Why hold the 2014 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in Detroit of all places?
That’s a question that Tom Hay, director of operations for the Office of the General Assembly, said he gets a lot. So Hay gave the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board five good reasons to answer the question, “With the packs of feral dogs roaming the streets, why would anyone go there?”
- The problems are real. Hay acknowledged that Detroit “is a city with huge, huge problems.” A third of the residents live below the poverty line. One in four adults did not graduate from high school. There are reports of emergency 911 calls taking hours to be answered.
- Detroit’s bankruptcy both means much and means little. For Presbyterians, coming to an assembly for a week of wall-to-wall meetings, the city’s difficulties – as serious as they are – won’t be the denomination’s top concern.
- Downtown Detroit is safe. Detroit is “as safe as any city we will ever go to,” Hay said. The crime rate is low, security officers and cameras in evidence. Hay said he worries more about downtown Louisville – where the church’s national offices are – than Detroit.
- Detroit has a lot to teach. Detroit has lessons to teach the church about what it means to be an institution with a wonderful history, an established pattern and intense challenges. Detroit is a “hotbed of innovation,” Hay said. “There are more people asking good questions there” than in any other city in the country. “They are way out of the box in what they are thinking.”
- Presbyterians can be a witness to Jesus Christ in Detroit. With the dollars they spend in hotels and restaurants, by leaving a $5 tip in every hotel room every day, Presbyterians can make an economic difference. By acting with kindness, courtesy and compassion, “you will show the world that this is a place where love is,” Hay said. Presbyterians can show the nation “that this is a city of people, not of fear. That this is a place of ministry, not of degradation.” This is a place where Jesus would go. “It is where people hurt, and where people are open to hearing words of justice.”
