Sharon’s leadership of the board is marked by wise, gentle persistence. Sharon retired as a senior manager in the Internal Revenue Service after 31 years of federal service. She currently resides in Richmond, Virginia, with her husband Brian, who is president and professor of New Testament at Union Presbyterian Seminary. A lifelong Presbyterian, Sharon has served as an elder at Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church in Princeton, New Jersey, and at Second Presbyterian Church in Richmond, Virginia. Her commitment, hard work and passion inspire those around her to bring their very best and keep working on problems that do not have easy solutions. Sharon has the rare gift of balancing genuine collaboration with stepping out and taking bold action. Board and committee work, along with tutoring at a local elementary school, keep her busy. She enjoys spending time with family and friends, is an avid reader (she’s in three book clubs!) and loves to travel both for the … [Read more...]
Taking risks, trying new things, granting permission — August 19, 2019
Culture is changing rapidly. Being and doing church cannot remain static while everything around us evolves. Nonetheless, our loyalty is to Jesus Christ alone. How, then, do we discern what is essential and what should be jettisoned? How do we experiment with mission and ministry in a way consistent with the gospel? This issue wrestles with these questions, shares stories of out-of-the-box thinking and offers an example of a major change navigated with grace. Click here to read the issue in the Uberflip reader. Social entrepreneurship and mission The Epiphany project of First Presbyterian Church in Atlanta awards grants to help local people serve the community. Leslie Scanlon reports. Turning the Holy Spirit loose in our polityPresbyterian polity offers freedom and flexibility, open to the innovative winds of the Holy Spirit. Stronger together Two Presbyterian agencies worked together to negotiate a healthy merger. … [Read more...]
“Late we come” — The Presbyterian Outlook and Southern Presbyterians on race
Speaking at the March on Washington in August 1963, Eugene Carson Blake, stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (UPCUSA), began with an apology to Martin Luther King Jr. and others gathered: “We come and late we come.” Blake, who had recently been arrested in a demonstration to integrate a Baltimore amusement park, spoke the truth. With notable exceptions – African Americans, some other people of color and numbers of prophetic whites – Presbyterians did come late to the struggle for civil rights for all Americans. Nationally, most Presbyterians may have come tardily to the movement, but they provided strong leadership from the early 1960s onward. They still do. Southern Presbyterians were, for the most part, the latest of the late. Representatives of the Presbyterian Church U.S. (PCUS) formed in 1861 at the outbreak of the Civil War in the South, failed even to endorse that March on Washington — the only so-called mainline denomination to demur. But change … [Read more...]
Slavery and the genealogy of The Presbyterian Outlook
“I am owned by the blood of all of them Who ever were owned by my blood. We cannot be free of each other." – Wendell Berry, “My Great-Grandfather’s Slaves” We are struggling as a nation to know ourselves better, to tell our stories more honestly and to acknowledge the profound ambiguities of our history. This is no easy task in our consumer culture with its entertainment empires seeking to distract us and in our political culture with its lies and tawdry deceits. Nor is it easy to know ourselves better when we think we have no deep connections with our ancestors — that we modern, individualistic Americans appeared in the present moment through the miracle of self-generation like frogs springing up out of the waters of the Nile. Nevertheless, we are – despite the odds – struggling to know ourselves better. And nowhere is this struggle more clearly visible than in our attempts to understand and acknowledge the role of slavery and racism in the history of the nation. We are … [Read more...]
Payback time
“What do we do now?” That’s the refrain I hear after I speak or preach or teach about the long history and persistent presence of white supremacy and racism, even in the church and among Christians. While well intended, “What do we do now?” represents a rush to false resolution and a desire to dismiss our current complicity in the sin of racism. White people like me want to be assured of our goodness. We want to be commended for our desire to do something. We don’t want to sit in the painful space of recognizing the advantages we enjoy at the costly expense to non-whites. Repeatedly, white Christians say to me that the past is past and all that matters is what we do now. Embedded in that urgency is a need to deny the suffering, terror and oppression beset upon people of color not only by our white ancestors, but by our peers in this present day. Unless we white people recognize the depth and breadth of injustice and harm done, we can never advocate and participate fully in making … [Read more...]
Prayer for El Paso
Enough, Lord God, enough. Rend our hearts and restore your goodness and mercy in our land. Through you, all things are possible, and yet we fail to claim your power to transform chaos into order, war into peace, and anger into action. We pray yet again, Lord God, yet again for your children cut down in a hail of gunfire, for families devastated, communities decimated, our country reeling from self-inflicted wounds of hate. We beg your forgiveness for our unwillingness to address the soul-sickness of our nation, the idolatry of guns and our infatuation with violence and anger and hatred. Comfort those who mourn. Heal the hurting. Strengthen the helpers. Grant courage to your people that we may not just say enough, but do all we can and everything required to stop the killing in our streets. Amen. This prayer from Presbyterian Outlook editor Jill Duffield was written after news reports of a mass shooting August 3 at a shopping mall in El Paso. Congregations are free to use this … [Read more...]
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