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Report released today calls for reconfiguration in structure and ethos of the Presbyterian Mission Agency

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The Coordinating Committee of the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board voted by Zoom Sept. 16 to take next steps regarding a consultants’ report calling for a reconfiguration in structure and ethos of the Presbyterian Mission Agency (PMA) — something the report said could transform the work of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) for the next 25 years. (The report is available here: CounterStories Consulting Report to PMAB September 2021.) The report is presented as a way for PMA to live into its commitment of being a Matthew 25 church – with its focus on congregational vitality, dismantling systemic racism and ending systemic poverty – and to provide “a scaffolding for a vision that will guide the organization over the course of a generation,” with intentions to transform the agency’s structure, the way it allocates resources and denominational culture. The report refers to the Matthew 25 overture that the 2016 General Assembly approved — stating that other concerns the overture raised … [Read more...]

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Painful legacies: Acknowledging the church’s role in atrocities at Indigenous boarding schools

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The reckoning has already started in Canada, where the unmarked graves of hundreds of Indigenous children were discovered earlier this year — at least 215 children, some as young as three, discovered in May 2021 at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia, and at least 751 graves discovered in June 2021 by the Cowessess First Nation at Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan. The Catholic Church was involved in running both schools. The accounting is coming for the United States, where Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland has pledged a comprehensive review of residential boarding school records to uncover possible burial sites of Native American children, with a report due by April 1, 2022.  Previously, Canada convened a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which issued a report in 2015 documenting the abuse at those schools and calling what happened over more than a century to Native American children “cultural genocide.” A member of the Pueblo of … [Read more...]

“They wanted me to become a white man” — An Indigenous boarding school student’s story

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Editor's note: The Outlook has received word that shortly after this article was published, Roy M. Nageak Sr. died at Mat-Su Regional Medical Center after becoming ill with COVID-19. Our deepest sympathy to his wife, Flossie; his children, grandchildren and extended family; and his many friends.  The crying never stopped. The first night that Roy M. Nageak Sr.’s sister spent at Wrangell Institute in Alaska, she lay on her cot, exhausted from the long journey, but could not sleep. Wrangell was a school that brought Native American children from all over the state, and lying there she could hear “all the crying of the younger kids,” Nageak said. “Some were really young. She couldn’t get that out of her mind for many years.” Nageak heard stories growing up of teachers hitting Native children. “People were injured permanently, sometimes to where they limped all of their lives,” he said. Nageak, born in 1951, is from the Iñupiaq people and serves a commissioned co-pastor of … [Read more...]

Redemption & healing: Synod introduces program to share generational wealth

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A new Restorative Action program, sponsored by the Synod of Lakes and Prairies, is asking congregations, organizations and individuals to donate a portion of their assets to trusts that will be governed by African American and Indigenous people, and used for the benefit of their communities. The commitment is this: The wealth that white churches and families and organizations possess was built at the cost of African American and Indigenous people. And some of it rightfully, theologically, belongs to them and needs to be returned. While initiated by the Synod of Lakes and Prairies, which voted in October 2020 to give $351,000 – 15% of its net assets – to the Restorative Action program, the program is not limited to that synod. It’s starting there, but also inviting white people and organizations from across the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) and beyond the church walls to participate — hoping to serve as a model for how this work can be done in other locations and contexts. The … [Read more...]

A Corp Board tackles big-picture issues, from budgets to pandemic concerns

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The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) budgets look good — at least for now. Plans for the $2.4 million renovation of the first floor of the Presbyterian Center in downtown Louisville are proceeding. And COVID-19 remains a wild card — with the center currently scheduled to reopen fully to employees on Nov. 1, but the possibility that could be pushed back, as cases of the delta variant climb.  Louisville and Jefferson County in Kentucky are currently in the red zone of confirmed COVID-19 cases. A lesson the COVID-19 pandemic keeps teaching: “Don’t get too attached to a plan, because it’s going to change,” said Kathy Lueckert, president of the PC(USA), A Corporation, which is responsible for administrative services for the national church. She also did not rule out the possibility that PC(USA) employees at the national offices might be required to show proof of vaccination in order to return to work in the building. “We’re still evaluating the vaccination requirement,” Lueckert … [Read more...]

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Achievements behind, challenge ahead: Board talks PC(USA) building renovations and COVID-19 pandemic

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In 2018, the General Assembly reconfigured the board that governs the corporate activities of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), A Corporation — basically, which oversees administrative work of the denomination. What’s happened since then: some “heavy lifting” to put a new organizational structure into place, including the creation of the Administrative Services Group in early 2019; the hiring of Kathy Lueckert as A Corporation president in June 2019; and the creation of an organizational culture focused on client services. “I think we should feel very good about the work we have done,” said A Corporation board member Cynthia Campbell, including leading the response of the national church to the COVID-19 pandemic, “which was in no one’s strategic plan.” On the first day of its Aug. 26-27 Zoom meeting, the A Corporation board spent some time looking at what it’s accomplished over those three years; at its intent to shift now from a more hands-on role to one focused increasingly … [Read more...]

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