Two Arizona presbyteries commissioned Mark Adams and Miriam Maldonado as mission co-workers on May 2 at Valley Presbyterian Church in Tucson. The joint sending arrangement keeps the married couple in the border ministry more than a year after the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) closed World Mission and eliminated their positions.
Related reading: “PC(USA) announces major cuts to mission co-workers amid restructuring” by Eric Ledermann, Presbyterian Outlook reporting
For nearly 30 years, Adams and Maldonado have served with Frontera de Cristo Presbyterian Border Ministry on the U.S.-Mexico border in Douglas, Arizona, and Agua Prieta, Sonora. They were among the 54 mission co-workers laid off when the Interim Unified Agency – since renamed Presbyterian Life and Witness – closed World Mission on March 31, 2025. Adams was offered a position in the denomination’s new Global Ecumenical Partnerships model, but he declined.
The new arrangement is shared among Frontera de Cristo’s board of directors, Presbytery de Cristo and Presbytery Grand Canyon.
During the worship service at which Adams and Maldonado were commissioned, Tony Larson, co-moderator of the 226th and 227th General Assemblies, delivered the sermon. Preaching from John 4, the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well, Larson stepped into the voice of Jacob’s well and distinguished between Nicodemus, who came at night “with his cup already full” of credentials, and the Samaritan woman, who came at noon with an empty jar and left it behind to bring others to the water.
Near the close of the sermon, Larson turned to the current circumstance. “When positions were eliminated, the structure was reorganized, and decisions were made in rooms far from this place, [Adams and Maldonado] did not leave the well.”
“These two presbyteries looked at each other and said, ‘We will become the structure. We will hold the load. We will become the well that keeps the water available while the work goes on.’”
Larson later said the commissioning reflected presbyteries acting within their proper authority. “These two presbyteries discerned a faithful way to respond when an institutional decision risked ending a ministry they valued,” he said. “This is connectionalism being more than a flow chart; these connections are deeply relational.”
“This is connectionalism being more than a flow chart; these connections are deeply relational.” — Tony Larson
On the closure of World Mission, Larson was careful: “I believe the church discerns best when the conversation is broadest — when the voices closest to the ground, closest to the actual ministries and the actual people, are part of the deliberation. [The commissioning of Adams and Maldonado] felt like that kind of discernment in action; not a circumvention of the process, but an expression of it.”
Proposal ‘gave us hope’
“It was a no-brainer,” Brad Munroe, presbytery pastor for both presbyteries, said. “For the last 10 years, Frontera has been building relationships across the state, across the synod, across the denomination. What we wanted was to keep the band together and keep the ministry going for the cause of Christ.”
Related reading: “Crossing borders with song: A music and mission journey to the US-Mexico border” by Greg Allen-Pickett, Presbyterian Outlook
René Espinosa, the Mexico-based president of the binational Frontera de Cristo board, said the closure caught the ministry by surprise. “The leaders of World Mission never communicated with us about what was happening, nor how things would be after they made the decision,” Espinosa wrote in a statement in his native Spanish, translated by Mark Adams. “They did not ask us how it would impact the ministry of losing two persons who I believe are key to [Frontera de Cristo] here in the community.”
Jeni O’Callaghan, a longtime Frontera de Cristo board member and a member of a United Methodist congregation in Verde Valley, Arizona, said the closure of World Mission was “a kick in the gut” and left her disappointed with the PC(USA). The board regrouped within two weeks to determine if it could fund Adams’s position internally, she said. The presbyteries’ proposal “gave us hope.”
Stated Clerk Jihyun Oh, who also serves as executive director of Presbyterian Life and Witness, said when the closure was announced that “this approach continues our commitment to partnership and takes the next step of moving from sending missionaries to being more equal ministry partners in the world.” Former mission co-workers, global partners and the National Hispanic Latino Presbyterian Caucus have contested that framing, arguing that global partners were not meaningfully consulted before the closure was decided.
Related reading: “Global partners protest PC(USA) mission layoffs in open letter” by Eric Ledermann, Presbyterian Outlook reporting
Adams said after the commissioning that it answered a question he had carried since his dismissal. “I’ve always known in my head that the Interim Unified Agency’s decision to end World Mission and the ministry to which we sensed a deep call and commitment was not the church’s – much less God’s – rejection of the ministry we had dedicated our lives to,” he said.
“But during the commissioning service, hearing the sermon from Co-moderator Tony Larson, seeing our partners from Frontera de Cristo, commissioners from both presbyteries as well as representatives from churches from Alabama, Michigan, South Carolina and Virginia, and feeling surrounded by the Spirit when they laid hands on us and prayed, I knew – not just in my head, but in my whole being – that while the Interim Unified Agency had moved on from this particular model of relational and incarnational ministry, the broader church has not.”
“I knew – not just in my head, but in my whole being – that while the Interim Unified Agency had moved on from this particular model of relational and incarnational ministry, the broader church has not.” — Mark Adams
Maldonado said after the service that it brought hope after “an unfortunate and devastating loss.” She said it filled her with joy “to see the commitment of the two presbyteries of Arizona, as well as many churches and individuals and Frontera de Cristo, to affirm our call to continue to walk together in search of a more just, peace-filled and loving world.”
Three overtures connected to the closure will come before the 227th General Assembly in Milwaukee, June 22–July 2. Two from the Presbytery of the Cascades would direct an investigation of the decision-making (OVT-005, assigned to the GA227 committee on Reformed Identity Around the World and renumbered RIW-01) and the development of a new missiological statement (OVT-006, also assigned to RIW and renumbered RIW-02).
