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Meet those standing for moderator

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The Presbyterian Outlook asked those standing for co-moderator or moderator and vice moderator to share their sense of call as well as their vision of what God may be calling the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to do and be in the years ahead. We are grateful to each of these candidates for their willingness to serve, their honest responses and their faithfulness to seeking God’s will. The moderator or co-moderators will be elected Saturday, June 16, 2018. OUTLOOK: Why do you feel called to stand for moderator/co-moderator? BERTRAM JOHNSON & ELIANA MAXIM: We have been friends for over 15 years. That’s longer than we’ve been ordained. We’ve witnessed each other grow into our calls as pastors with fear, doubt and wonder. We have supported one another to stand in courageous places, making our faith public, striving to honor God by naming social and racial injustice. We both have full lives surrounded by many obligations, joys and dreams. Neither of us thought to stand for … [Read more...]

Tagged With: GA223

Adopting a child mirrors God’s adoption of us all

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Adoption is the act of taking a child born to another woman and claiming that child as family. It is an act, born out of the complicated and broken nature of our world, that can make God’s love and redemption manifest in lives. Through adoption, brokenness and pain can tell another story. God’s story Adoption is ultimately the story of God’s people. God “adopts” the people of Israel to be God’s people, and covenants to be their God. God becomes a birth parent, relinquishing the divine son to be raised by other parents. Jesus knows what it is to be an adopted child. The triad of adoption is complete in the story of God’s own self and God’s people. An early function of adoption was to secure someone to inherit a family farm, a family name. Abram, before his name change and before his heirs were born, planned for Eliezer of Damascus to be his heir (Genesis 15). Biological children still had priority in inheritance. It was an unequal if still beneficial process. The transactional … [Read more...]

Tagged With: family life • parenting

What’s right about All Souls Presbyterian Church?

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All Souls Presbyterian Church — Richmond, Virginia In 1952 the Presbytery of East Hanover (now Presbytery of the James) and Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, approached a nascent African-American congregation about a joint witness. From that, All Souls Presbyterian Church was born — the first integrated congregation in the capital of the confederacy. Over the decades, All Souls has borne a vibrant witness to the reconciliation that we know in Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:14), including founding the city’s first integrated Boy Scout troop and first integrated vacation Bible school. Today, the church building houses three ministries that continue to serve the local (and gentrifying) community: Northside Cares, which offers free breakfast twice a month to all; Into the Neighborhood, which ministers to homeless women and offers life-skills and job training to people re-entering society from incarceration; and Joe’s Bike Shop, which trains local youth to repair bikes, and … [Read more...]

Embodying parenting and faith

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Before my daughter arrived at toddler-hood, I read a lot about healthy toddler interactions. I read how to talk about sharing. (One key is don’t talk about it. Talk about taking turns instead). I absorbed wisdom on what not to do when one kid takes a toy from another. (Don’t jump in right away. Narrate what’s happening as you try to let the kids work it out on their own.) But until my family interacted with other like-minded families, all this information was just theoretical. To really understand it, my husband and I had to witness our daughter cry because she wanted the coveted ice cream truck toy that her friend was enjoying. Then we urged her to ask for a turn and accept her friend’s answer whether it was “yes” or “no.” I observed carefully when a friend pulled a ball out of her hands. I realized she didn’t get upset about it, and she was able to move on to another toy as long as I stayed calm. I watched as my friends used these strategies with their own children. I learned from … [Read more...]

Tagged With: family life • parenting

Hope and challenge: Vocation within the PC(USA)

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There is good news to report! The majority of ministers ordained in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in the last decade were in their 20s and 30s, and most are serving in positions with benefits provided through the Board of Pensions. Still, there are challenges. We are ordaining fewer ministers each year, and of those ordained, access to full benefits and equal compensation is not consistent across gender and age. While the Board of Pensions is bringing forward multiple programs to encourage new calls for ministers, congregations and presbyteries will have to create innovation on the ground. Seminaries have a key role to play, as do our ordination candidates themselves. Let’s take a deeper dive into the data and be open equally to positive surprises and predictable disappointments. THE RESEARCH During 2017, the board worked with the Office of General Assembly (OGA) to develop the most comprehensive vocational data set on PC(USA) ministers in a generation. By combining … [Read more...]

Tagged With: Board of Pensions

Cultural contempt

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Repeatedly, in a multitude of settings, I hear complaints about people in leadership positions: the executive director, the principal, the president, the head of staff… you name it. From the neighborhood association to the city council and beyond, leaders are considered not simply mistaken or misdirected or misinformed, they are stupid, idiots, evil. Motives are not questioned, they are assumed malevolent. Decisions are not disagreed with, debated and discussed, they are maligned and the people who made them castigated. The benefit of the doubt doesn’t exist anymore. Public postings of perceived ineptitude have replaced personal conversations seeking understanding and resolution. And we wonder why the pool of people willing to occupy leadership roles is so shallow. When we operate out of a default mode of disdain, we get the leaders we deserve: the ones who don’t give a whit about what others think, the ones who seek power for self-aggrandizement and abuse the privileges their … [Read more...]

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