Nelson’s appointment to the office’s top position marks the completion of a period of re-evaluation of the Washington office and its role in public policy advocacy for the denomination.
A report presented to the General Assembly Mission Council last fall, submitted by the Washington Office study group, concluded that the office “remains poorly understood and supported by much of the church, and a source of controversy within it.” But the report also states that the office and its staff “remain an irreplaceable resource” for a denomination working for the causes of hope, justice and peace.
Nelson has spent 25 years working with congregations, most recently with Liberation Community Presbyterian Church, a new church development in urban Memphis that was chartered in 1999, and before that in Greensboro, N.C.
A third-generation Presbyterian minister, Nelson has been a speaker at numerous Presbyterian conferences and earned a master of divinity degree from Johnson C. Smith Theological Seminary in Atlanta and a doctorate in ministry from Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
