Maggie Lauterer is third moderator candidate

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.
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.
A 65-year-old North Carolina native, Lauterer worked as a newspaper reporter and columnist and as a television reporter until the early 1990s. In 1994 she left journalism to run unsuccessfully for Congress.
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.
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 … 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.