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The Rev. Dr. Bill Myers, pastor for the last five years of First Presbyterian Church of Charleston, West Virginia, will stand for Moderator on the final day of the 227th General Assembly — providing he can find someone to stand with him.
Myers said Thursday he’d hoped to partner with a commissioner from the Presbytery of the Pacific. He’s since reached out to the Synod of the Southwest for a possible partner. The deadline for naming a Co-Moderator candidate is May 7. Commissioners interested in standing for Co-Moderator alongside Myers can reach him at [email protected].
Myers has been endorsed by the Presbytery of West Virginia. Most recently, he served as a member of the presbytery’s Leadership Team and has led authorized lay pastor and commissioned pastor retreat workshops.
“We’ve got to find a way to remain at the table with each other,” Myers told Presbyterian News Service. At the outset of his service at First Presbyterian Church of Charleston, he was told it’s a purple church. But after a few weeks on the job, “I said, ‘You are a red and blue church living under the same roof,’” he said. “We have focused on that over five years, with no major conflicts.”
“I will stand at the Communion table and say, ‘You don’t agree on anything, and yet you find your way to this table every month.’ We have found a way to move forward post-Covid in very effective ways.”
“The future of the church may not be decided in its largest rooms,” Myers said in a paper announcing he will stand for Moderator. “But it is already being revealed — in its smallest ones.”
“This is not a story of decline,” Myers wrote. “It is a story of a different kind of strength. It is not unique to one place.”
“Across our church — in rural communities, in Indigenous contexts, in immigrant fellowships, and in congregations often overlooked — the Spirit is forming a people who know how to live the gospel with depth, courage and grace.”
“These are not peripheral stories,” he wrote. “They are a glimpse of who we are being called to become.” His motto — “Small Churches, Big Faith” — “is not a slogan. It is an invitation — to recover a way of being the church that is rooted, relational and alive in Christ.”
First Presbyterian Church of Charleston has bounced back since the Covid pandemic, he said, including sharing about $225,000 in gifts annually with mission partners, revitalizing the bell choir and church choir, growing the preschool to about 160 students and starting a concert series, Myers noted.
“I said, ‘In spite of all the good you’ve done, the most important thing you’ve done in our community is the example of how people who don’t share a common worldview can keep moving forward together,’” he said. “They called a pastor with a ponytail, and those images don’t line up for most folks in Charleston.” Church members and friends “say I push the envelope a little bit, but not in a partisan way. I think that’s a story that needs to be told — how we can be the church together.”
Myers and his wife, Margie, have two children. Their son, the Rev. Will Myers, serves with UKirk at West Virginia University. Their daughter, Elizabeth, is a research librarian in Seattle. Will and his wife, Nimmi, have two children.
Myers was born in Honolulu while his father was stationed at nearby Pearl Harbor. The family soon moved to the Quad Cities in Illinois. He began college at the University of Iowa before transferring to PC(USA)-affiliated Monmouth College, where he studied Religious Studies, played the bagpipes and led intramural programs. He earned his M.Div. at Princeton Theological Seminary and his D.Min. at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.
“We are living in a time marked by division, fatigue and uncertainty,” Myers said in an announcement published by the Presbytery of West Virginia. “The instinct is to move quickly — to resolve, to decide, to move on. But I don’t believe the church’s deepest need right now is quicker answers. I believe it is deeper faithfulness.”
That faithfulness “shows up in how we listen, how we speak, and whether we are willing to remain at the table with one another,” he told the presbytery. “If we can recover that way of being — imperfectly, but intentionally — it will shape not only our decisions, but our witness to a world that is longing for something more than division.”
In that announcement, Myers told the presbytery that most of his ministry has been in congregations in the midst of conflict and renewal. “I’m comfortable in those spaces — not because they’re easy, but because I believe the church belongs together, even when it’s struggling,” he said. “Throughout it all, I’ve tried to help the church notice where God is already at work and to join that work with humility and courage.”
He told the presbytery his hope for the denomination is in the quiet determination with which people continue to show up.
“They may not have abundant resources, but they have something deeper: a trust that God is still present and still at work,” he told the presbytery. “Again and again, I see evidence that the Spirit is not finished with us. In fact, some of the most faithful and creative ministries in our church are happening in places that are easy to overlook.”
“If we’re paying attention, those communities have something to teach the rest of us. That’s where my hope lies.”
Those who have declared their intention to stand as Co-Moderators of the upcoming Assembly are the Rev. Marta Pumroy-Cordero and the Rev. Dr. Kristopher D. Schondelmeyer and the Rev. Dr. Frances Lin and the Rev. Dr. Sean Chow. The Moderator Election is set for July 2. Whoever is elected will officiate the 228th General Assembly in 2028.
By Mike Ferguson, Presbyterian News Service
