Mission Yearbook: Members of the Zo tribe of Myanmar find sanctuary as PC(USA) church

“This church was founded on the principle that we will become a tree of life,” said the Rev. Sarah Lane, pastor of the Zo Presbyterian Church, a new worshiping community within the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta that serves refugees and immigrants from Myanmar. “A tree of life indicates that we are here for the people in the U.S. but also in the future to do mission work for people that are outside the bounds of the U.S.”

The ancestral lands of the Zo tribe fall on either side of the border between Myanmar and India. According to the Rev. Dr. Lindsay Armstrong, executive director of the presbytery's New Church Development Commission, Zo Presbyterian Church was started by Lane’s father, Dr. Lianchinkhup Taithul, during a time that the United States and international partners were resettling refugees from Myanmar because the Zo people were being ethnically cleansed. Armstrong remembers being surprised and impressed when Taithul walked into the presbytery office, introduced himself as a member of the Presbyterian Church of Myanmar, and announced his intentions to start the first Zo church within the PC(USA), which would lead to other PC(USA) congregations of Zo people in the nation. As a young adult, Taithul received a Master of Theology degree from Princeton Theological Seminary, where he learned Greek and Hebrew before returning to the Zo tribal territory. Taithul completed the first translation of the Bible from these ancient languages into the Zo language.

Lane describes her father as valuing women’s contributions, so when Taithul died in an automobile accident, Lane felt called to serve the new worshiping community as its pastor even though there were no women ordained in Zo Presbyterian churches at the time. She enrolled at Columbia Theological Seminary and was later ordained as a teaching elder in the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta, where she also works in health-care chaplaincy.

This church was founded as “a tree of life,” the Rev. Sarah Lane said of her vision
of a church that serves Zo refugees in the United States and abroad. Lane visited
Myanmar in 2018. (Photo contributed by the Rev. Sarah Lane)

Lane is working with the presbytery to train women as well as men to be elders in the church through a leadership training program for new worshiping communities run by the New Church Development Commission.

Opportunities to educate and lead flow between the presbytery and congregations that have made a home for Zo Presbyterians in Atlanta, where two of the three PC(USA) congregations with predominantly Zo membership are currently located.

“Zo Presbyterian Church’s impact on this presbytery has been unique,” said Armstrong. “I don’t think many people knew much about Burma or Myanmar. I don’t think many people knew a lot about the plight of the refugee people who were being resettled around the world.”

There is a third Zo congregation in Baltimore, according to the Rev. Ralph Su, who is the associate for Asian Intercultural Congregational Support for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Su currently supports 120 congregations, including Burmese, Cambodian, Chinese, Filipino, and South Asian churches, as they seek to partner with their councils and presbyteries in faithful ministry.

Su helps mid councils and immigrant ministers as they communicate with denominations in home countries, apply for religious worker visas and adjust to the polity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), which can be difficult when the denomination’s constitutional books have been translated only into Spanish and Korean.

Su, who speaks Taiwanese, Mandarin, and Japanese, works with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to accommodate the translation needs of non-Korean Asian language speakers. Later this year, translations of the Brief Statement of Faith of the PC(USA) will be translated into three of the 10 languages Su supports. This will be the first confession to be translated into these languages.

Su hopes these translated confessions will show both hospitality and support as well as assist in the training of pastors, elders and commissioned ruling elders in Asian language-specific communities. There are no plans to translate the Book of Order or the Book of Confession into Zo.

But that won’t stop Lane and her vision of the Presbyterian church as a tree of life that serves people of the Zo tribe both here in the U.S. and those abroad.

The PC(USA) and its partners continue to look for ways to support those affected by the humanitarian crisis in Myanmar. Christians are a minority in Myanmar. The Presbyterian Church of Myanmar currently has only 30,000 members.

Beth Waltemath, Communications Strategist, Communications Ministry, Interim Unified Agency (Click here to read original PNS story)

Let us join in prayer for:

• Destini Hodges, Coordinator of the Young Adult Volunteer Program, Interim Unified Agency
• Patricia Hoehn, Production Clerk, Hubbard Press, Administrative Services Group (A Corp) 

Let us pray:

God of peace and love, transform us from people who hurt to people who bring peace. Change our hearts to be more like yours, O God. May you work in us, our churches, our communities, and our world for peace, compassion, and justice for all. In the name of Christ. Amen.

Minute for Mission: World Water Day

Water is life, Indigenous water-protectors proclaim. Water is a blessing, gardeners understand. Water is powerful, farmers know — too much or too little can be dangerous for both crops and people. Water is precious, and it is needed in unpolluted and uncontaminated form, to be used in one of our essential sacraments in our faith tradition.

In baptism, we use water as we share a mark of being in community and bound to one another. We pledge our covenant to care for our siblings through this sign and seal of God’s grace. How could we celebrate this holy sacrament without all people having access to clean water?

Around the world and in our own country, having fresh water sources, “just enough” water, and access to potable water are inequitable. Some communities face floods while others face drought. Some communities are poisoned by lead pipes in systems long in disrepair, or by industrial and chemical pollutants from nearby industries. Still others around the world are in dire need of water for drinking, cooking, cleaning, and bathing and yet find no nearby water sources or only sources that have been contaminated.

Without water, we cannot live. All creatures and systems depend on water, and we are grateful for the life it brings and nourishes. As Christians and Presbyterians, we are grateful to God for this gift that is a part of Baptism. Being fortified by the grace of God in baptism, let us commit to working for a world where everyone has access to clean water, and just enough.

Rev. Rebecca Barnes, Manager, Presbyterian Hunger Program, Interim Unified Agency

Let us join in prayer for:

• Dori Hjalmarson, Mission co-worker serving in Honduras, World Mission, Interim Unified Agency 
• Randy Hobson, Manager, Design & Multimedia, Communication, Interim Unified Agency 

Let us pray:

God, in the beginning of time, your wisdom danced over the waters of the earth. We give you thanks that your Spirit still blows through your Creation, as it did in the beginning of time. May your sacred presence continue to infuse the waters of the world and bring creativity, healing, and transformation to hurting places.

Mission Yearbook: Youth workers urged to ‘keep encouraging one another’

From left are Stephen Flavin, Children and Youth Director, First Presbyterian
Church, Northville, Mich.; Shelli Dart, Director of Youth Ministry, First
Presbyterian Church, Bellevue, Neb.; and Chris Hecker, Director of Youth,
Village Church, Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. (photo by Emily Enders Odom)

Reaching eagerly into their brown paper lunch sacks and enthusiastically engaging the three conversation prompts displayed on the screen, attendees at the Youth Workers Lunch at the Association of Partners in Christian Education (APCE) 2025 Annual Event did just what the luncheon’s organizers had hoped they would do.

“For me, this is my first experience with the PC(USA),” said Stephen Flavin, children and youth director at the First Presbyterian Church of Northville (Michigan), who came to serve a PC(USA) congregation from the Free Methodist tradition. “I’m here to understand the culture and to network a little more.”

Sponsored by the Presbyterian Youth Workers Association (PYWA) and the office of Presbyterian Youth and Triennium (PYAT) of the Interim Unified Agency of the PC(USA), the luncheon was designed around the PYWA’s stated mission to “connect, uphold, and inspire Presbyterian youth workers to faithfully serve the one triune God among young people.”

One of Flavin’s tablemates, Shelli Dart, director of Youth Ministry at the First Presbyterian Church in Bellevue, Nebraska, added that she was looking forward to “new ideas,” especially “creative ways to integrate our band, choir and show schedule with faith formation.”

As if hearing that very concern, Dr. Christy Williams, PYWA’s organizational administrator, opened the luncheon with timely words of welcome and encouragement.

“We understand your unique challenges and joys, and we want to be there for both,” Williams said.

The gathering then delighted in an appearance by the Rev. CeCe Armstrong, Co-Moderator of the 226th General Assembly (2024).

Dr. Christy Williams (photo by Emily Enders Odom)

Armstrong, who — as Dart would later share with the gathering had so memorably preached at the 2019 Presbyterian Youth Triennium — offered brief remarks and the luncheon’s opening blessing.

“We do this work with love and joy and laughter,” began Armstrong, “and y’all need to laugh more! Feel free to practice now!”

She reminded the youth workers that they are doing the important work of “training the replacements.”

“That’s your responsibility anywhere you go in spaces with youth,” she said. “It’s an important reminder that none of us is going to be here forever.”

Following a brief time of sharing their responses to the table prompts, the group heard from several PYWA board members, but not before Eileen VanGieson, co-moderator of PYWA, expressed the association’s excitement about being at APCE and their gratitude to the office of Presbyterian Youth and Triennium, which hosted and underwrote “a huge part of this lunch.”

She added that PYWA is one of five members of the Collective of the Office of Christian Formation of the Interim Unified Agency of the PC(USA). The others are the Presbyterian Older Adult Ministry Network (POAMN), UKirk, Presbyterian Church Camp and Conference Association (PCCCA), and the Association of Partners in Christian Education (APCE).

Among the newest PYWA initiatives the group would learn about during the luncheon was its new Youth Worker Map. As Board Member Rebekah Witt explained, the new map will be populated with blue dots representing UKirk sites, red dots for youth worker locations, and green dots showing camps and conference centers.

The Rev. CeCe Armstrong (photo by Emily Enders Odom)

“Maybe you have a college student and you’re looking for a UKirk site, or you’ve moved and you’re at a new church looking to connect with colleagues,” Witt said. “Once you sign up for PYWA, which is free, you can get your dot on the map!”

Board member Kate Satterstrom pointed the group toward the comprehensive resource page on the association’s new website. “There are tons of resources to help get you thinking,” she said.

Satterstrom announced that PYWA is in the process of developing a new sexuality resource. She also commended the use of Quicksheets, which are free, downloadable PDF resources produced by PYAT on a variety of topics related to youth ministry.

VanGieson closed the event by inviting attendees’ membership and participation in PYWA, which she said is “actively trying to give you the support you need to make sure you thrive.”

“We know that sometimes this job is really hard and really lonely,” she said. “We hear so many of you say, ‘I feel so alone.’ But when you get into a room with such fun, energetic people, the spark in you ignites the spark in me. So, let’s keep encouraging one another.”

Emily Odom, Associate Director of Mission Communications, Interim Unified Agency (Click here to read original PNS story)

Let us join in prayer for:

• Michael Hilliard, Sales and Events Coordinator, Presbyterian Publishing Corporation
• Matt Hinkle, System Engineer, Presbyterian Foundation 

Let us pray:

Lord, we are continually surprised and astounded by your abundant presence in our lives. Help us to be open to your working through the Holy Spirit and to recognize when we are being called to your service. Amen.

Minute for Mission: Mr. Rogers Day

Fred Rogers was an ordained minister of word and sacrament for the PC(USA) and is a notable public figure whose work around peace and reconciliation is worth remembering. Rogers was also a pioneer in the world of Christian education and formation of young children. March 20 was his birthday, and so it is the day that the PC(USA) has chosen to highlight all we can learn from his work.

We live in a world filled with personal, community, and world conflict where sometimes it is difficult to cope or be hopeful, but we can continue to learn from the work of Fred Rogers and follow his example. Fred’s peacemaking sensibilities both on and off camera can inform our lives today. He practiced deep listening, deep thinking, and deep understanding. He modeled building neighborhoods of compassion and peace through the Neighborhood of Make Believe on his TV show, by testifying before Congress and through curriculum like Peacemaking in the Family: Four Intergenerational Events, originally written with the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program in the 1980s and available free for download.

Author Michael Long, in his book “Peaceful Neighbor: Rediscovering the Counter Cultural Mister Rogers,” says “peace is possible, according to Rogers, first because each of us is equipped with a powerful moral imagination — the ability to see goodness in moments of crisis and danger. As Mister Rogers puts this in his concluding monologue, ‘You see, people can imagine bad things, hurtful things, angry war-like things, but people can also imagine good things, helpful things, happy peaceful things.’ … Peace is possible because we are actors, not passive victims, who can always choose to create the peace we have envisioned.” So, let’s find ways to choose peace and build neighborhoods of compassion.

You can find a wealth of resources to celebrate the legacy of Fred Rogers, engage in Peacemaking, and be neighborly here. There are a variety of materials to use in different contexts and settings for March 20 or any day during the year a faith community chooses to celebrate. Resources include Walking in God’s Path of Peace: Intergenerational worship liturgy, the hymn “Jesus Teach Us to Be Neighbors,” a coloring page, the Building a Neighborhood Together Intergenerational Peacemaking Project, and Neighboring Sunday activities.

Miatta Wilson, Mission Associate, Office of Christian Formation, Interim Unified Agency pcusa.org/formation 

Let us join in prayer for:

• Kyna Herzinger, Records Manager, Presbyterian Historical Society
• Marquis Hill, Housekeeper, Stony Point Center, Interim Unified Agency 

Let us pray:

Gracious and Loving God, come near and be with us today and help us to look for ways to be a neighbor, to share love and to build peace. Come near, and be with those who are suffering in homes, communities, and around the world where violence is present and persistent. Come near and be with the peacebuilders and those finding ways to show your love in both difficult and ordinary situations. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: ‘We would never tell a kid who painted off the paper they had no future in Sunday school’

The Rev. Dr. Almeda M. Wright

At Yale Divinity School, where the Rev. Dr. Almeda M. Wright is an associate professor of Christian Education, a Lilly Foundation grant helps cohorts to try, to fail, and to learn from their failures.

“I tell students, ‘I will give you money to mess things up,” Wright said Thursday during the second plenary at the Annual Event of the Association of Partners in Christian Education. “What I’m most interested in is what you learn in the process.”

In fact, Wright is so interested she wrote a foreword for a new book, “Nobody’s Perfect: Redefining Sin and Mistakes in Adolescent Christian Education,” which was published Feb. 25.

“The authors are pushing us in this work [as Christian educators] to consider mistake-making, particularly among young people, and to wrestle with centering the concept of making mistakes,” Wright said.

Wright began her career as an electrical engineer. “A skillset of engineers is I have an uncanny high skill level of messing things up. My gift is to blow things up,” she said. “A skill required of engineers is failing well. … Make mistakes and learn from them,” she said, adding this message to the pastors and Christian educators attending APCE’s Annual Event: “Build communities and transform cultures so one can be supported in failing and encouraged to try again.”

Too often, even for young people, the stakes are too high, Wright said.

“Instead of giving them room to fail, young people are forced into rigid expectations,” she said. “Perfectionism seems to be the only safe way.”

But Christian educators “can hold mistakes and embrace mistake-making.”

“The conversation is not simply over how to get it right, or how we can best be perfect,” she said. “It’s a reminder that as we wrestle with fallibilities, there is good news: the invitation is to create ways of telling more complete narratives about who we are and how we can live together” in ways where we’re “calling out, repairing [failures] and not being so afraid of messing things up that we don’t even start.”

The third cohort group is currently in place at the young adult ministry innovation hub for people 23–29 years old. “That’s a demographic most of our curriculum has nothing to say to,” Wright said. “We bring in artists, activists, and people who are dreaming. We try to help them think about different ways of doing ministry.”

When asked to give some examples, Wright mentioned an alternative Christian community with locations in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Hartford, Connecticut. Wright focuses on the latter because of its proximity to New Haven.

“They are dealing with people suspicious of the church,” she said. “They meet in coffee shops and gyms. Sometimes there’s a sermon, and sometimes there isn’t. They do a lot of talking and a lot of listening.”

“We mess up really well. We just don’t name it that way,” she said. The arts and crafts projects for the youngest participants can bring joy to the entire faith community.

“We know how to cover the surfaces and bring out the paint and the messy art supplies,” she said. “They put the paint on the canvas, and mother has never been prouder.”

“We need to remind ourselves of the ways we curate experiences like that with less predetermined goals,” Wright said. “How do we hold space to let young people know that making mistakes is part of life? We would never tell a kid who painted off the paper they had no future in Sunday school.”

It's an approach with biblical roots.

“I like the way the Hebrew Bible is full of stories of people messing up and God not counting them out,” she said.

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service, Interim Unified Agency (Click here to read original PNS story)

Let us join in prayer for:

• Carissa Herold, Marketing Associate, Presbyterian Women 
• Nell Herring, Mission Specialist II for Volunteer Ministries, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, Interim Unified Agency 

Let us pray:

God, thank you for the ripple effect on lives when we engage Scripture. Continue to encourage us “to take hold of life that really is life.” As we learn to share our faith and serve our communities, teach us how to be the church — rich in good works, generous, and ready to share. Amen.

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Mission Yearbook: ‘Hold on’

The Rev. Dr. PJ Craig

As if to belie the theme of the Association of Partners in Christian Education (APCE) 2025 Annual Event, “A Stirring in Our Souls: Wrestling with God and Church Toward a More Beloved Community,” a generous, affirming and wholly non-contentious spirit welcomed attendees into opening worship and their first full session together.

“There will be no wrestling matches here,” said Tatayana Richardson and Jaime Staehle, co-chairs of the 2025 Annual Event. “This will be a space to be both challenged and encouraged, to lean into God’s work in and through us as the one big, slightly quirky, wonderfully gifted community that we are.”

Further reinforcing the event’s hospitable tone, Benjamin “Ben” Brody, chair of the Music Department, professor of Music and director of Church Music Studies at the Presbyterian-affiliated Whitworth University, led the gathering in gently evocative music, a fitting opening for the afternoon’s preacher, the Rev. Dr. Peggy Jean “PJ” Craig.

Craig, an ordained minister in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, is senior pastor at the Cumberland Presbyterian Church of Germantown, Tennessee.

Preaching on the event Scripture, Genesis 32:22–32 — in which Jacob wrestles with God at the Jabbok River — she opened in a confessional mode.

“I know nothing about wrestling,” Craig admitted. “The closest I came was one year in middle school with a girl named Maggie, who was much bigger and much madder than me. It was all super dramatic, but nothing happened. While that was the closest I came to a fight, I know people who fight. This is what you got, so let’s go with it.”

Through the stories of RJ, her skinny, scrappy, rural North Alabama high school classmate — who was arrested for fighting — and Ally, a fight-prone foster child whom she met while running an after-school program in North Philadelphia, Craig related the biblical Jacob’s birth narrative and subsequent history.

“Both [RJ and Ally] were kids who came out swinging like their life depended on it,” she said, “and I wondered if Jacob was like that, too. He came out swinging.”

It started in the womb, she observed, where he and brother Esau used to fight, with Jacob coming into the world holding onto Esau’s heel.

The Annual Event of the Association of Partners in Christian Education was
held in Memphis, Tenn. (Photo by Emily Enders Odom)

“In the blood and the fluid and the mess of labor, you couldn’t tell where Esau ended and Jacob began,” Craig preached. “It was like they were one.”

And yet, one brother couldn’t have been more different than the other. Esau, the firstborn, was strong and muscular. Jacob, the grabber, the fighter, stayed inside and cooked stews.

“Like so many other fighters, I wonder if Jacob was small and scrawny but scrappy and gritty like you have to be if you’re always second, always ignored,” she said. “I wonder what it’s like to never be somebody’s somebody. To be the one without the birthright. Like RJ and Ally, maybe every time they were fighting, they were fighting for somebody, anybody, to know that they existed. Maybe they wanted love, relationship, connection.”

After tricking his father Isaac into bestowing his blessing on him rather than Esau — who wanted to murder his twin — Jacob became estranged from Esau for 20 years.

It was while heading back to meet his brother after their long separation that Jacob found himself alone in the darkness, being attacked by a man and fighting back.

“Was there a minute when he thought, ‘This is my last one; this is the fight of my life?’” Craig said. “Minutes turned into hours, and, at some point, the man realizes that Jacob ain’t gonna give up. ‘I will not let you go until you bless me.’ This man renames Jacob and gives him a clue as to who he has been holding onto all night. Maybe what is at Jacob’s core — no matter what his name is — is not so much about fighting, but holding on. He wasn’t the strongest or the biggest or the best, but he held on.”

Emily Enders Odom, Associate Director of Mission Communications, Interim Unified Agency (Click here to read original PNS story)

Let us join in prayer for:

• Brian Henson, Desktop Support Analyst, Information Technology, Administrative Services Group (A Corp) 
• Jessica Hernandez, Electronic Marketing Associate, Presbyterian Publishing Corporation   

Let us pray:

Loving God, grant your people strength and energy for faithful witness, generous and open hearts, purpose, and the will to proclaim and live the good news of Jesus Christ. Amen.