Harriet Smith, who turned 105-years-old a few days ago.<\/p>\n<p>She is also being given commendations by the city for marking more than a century of life, faith, service and dedication.<\/p>\n<p>Harriet was not in there in person, but that didn&#8217;t stop her fellow churchgoers from singing her praises.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I just thank God to have her with us, still, her wisdom, her knowledge, the stories that she has to tell us, and the world really, it&#8217;s just amazing, it&#8217;s just amazing and her spirit is so rich, and she&#8217;s so full of life, it&#8217;s just, again, amazing and I thank God for her,&#8221; said senior Pastor Steven McCracken.<\/p>\n<p>The church says even at age 105, Harriet stays active with crocheting and other hobbies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. &#8211; A church congregation in Reading is honoring one of its members who recently celebrated a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":201646,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[214,128,130,129,213],"class_list":["post-201645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-reading-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}