Meeting April 27, the Presbytery of Western North Carolina endorsed Lauterer, who for more than a decade has served as pastor of First Church of Burnsville, N.C. In a statement to the presbytery, Lauterer wrote, “after much prayer and listening, I have been convicted by the Holy Spirit to pursue this call to candidacy.”
Lauterer becomes the third candidate announced for moderator, joining Cynthia Bolbach, a lawyer and elder from National Capital Presbytery, and Jin S. Kim, pastor of the Church of All Nations in Minneapolis, who has been endorsed by the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area.
Another possible candidate is Eric Nielsen, (firstpres-eauclaire.org/) pastor of First Church in Eau Claire, Wis. The Presbytery of Northern Waters is expected to vote on his nomination May 6.
Lauterer, a 65-year-old North Carolina native, worked as a newspaper reporter and columnist and as a television reporter until the early 1990s. Then she left journalism to run for Congress, running in 1994 as a Democrat against Republican Charles H. Taylor, who was then the incumbent and who represented North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District from 1991 to 2007.
Lauterer’s venture into politics and her losing race against Taylor (he won by about a 60-40 percent margin) was chronicled as part of a PBS documentary film project called Vote for Me: Politics in America, in a segment with the title: The Political Education of Maggie Lauterer.
After the Congressional race was over, Lauterer earned a Master of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary-Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond. She then became pastor at First Church in Burnsville.
Lauterer told the presbytery “my experience on the ground with a 113-year-old small congregation, one that had been written off as a dying church … demonstrates the power of Christ’s love and his vision for what is possible.”
When she arrived a decade ago, the church had about 20 active members, Lauterer said in an interview. Its membership now is about 180. She calls it “a little church that was ready to lock its doors and give the keys to the presbytery, until God turned it around. … This church proved that a small church doesn’t have to die.”
She also wrote of her sense that those in the PC(USA) “are called to be global Presbyterians” — sensitive to the world’s struggles and needs. Her congregation, for example, has a “sister church” – the Nueva Esperanza congregation in San Felipe, Guatemala.
During her tenure in Burnsville, Lauterer also has served as moderator of the presbytery and a commissioner to the 2008 General Assembly. She and her husband, Zack Allen, have a son and a daughter, both adults now, and two grandchildren.
