Mission Yearbook: Peru trip’s lessons inspire actions for leaders in PC(USA)

Last summer, a small delegation of Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) leaders journeyed to Peru. Over eight days, they traveled from remote Andean villages to the coastal capital of Lima and into the depths of the Amazon jungle. Along the way, they met with church leaders, theologians, activists and local citizens. They worshiped, dialogued, and learned about the profound damage that conquest and extractive mining have inflicted — and continue to inflict — on the environment, Indigenous communities, and other marginalized populations. When they departed, they carried a promise: what happened in Peru would not stay in Peru.

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The Peru delegation included staff from the Interim Unified Agency, the Co-Moderator of the 226th General Assembly (2024) and mid-council staff. (Contributed photo)

Global engagement is a key value of the PC(USA), and international trips are common — especially for denominational leaders. However, while many past trips centered primarily on observing or serving communities abroad, this delegation approached the visit with an eye toward action back home. The Rev. Tony Larson, Co-Moderator of the 226th General Assembly (2024), brought a personal connection to the trip’s focus on the impacts of extractivism — a challenge he sees on the Carolina coast where he lives. The trip’s conveners were determined that participants would return not only with memories, but with insights and commitments they could apply in their U.S. communities.

Alongside Larson, the delegation included denominational staff from ministries focused on ecumenical and interreligious engagement; compassion, peace and justice; as well as disaster assistance. Representatives from presbyteries across the country also participated. 

Speaking about the commitment to tangible follow-ups from their trip, the Rev. Dr. Laurie Kraus, director of Humanitarian and Global Ecumenical Engagement in the Interim Unified Agency, said, “We have not generally aimed for specific ‘deliverables’ when following up on such visits. This, we realize, is a lost opportunity for our Church, as well as for the partners who have taken time and effort to share their work and vision with us. This time, instead of limiting the trip to staff leads and the Co-Moderator, we intentionally invited leaders from two presbyteries involved in Joining Hands work in Peru: the Rev. Annanda Barclay from San Jose and Dr. Clarice Hutchens from Giddings-Lovejoy.”

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La Oroya is home to a smelting operation and is considered one of the most polluted places in the world. (Contributed photo)

In addition to its support of the Joining Hands Network in Peru, the Presbytery of San Jose has an ongoing commitment to addressing Indigenous land rights and the environmental consequences of the Doctrine of Discovery. Barclay also co-moderates the board for the Center for Jubilee Practice, which supports churches and Christian organizations in “confronting their legacies of liberation and developing restorative communal practices.” Giddings-Lovejoy Presbytery has advocated for environmental justice within the U.S., endorsing General Assembly overtures highlighting the intersection of environmental issues and social inequities. Hutchens, a scientist and business executive, focuses on environmental sustainability and the integration of Western science with Indigenous knowledge.

This diverse group of Presbyterians brought their own expertise and passions to bear during their time in Peru. Now that they are home, they are committed to finding ways to integrate what they learned into their local contexts. While much is still being discerned, some concrete ideas have emerged.

Group members reconvened in August to share their ideas for next steps, which Kraus said include “outreach to a number of other presbyteries within whose bounds similar issues of environmental racism, extractivism, and Indigenous rights are in play.” She said they are working toward a follow-up trip to include some of those presbyteries in hopes of longer-term dialogue. Kraus also said a series of short videos could lift up the connection between experiences of partners in Peru and struggles in the U.S.

Meanwhile, in Peru, the work to undo the damage of conquest and the pervasive threat of extractivism continues. Eduardo Arboccó, head of Peru’s Joining Hands Network, emphasized the need to support Indigenous defenders — particularly women — who bear the heaviest burdens of exclusion in a society still marked by colonialist, sexist and classist practices. He said efforts going forward will focus especially on the northern Amazon, where Indigenous communities face heightened risks from foreign and domestic companies, and where environmental defenders often struggle to make their voices heard. The network also hopes to continue partnering with other Christian organizations, including the PC(USA), as they work toward justice and healing for the earth and human communities harmed by extractivist industries.

Layton Williams Berkes, Communications Strategist, Presbyterian News Service (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Kelly Cahill, Administrator, Plan Operations, Board of Pensions
Peter Campbell, Team Lead Consultant, Information Technology Infrastructure, Administrative Services Group, A Corporation                                   

Let us pray:

Gracious God, thank you for opportunities to see our neighbors’ plights in a new light. May we follow your example to help those in need as much as we possibly can. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: Stewardship leaders are urged to reframe giving conversations amid changing faith patterns

How congregations weather changing faith and giving patterns may depend on how leaders engage and talk about stewardship, said Dr. David P. King.

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Dr. David P. King of the Lake Institute on Faith and Giving delivered the opening plenary last month at Stewardship Kaleidoscope. (Photo by Gregg Brekke)

King, who is Karen Lake Buttrey Director of the Lake Institute on Faith and Giving and associate professor of Philanthropic Studies within the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, recently spoke at the first plenary gathering at Stewardship Kaleidoscope  in New Orleans. The annual conference is presented by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

In “Engaging the Shifting Landscape of Faith and Giving,” King plunged into numbers that tell a nuanced story. Church membership among U.S. adults is now below 50%, with 56% reporting they seldom or never attend church.

“Even engaged members might be there just half the month,” he said.

History shows a change, particularly after World War II, from “the age of association to the age of authenticity.” Emerging generations feel less need to affiliate with an organization such as a congregation to find meaning and purpose, preferring a more personalized journey.

While 22% of Americans describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious,” 88% of these engage in a spiritual or religious activity weekly or more often.

“These people are inclined to be givers,” King said, encouraging church leaders to consider how to encourage congregational participation in conjunction with this generosity.

Almost a quarter of all charitable giving goes to religious organizations. The majority of these are congregations, King said. However, as a share of total giving, donations to religion have declined since the 1980s.

Also decreased is the number of households giving to charity in general. “Fewer folks are giving more, particularly the biggest donors,” he noted.

King cited declines in both individual disposable income and institutional trust. Another factor is a marked decline in giving to churches among adults younger than 30.

Fifty-five percent of Americans say religious or spiritual values motivate their giving, King said.

“One question is: How are they giving?” King said.

He pointed to four giving types: impulsive, selective, habitual and planned. “Impulsive givers (42%) are about half of all Americans,” he said. Selective givers came in at 17%, while planned givers make up about 16% and habitual are only 6%.

“This isn’t to say any of these are right or wrong,” King said, “but messaging is important.”

Also consider “pay the bills” vs. “share the vision” messaging, he suggested. The former frames money in mostly unspiritual terms: “Money is scarce.” “We have bills to pay if we’re going to survive.” The latter, by contrast, may say: “We may not be rich, but we have more than enough.” or “Partner with us in God’s mission to …”

The word “stewardship” itself gets used so much it can become vague or even empty, King said.

“We could either rehab stewardship language or retire it,” he said. “I think we could revivify it. We can give it new life.”

Nancy Crowe for the Presbyterian Foundation (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Olivia Cacchione, Outreach Specialist, Presbyterian Historical Society, Interim Unified Agency
Carl Cadet, Lead Cook, Stony Point Center, Interim Unified Agency

Let us pray:

Generous God, all that we have comes from you, and you invite us to share your work in the world. Help us to share a vision that inspires faith and joyful participation in your mission. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: Young advocates gather for worship and justice at Michigan church during conference

As participants in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s Young Adult Advocacy Conference came together for a Sunday morning service with members of First Presbyterian Church of Lansing, the Rev. Jennifer Hibben had a situation back home on her mind.

While on the way to the conference, Hibben, a Methodist minister accompanying a group pf YAAC participants who were en route from Iowa, had received a notification that a community member had been apprehended by immigration authorities.

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The Rev. Jennifer Hibben is director of The Vine, a campus ministry affiliated with Collegiate Presbyterian Church in Ames, Iowa. (Photo by Alex Simon)

“We're really heartbroken about that,” said Hibben, who directs The Vine, a campus ministry affiliated with Collegiate Presbyterian Church and serving the Iowa State University community. "We continue to figure out how we as people of the church can continue to work so that these things don't happen.” 

Social justice advocacy work — and the importance of getting young people involved — was the focus of the recent conference, also known as “Jesus and Justice.” The topic also tied into that Sunday’s sermon at First Presbyterian Church by the Rev. Jimmie Hawkins, advocacy director in the Interim Unified Agency of the PC(USA).

Explaining how the conference works, Hawkins told church service attendees that “we bring young people together to talk about faith and justice together — how they are intertwined” and later added, "God calls us to be people of justice.”

During his sermon, Hawkins noted that “when you talk to young people about their priorities, justice is at the top of the list,” and praised a YAAC panel of young adults for expressing their concern about many topics on the Saturday before.

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The Rev. Jimmie Hawkins speaks at First Presbyterian Church of Lansing, Michigan. (Photo by Alex Simon)

Young people “talk about the ways in which they want to make a difference in this world,” Hawkins noted, and when “you look at all of the protest marches that happened in this country in the last five years, most of them have been led by young people.”

So, it’s vital for the church to convey the message that justice was important to Jesus and is also important to the PC(USA), Hawkins has noted.

“We’ve got to find ways to connect with young people, to let them know that we, too, are concerned about justice,” he said. “We want to support you in your drive to make a difference in this world, to be a living witness to what it means to follow Jesus.” 

One of the main Scriptures that Hawkins highlighted was Matthew 23:23–24 in which Jesus chastises the people for neglecting justice, mercy and faithfulness. “Those are our priorities today, church. If everyone does not have justice, we cannot be comfortable.”

Hawkins also emphasized Micah 6:8, which asks, “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God?”

Yet “our rulers are struggling with what it means to have integrity,” Hawkins said. “Our nation is so divided, one against another, and even in the church, we define ourselves by political labels,” such as being a red, blue or purple church, instead of remembering that “we fall under the banner of Jesus Christ.”

Regardless of race, socioeconomic status or political party, “when we walk in this house we are one,” Hawkins said.

The preacher also expressed concern about wars scattered around the world, from Gaza to Sudan to Ukraine, and urged church attendees to look to Micah 4:2–3 for words of peace.

“War is too rampant around this world,” Hawkins said. “And we pray that our God might indeed bring forth this promise that all nations will put away their weapons of war and yet melt them down into farming tools in order to feed hungry children. That is why we are here, church. We are called to be a people who recognize that there is pain in this world, there’s suffering in this world, and we cannot pretend that it's not going forth and not happening and not do anything about it.”

Darla Carter, Communications Strategist, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Donna Burkland, Apprentice, 1001 New Worshiping Communities, Interim Unified Agency
Becky Burton, Data Entry, Funds Development Operations, Administrative Services Group, A Corporation

Let us pray:

God of justice and mercy, bless young leaders with courage and perseverance and unite us across every divide so that together we may be instruments of your peace. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: Author offers reflections on ‘the AI mirror’ during lecture

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Dr. Shannon Vallor

Delivering the Anita and Antonio Gott Lecture at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City recently, Dr. Shannon Vallor explored the topic “The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking.” Vallor is the Baillie Gifford Professor in the Ethics of Data and Artificial Intelligence at the Edinburgh Futures Institute at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Her most recent book, which shares a title with her lecture, explores the ethics, advantages and challenges of a future with artificial intelligence.

She was introduced before the lecture by the Rev. Dr. Scott Black Johnston, senior pastor at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. Vallor said her book “uses a mirror as a metaphor to help us understand how AI tools work, what they can do and cannot do, and what they can do but probably shouldn’t.”

During her talk, which can be seen here, Vallor addressed mirrors, space, time and stories.

On the topic of mirrors, “we need to grasp AI’s impacts on democracy, science, media, the arts and climate,” she said, including how we carry out our daily work and how we find companionship.

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“It is changing how we make laws, music, love and war,” Vallor said. AI is a mirror “in a more powerful sense. It’s not one technology, but many machine-learning tools.”

When you look in a mirror, “you know there is no second face in that room,” she said. But AI companies “want you to fail the mirror test. They want you to think [that with AI technology] you’re seeing something that can help you, teach you, comfort you, help you speak and write — and one day replace you.”

AI tricks “can be dazzling, even blinding and disorienting,” she said. “They are used to confound us. They are fraudulent deep-fake images, designed to gin up our rage over something that never happened.”

Thinking about space, Vallor said that in order to reason, “we need to use thought as a way to stretch into the open space of the future.” AI tools can be designed “to hold open the space of reason, but for the most part they aren’t.” A large language model won’t tell us “I don’t really know” or “I’m not sure” or “why don’t you tell me?” she noted.

“They are mental space-filling machines,” Vallor said. “Want a better ending to your novel? The AI mirror has unflagging confidence.”

If we had large language models in the 1600s and asked them to deliver justice, “they would have never demanded the liberation of women and slaves. They could not have even questioned the divine right of kings,” she said. “We would have remained stuck in time.”

Thinking “requires the repeated practice of scaling daunting peaks. We’re letting those skills erode,” she said. “We could design AI to strengthen our cognitive muscles and those of the next generation, but that’s not what the market wants. It wants to extract maximum returns now.”

Vallor reminded her hearers that “we know space and time aren’t separate” and that “things and events arrive on an unpredictable schedule.”

Humans enjoy the ability to choose. “We can abandon a commitment or make one we swore we would never take on,” Vallor said. “We can stick with the dire politics we know, or we can say, ‘to hell with this. We’re changing the game.’”

During a question-and-answer session following her talk, Vallor was asked about how we can get to a hopeful future.

“I think we can get there through remembering the history of human courage and human responsibility,” she said. “When things feel like they’re spinning out of control, it’s easy to feel like we don’t have the resources to get through this.”

“All you have to do is read history enough to know how many times we’ve been in some version of here,” she said, and “how many times humanity has been boxed up … and chewed its way out through solidarity, ingenuity, faith and a commitment to the future.”

“There are ways to channel feelings into a power of creating a future for ourselves and one another,” Vallor said. “We’ve done it so many times, and we can do it again.”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Lucy Bryant, Online Service Client Relations Specialist, Operations, The Presbyterian Foundation
Monica Buonincontri, Vice President, Marketing & Commumications, The Board of Pensions

Let us pray:

God of truth and wisdom, you created us with minds to wonder, question and imagine. As we live in a world shaped by new technologies, help us to use what we create with humility, courage and care. Remind us that no machine can replace the dignity, responsibility and hope you have placed within humanity. Amen.

One Great Hour of Sharing - Small Gifts Make a Big Difference

Throughout the years, our “Gracie” fish coin banks have been used to help encourage children to participate in One Great Hour of Sharing. The Leaders’s Guide offers many suggestions for using the fish coin banks and can be found on page 10. You can get creative and download fish stickers or can wrapper to put on your own boxes, cans or water bottles. Print these stickers to use wherever you like. Use these stickers or the Can Wrapper below to make your own way to collect coins. Download Fish Stickers Create coin cans for collection or display. Download Can Wrapper The Leader’s Guide has two suggested litanies to incorporate use of the fish boxes into One Great Hour of Sharing worship. You can find them on page 11. Download the Leader's Guide Centered in the prophet Micah’s call to do justice, One Great Hour of Sharing has been helping neighbors in need around the world for over 75 years. The annual Offering gives the PC(USA) a tangible way to share God’s love by joining together to help eliminate the root causes of the world’s injustices. Thank you for generously supporting the Churchwide Special Offerings. If you have any questions, reply to this email or call us at (800) 728-7228, Ext. 5047.

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Mission Yearbook: Documentary ‘Evicting the American Dream’ is now streaming on Amazon Prime

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"Evicting the American Dream" has already been shown in several communities across the country. It's now available for streaming on Amazon Prime. (Contributed photo)

“Evicting the American Dream” is now available to stream on Amazon Prime. The documentary, produced by Presbyterian Disaster Assistance and Counter Stories Productions, presents the stories of children and families confronting eviction and homelessness, exploring the root causes and systemic issues that perpetuate this epidemic.

“Amazon Prime has the potential to reach over 200 million worldwide, and this is just an incredible platform and opportunity to amplify these voices and Counter Stories to a wider audience of millions,” said David Barnhart, director of the documentary and associate for Story Ministry for Presbyterian Disaster Assistance.

Dr. Katherine Rowell, co-producer of the film and a retired sociology professor at Sinclair College in Dayton, Ohio, addressed some of the current challenges around housing in the United States. “We continue to see racial disparity in housing affordability and eviction rates,” Rowell said. “The issue of housing affordability remains at the heart of the American Dream, and increasingly that dream is becoming a nightmare for many families.”

Rowell developed a documentary resource guide to the film available to download with additional resources about eviction and homelessness as a way to raise awareness and encourage education and dialogue around this topic. “It is hoped that communities will add their own resources and questions to guide these conversations and call for action in their communities,” Rowell said.

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Listen to staff from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) talk about “Evicting the American Dream” here.

“Evicting the American Dream” joins other Counter Stories Productions documentaries available for streaming, including “Trigger: The Ripple Effect of Gun Violence” and “Flint: The Poisoning of an American City.” 

Barnhart also highlighted the importance of generating national conversations and engagement around root causes, noting that “Flint: The Poisoning of an American City” recently reached the “15 million Streaming Milestone” across all streaming platforms worldwide. “This level of outreach is incredibly important as we all work together in these movements for justice,” Barnhart said.

Since its premiere last March, “Evicting the American Dream” has been screened in places across the United States, including Kentucky, Ohio, Georgia, Washington, D.C., North Carolina, Illinois and California. Screenings are accompanied by panel discussions and brainstorming sessions with local leaders, organizations and faith groups addressing eviction and homelessness.

See some of the responses from partners and collaborators here.

Alongside the screening campaign for “Evicting the American Dream,” Counter Stories Productions is in the production phase for a documentary about gun violence prevention and another one focused on environmental racism. 

More information about Counter Stories Productions and its film resources can be found here or here. 

Michelle Muñiz, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Andrew Browne, Executive Vice President, Engagement & Church Relations, The Board of Pensions
Laura Bryan, Manager, Financial Aid for Service, Interim Unified Agency

Let us pray:

God of shelter and mercy, be near to those who are losing homes or fearing what comes next. Stir compassion and wisdom in leaders so that justice and care may prevail. Amen