MILWAUKEE — Commissioners to the 227th General Assembly elected Marta Pumroy-Cordero and Kristopher D. Schondelmeyer co-moderators on the first ballot Thursday, with the pair receiving 250 of the 380 votes cast among four teams standing for the office. Past assemblies often needed multiple ballots before reaching the simple majority required to elect a moderator or co-moderators.
Pumroy-Cordero, a teaching elder commissioner from Tres Rios Presbytery, works as border ministry coordinator with the Tres Rios Border Foundation, and Schondelmeyer, a teaching elder commissioner from Presbytery of East Iowa, is pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Davenport, Iowa. The other teams standing for co-moderator received the following votes: Barbara Barkley and Bill Myers received nine votes, Frances Lin and Sean Chow received 72, and Rebecca Luter and Chris Peters received 49.
All four teams served the assembly as commissioners before the election, a departure from the past when candidates, once elected, immediately stepped back from committee deliberation to avoid the appearance of bias when they moderated the whole assembly during plenary. Pumroy-Cordero served on the Committee on Constitutional Interpretation, and Schondelmeyer served on the Committee on Reformed Identity in the United States.
In a change approved at GA226 in 2024, Pumroy-Cordero and Schondelmeyer will moderate the 228th General Assembly meeting in Puerto Rico in 2028 rather than moderating the assembly that elected them.
One of the defining themes of GA227 was a call for greater accountability, driven largely by concerns over how the closure of World Mission was handled. Building on this theme, those standing for co-moderator were asked what accountability should look like for the denomination during the candidates’ question-and-answer period before the election.
Pumroy-Cordero answered, “I believe accountability is doing the things you say you’re going to do, even if they’re uncomfortable. Just because we’re holding people accountable doesn’t mean that we’re not caring and concerning. It’s not just punitive — it is a way to bring people together and to move forward. Holding each other accountable is a way of showing love.”
Schondelmeyer responded to the same question, saying, “I’m a survivor of clergy abuse in this denomination. I’m probably the only candidate up here who’s ever been asked by lawyers of this denomination to sign a non-disclosure agreement, which is what happened when I first came forward as a survivor of clergy abuse, before they would let me know how to talk to church leaders to share my story.
“But I’m still here in this denomination because I love this church, and this church has loved me.” He cited the work of the late Marie Fortune, a pioneer in addressing clergy sexual abuse, on truth-telling as the foundation of institutional accountability, and said working with survivors to achieve healing has been part of his ministry since.
The disclosure of Schondelmeyer having to sign an NDA lands at a charged moment in the denomination. Commissioners this week directed the new co-moderators to appoint a seven-member commission reviewing the decisions behind the 2025 dissolution of Presbyterian World Mission, a process that has already drawn scrutiny over non-disclosure agreements tied to terminated mission staff. Pumroy-Cordero and Schondelmeyer will be the ones naming that commission’s members, a responsibility neither has yet detailed publicly.
Related reading: “Documents contradict PL&W testimony on covenant given to terminated mission co-workers” by Eric Ledermann, Outlook reporting
Closing worship and the installation of the new co-moderators immediately followed the election, with Laura Mariko Cheifetz, teaching elder and transitional executive presbyter for the Presbytery of San Francisco, preaching on Isaiah 58 — “you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in” — under a theme of institutional failure and repair.
Cheifetz preached that worship divorced from justice does not hold up under the prophet’s scrutiny, regardless of how it looks from the outside. “A beautiful worship service, while the poor and hungry are shut outside of your fancy gates, doesn’t cut it,” she said.
“Quoting Scripture while mistreating your employees will not make you righteous. Declaring oneself an agent of a true faith while committing spiritual violence against your siblings will not make you holy.” — Laura Mariko Cheifetz
“An eloquent prayer, when one ignores the immigrant and the widow, does not pass muster. Quoting Scripture while mistreating your employees will not make you righteous. Declaring oneself an agent of a true faith while committing spiritual violence against your siblings will not make you holy.”
Cheifetz named Christian nationalism directly, tying the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding, celebrated this weekend, to the church’s own history. “We helped make this country exactly what it is becoming,” she said, “the original Christian nationalists, perpetrators of the heresy of believing God gave us the right to own other human beings for profit, of the shameful sin of believing we deserved this land.” She tied that heresy to the prophet’s call for repentant and restorative work, describing her presbytery’s accompaniment of immigrants to court hearings “because of this administration’s cruel and punitive approach to those who dare to move.”
Related reading: “PC(USA) labels White Christian nationalism ‘Theological Error'” by John Bolt, Outlook reporting
Cheifetz built the sermon around what she called “the break,” a term she credited to spoken-word artist and nonprofit leader Michelle Mush Lee to describe an instrumental passage in music.
“The break is the moment where the song almost collapses, and that is exactly where the freedom is,” Cheifetz said, framing institutional brokenness not as an argument against the church but as the precondition for whatever comes next. “We are not agents; we are collaborators,” she said. “God is the one who heals, and we are the ones who are sent.”
Outgoing co-moderator Tony Larson picked up a version of the same image in his farewell remarks minutes later, humorously reflecting on how the pair of new shoes he wore when he was elected in 2024 had become well worn after two years of travel. He said he offered them to the Presbyterian Historical Society, unsuccessfully. “They said no,” he said to laughter from the audience.
Turning more serious, he said, “Are not our hearts in some way broken? But because they are broken, there is the potential, there is the power, there is the capacity that they might grow bigger, if we have the courage to follow the Spirit.”
“Are not our hearts in some way broken? But because they are broken, there is the potential, there is the power, there is the capacity that they might grow bigger, if we have the courage to follow the Spirit.” — Tony Larson
During a brief interview with the Presbyterian Outlook moments after their installation, Pumroy-Cordero described feeling “excited, and also ready to see what’s going to happen next.” Schondelmeyer, who had disclosed his history as a clergy abuse survivor from the floor only hours earlier, called himself “humbled” and repeated the words he had used at the microphone: “I love this church. This church has loved me.”
Asked what concerns her most about the two years ahead, Pumroy-Cordero pointed to a commissioner’s resolution (RUS-14) on immigration detention that she helped bring forward to the committee on which Schondelmeyer served, Reformed Identity in the United States. “The border is in everyone’s backyard right now,” she said, “and I’m grateful that the assembly is pushing us to speak out about it.”
Schondelmeyer named Christian nationalism as his biggest concern. He described organizing a counter-rally in Toledo, Ohio, after a White Christian nationalist group was granted a permit to demonstrate outside city hall there. “We called it Unity in the Community,” he said. “The lead news story that day was the White Christian nationalist rally on City Hall, but by the end of the night, the leading news story was Unity in the Community. That’s what we’re called to do.”
Related reading: “PC(USA) General Assembly votes to hold its next assembly in Puerto Rico” by Gregg Brekke, Outlook reporting
Commissioners voted earlier in the week 467-5 to hold the 228th General Assembly in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 2028, the first time the assembly will meet on Latin American or Caribbean soil — a decision with personal resonance for Pumroy-Cordero, whose mother was born in Puerto Rico.
Following worship, commissioners and staff were thanked for their service and dismissed. The 227th General Assembly was officially over. Commissioners are now sent out into the church to share the news.
