Mission Yearbook: Around the Table Initiative fosters faith formation through cohorts

Kim Ness

“The church is changing, and we, as a denomination, can be leaders in finding new ways of teaching faith formation,” said Kim Ness, a Christian educator with decades of experience. Ness is offering her experience and her skills as a certified coach to others through the Around the Table Initiative, a Lilly Endowment Inc.-funded initiative through the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

Ness is one of five coaches leading test cohorts in this coached cohort model that is a hallmark of the Around the Table Initiative, along with the creation of resources and skill-building webinars. “Our initiative is dedicated to creating vibrant, intergenerational communities where meaningful conversations about faith can flourish in everyday life with children and youth at home,” said the Rev. Neema Cyrus-Franklin, director of the Around the Table Initiative. “These cohorts are designed to strengthen the role of households in nurturing lifelong faith and discipleship in Jesus Christ.”

The Around the Table Initiative will offer two waves of online learning cohorts: the first beginning in August 2025 and the second in August 2026. Cohorts will meet in person once during a regional kickoff gathering and then online seven times for 90 minutes over 9-18 months. Applications are now being accepted. Participation is free, and each faith community that actively engages and completes the cohort will receive $1,500 to host a concluding intergenerational retreat.

The Rev. Dr. Sarah Erickson

“I love the sense of community that comes from bringing folks together in cohorts,” said Ness, who serves two Presbyterian churches in Georgia. “These cohorts are more than just opportunities to learn about spiritual practices and brainstorm how to help families practice faith at home. They are reminders that we are not alone in ministry.”

Ness describes the cohort she leads as comprised of leaders in churches with large numbers of active children and youth. The majority of cohort members are Christian educators and ordained pastors that serve in seven states, from Florida to Michigan.

Madeline Alvarez

The Rev. Dr. Sarah Erickson began with the initiative in August 2024 at a training retreat at Highlands Presbyterian Camp and Retreat Center in Allenspark, Colorado. Erickson, who is retired from the Center for Lifelong Learning at Columbia Theological Seminary and who is involved in the Presbyterian Older Adult Ministry Network, leads a cohort of grandparents active in the faith development of the younger generation. The cohort, which has five individuals and a couple whose members hail from Georgia, Virginia, Colorado, Texas and Mexico, has met monthly since the cohort launched in October 2024. The group is faithful to the curriculum set out by the Around the Table Initiative using the Faith Practices Toolkit, which highlights key spiritual practices such as hospitality, prayer, service, storytelling and retreat.

Listening to each other share their stories about the faith practices in their context is its own source of learning in the cohort led by Madeline Alvarez. Alvarez leads one of three test cohorts of Spanish-speaking members. Members of her cohort include pastors originally from Colombia, Venezuela and Puerto Rico who are serving in New Jersey, Georgia, and Puerto Rico, as well as ruling elders and educators from three other Spanish-speaking contexts. Together their cohort reflected on the question: “How can the act of listening to the stories of others deepen your empathy and understanding of God’s work in their lives?”

“Every story is a window into the unique challenges, achievements and faith journeys that shape people's lives,” said Alvarez. Around the table, faith formation practices can be as formal as lighting Advent candles or saying prayers together or as informal as sharing stories.

“By listening to people’s stories, we learn to approach others without judgment and to be curious rather than critical,” Alvarez said as she described the insights her cohort had while reflecting on storytelling as a spiritual practice: “This practice helps us recognize how God’s love and purpose unfold in diverse and beautiful ways. A story that is truly heard brings us closer to understanding and honoring human dignity.”

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

Let us join in prayer for:

• Mikyle Johnson, Administrative Support, REWIM, Interim Unified Agency
• Sandy Johnson, Financial/Budget Analyst, Budgets & Forecasting, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)  

Let us pray:

Creator God, you send us miracles that help us know that in you everything is possible. When we work together and gladly serve one another, great things happen. We are grateful for anyone who takes the equivalent of loaves and fishes and generously feeds others. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: ‘Coldest Night of the Year’ 3K walk raises funds, awareness for Wisconsin warming shelter

The Rev. Dr. Matthew L. Sauer of Manitowoc Cooperative Ministry
is pictured with his dog, Gus. (contributed photo)

Cold weather kills.

When mid-January brought days of near and below-zero temperatures and wind chills approaching minus-40 to Manitowoc, Wisconsin, the local Warming Shelter had to turn away people because of limited space.

Manitowoc Cooperative Ministry is partnering with others to bring warmth and hope to those in need.

On Feb. 22, a “winterrific” family-friendly fundraising Coldest Night of the Year 3K Walk helped raise money to expand the shelter’s services, install clothes washers and dryers so that no one must wear dirty clothes, and provide showers for guests.

The Rev. Dr. Matthew L. Sauer is pastor at Manitowoc Cooperative Ministry, an innovative partnership of the historic Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and United Church of Christ congregations serving the community for more than 170 years. The city is located on Lake Michigan, south of Green Bay and north of Milwaukee.

The church’s long-term goal is to raise $1.2 million to purchase and remodel a building for a shelter that will serve 24 people daily, Sauer said.

“Never give up on God! We are a small congregation, 40 in worship,” he said. “But we listened, and God spoke a dream on our hearts and now we are leading a community to live out the Matthew 25 gospel. We are frightened, we don’t know how we can fund this, but our faith is stronger than our fear.”

The Manitowoc Warming Shelter provides a safe, warm refuge for neighbors facing temporary homelessness during the harsh Wisconsin winters. It is more than just a shelter — it’s a place of compassion and connection, Sauer said.

The facility’s permit and space provide shelter for a maximum of 12 people — but on cold nights they may have to turn away double that number, Sauer said.

More than 125 volunteers help run the Warming Shelter, open nightly from November through April, when temperatures can drop into single digits or colder at night, and sometimes the daily high is still below freezing.

“The Manitowoc Warming Shelter is an emergency low-barrier drop-in warming shelter with a simple mission, ‘No one deserves to freeze to death at night,’” Sauer said.

“We operate only in the coldest months, but we also provide two program-based homeless shelters in town: Hope House for single women and families and The Haven, for single men. Folks in our community understand the Warming Shelter stands in the gap and have been very supportive.”

John C. Williams for the Presbyterian Foundation, Special to Presbyterian News Service (Click here to read original PNS story)

Let us join in prayer for:

• Kirstie Johnson, Administrative Assistant, Director’s Office, Theology, Formation & Evangelism, Interim Unified Agency                                                      
• Melissa Johnson, Mission co-worker, Zambia, World Mission, Interim Unified Agency 

Let us pray:

Heavenly Father, help us to keep our focus on you and on what we have in common through Jesus Christ. Keep our eyes on your mission so that we will see what is possible and what is already happening when we work together. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: Children’s ministry that forms faith

Jill Benson

Jill Benson, a curriculum coordinator for the Christian Reformed Church, put on a workshop during this year’s APCE’s Annual Event  focused on children’s ministry that forms faith.

“Why do we have children’s ministry available at our church? It’s important to start with the why,” Benson said to workshop attendees meeting in person at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, and online. “For me, I love children, and I learn from them.” Alongside that is the privilege “to see them grow in their faith and form a lifelong faith.”

While Benson took workshop attendees back 85 years to survey the history of children’s ministry, “it goes all the way back to Deuteronomy and the Shema,” she said. For this portion of the presentation, Benson drew from Scottie May et al, the authors of “Children Matter: Celebrating Their Place in the Church, Family and Community.”

The years 1940–1965 saw content-centered children’s ministry, when “ministry was done to children to encourage this process of faith formation,” she said. Children were seen as sponges, and the teacher was “the expert, the boss, the funnel holder and the evaluator.” The traditional Sunday school setting dominated.

The strength during that era was the promotion of biblical literacy. “You could rest assured you were an emerging disciple of Christ,” Benson said. “But biblical literacy didn’t turn into lifelong faith formation.”

From 1965–1990, children’s ministry was student-centered. The goal was to make sure children enjoyed Sunday school, and programming “became elaborate,” Benson said. The teacher was seen as “the coordinator, customer service representative, ringmaster and planner,” Benson noted.

Processed-centered children’s ministry has dominated since 1990. The goal is to help the child to encounter God and God’s story in ways that form faith. The emphasis is on the relationship between the child and the adult and the process by which learning takes place. Children can be seen as a plant, a sheep, a pilgrim or a scientist “who learn and investigate together to find truth,” Benson said. The teacher is seen as a shepherd, farmer, fellow pilgrim or co-learner.

The strength of this model is “the emphasis on more authentic engagement with the biblical story,” while a weakness is “we focus on the quiet, contemplative moments and don’t include enough fun activities,” she said.

“This history does not mean that earlier views were wrong or bad,” but “they were less effective than once thought,” Benson said. “As we learned more about children, we altered the way we did children’s ministry.”

It could be a new era of children’s ministry has begun — one in which educators and other grownups are spiritually formed by children.

According to Benson, May says there have been “many times” she’s been ministered to by children, “but it has usually happened unintentionally. What if we made it intentional?”

Benson asked workshop attendees to break into small groups to discuss questions including, “Are you comfortable with what children’s ministry looks like at your church, or are there aspects of another model that you would like to include?”

“We noticed that the ‘entertainment model’ is often associated with the large numbers and ‘glory days’ of our churches,” said one workshop participant. “But we appreciate now functioning with the ‘with/by’ models, often with fewer numbers.”

Through Visio Divina, Benson then used “The Book of Belonging” and art by A Sanctified Art to tell the story of The Daughters of Zelophehad, reading the story as she might to a child.

Then she asked those in the workshop: Anything you wonder about this story?

Benson called wondering questions “a fantastic way to engage children. They don’t have a specific answer, or a right answer. The point is to help children put themselves in the story.”

Among her favorites is the one she had just asked: What do you wonder about this story?

“Kids jump right in and answer that one,” Benson said.

A link to a 10-question tool for choosing curriculum is here. Lists of five ways to help families grow in faith, help kids to worship and to pray with kids, can be found here.

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

Let us join in prayer for:

• Alonzo Johnson, Coordinator, Self-Development of People, Interim Unified Agency
• Carlton Johnson, Director, Racial Equity & Women’s Intercultural Ministries, Interim Unified Agency 

Let us pray:

Gracious God, we give thanks that you multiply our small and humble offerings and efforts as we work to care for those in need. We ask that you sharpen our focus on you and on ways we may serve. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: ‘Along the Road’ podcast explores the global Presbyterian family

The Rev. Dr. Mofid Wasef

When it comes to what it means to be Presbyterian and why it matters, it turns out that which country you come from makes a big difference.

In January, the “Along the Road” podcast hosted a conversation with Rev. Dr. Mofid Wasef, associate pastor of Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church in San Diego, and his daughter, Ruling Elder Dr. Mirna Wasef, about their experiences as Presbyterians in Egypt and in the United States.

Speaking with “Along the Road” host valerie izumi, a ruling elder in the PC(USA), the two were quick to clarify that the cultural expectations around denominational identity are vastly different in the two countries.

Mirna described finding that in the U.S., “there seems to be a fear of offending somebody if you talk about your own faith.” People don’t feel comfortable saying they are Presbyterian or Christian. In Egypt, however, it’s the opposite, she said. “It’s legally recognized that you’re going to talk about your religion because even on your ID card it says your religion.”

Mofid went further, explaining that in childhood in Egypt, there was a sense of competition even between various faiths and especially different Christian traditions, which motivated young Presbyterians to know the specifics of their tradition inside and out. He said that by middle school, young Egyptians were articulating their beliefs and representing their faith to others. This culture motivated them all, whether Coptic Orthodox or Presbyterian, to study and learn even more about their denomination.

“Along the Road” is a weekly podcast designed with mid council leaders and congregational leaders in mind and hosted by izumi, Manuel Silva-Esterrich, and Martha Miller. New episodes are typically released on Wednesdays and alternate between “Nourish” episodes geared toward ruling elders and deacons, and “Encounter” episodes geared toward mid council leaders. This season has focused on the theme of Presbyterian identity.

In the Jan. 15 episode, titled “Encounter: We Are Part of a Bigger Family Around the World,” izumi reminded listeners that the church — made up of its members, deacons, ruling elders, and teaching elders or ministers — is called “to go forth as agents of God’s mission in the world” (Book of Order, W-3.0502).

Dr. Mirna Wasef

Mirna shared that her journey of coming to understand and embrace her own Presbyterian identity was borne out of her experiences teaching Sunday school as a high school student in the U.S. and recognizing herself and her own upbringing in those teachings. This sense of identity was further deepened as she traveled back and forth between Egypt and the United States and saw what shared beliefs connected the Presbyterians she interacted with in each place.

Both Mirna and Mofid emphasized that understanding one’s Presbyterian identity isn’t just important for knowing how you are different from other Christians, but also how you are connected to other Presbyterians around the world.

“There is a history behind Presbyterians that’s rich and deep,” Mirna said. “Sometimes we lose ourselves in the U.S. context of Christianity. We think being Presbyterian is just about being in the U.S. and the Bible was written for us right now in the U.S. context. But we take out the richness of the culture of Scripture, and the richness of the people who read their own lives into Scripture, too.”

Mirna went on to point out that the Presbyterian Church is global and “every culture has their own experience with Scripture that we should be able to take into account.” Doing so is what it means to be a family, she explained.

Mofid said he believes the pulpit provides a crucial opportunity to teach churchgoers what it means to be Presbyterian.   

“If we teach our people, our members, what we believe and that we are part of a bigger family around the world, that will help the people understand. It’s very important to know that you’re a Presbyterian church and what you believe and who you are.”

All episodes of the “Along the Road” podcast are on the PC(USA) website or on Spotify, Apple and wherever else you get your podcasts.

Layton Williams Berkes, Communications Strategist, Interim Unified Agency (Click here to read original PNS story)

Let us join in prayer for:

• Reginald Jean-Mary, Building/Tech Support, Stony Point Conference Center, Interim Unified Agency 
• Ellie Johns-Kelley, Ministry Relations Officer, Presbyterian Foundation 

Let us pray:

Generous God, we give thanks for new opportunities to hear your word and see your grace transforming our lives. Your abundance bridges our cultural chasms and connects us in new communities of discipleship. In Christ’s service we pray. Amen. 

One Great Hour of Sharing Supports Work in Nepal

One Great Hour of Sharing Supports Work in Nepal One Great Hour of Sharing gifts are used to support the work of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA). Their work with Nepal partners helped provide safe, clean drinking water and helped people start small businesses, making a lasting impact on the country. “PDA is not only helping us empower the people back in the villages; it is also helping to get young people to stay in the country and work for the people.” — Anjila Khadka, president, Juneli Nepal Read About the Impact in Nepal Your gifts to One Great Hour of Sharing bring life to people in Nepal.  Thank you for your generous support of One Great Hour of Sharing. If you have any questions, reply to this email or call 800-728-7228, Ext. 5047.

Copyright © 2025 Special Offerings, All rights reserved.

Mission Yearbook: Financial Health Assessment tool helps churches discern future paths

The second edition of the Presbyterian Foundation's Financial Health Assessment
tool helps church leaders learn more about their church's finances and how those
figures compare to similarly sized congregations in the region. (Contributed photo)

The Presbyterian Foundation has launched the second iteration of its Financial Health Assessment tool for churches.

The tool helps church treasurers, stewardship teams and pastors learn more about their congregation’s church finances and how they compare to other congregations of similar size in their region. Each assessment provides a report with comparative data along with suggestions for stewardship resources and other financial assistance.

The tool’s origins began in 2012 with “three or four people sitting in the Charlotte airport saying, church treasurers don't have the ability to compare their data with others,” says Paul Grier, the Foundation’s vice president for Project Regeneration.’’

“We saw that clergy people have these networks, and they talk to each other, but church treasurers don’t usually have that,” he continued. “We said, what if we built some kind of tool, not so much to tell people you’re doing great or you’re doing poorly, but just to say, here's how you’re doing compared to everybody else.”

The omission of giving data from information collected by the PC(USA) statistical services group from 2020–2022 temporarily disrupted the real-time use of the assessment tool. In 2022, Foundation representatives asked the General Assembly to re-add these data points into the annual report from congregations, to which it agreed, and subsequent years’ reports have been built on this financial information.

The pause in use of the Financial Health Assessment tool allowed the Presbyterian Foundation to rethink its approach to what information it needed to be most effective and the reports it produced. Making the information easier to use and allowing mobile access were top priorities for “version 2” of the instrument, says Karl Mattison, the Foundation’s vice president of Planned Giving Resources. This new version of the Financial Health Assessment was built by Via Studio, a Louisville-based marketing agency.

People using the assessment tool are required to have basic information about the church’s giving such as how many “giving units” — individuals, couples, or families — regularly contribute, total annual contributions, percentage of budget that comes from contributions, bequest information and capital campaign history. While Grier cautions the tool is not “sophisticated” in the way it does financial analysis, it is a useful comparative tool for congregations to find solutions to common problems.

“The relevance of the data sometimes isn't so much in the data itself, but it starts the conversation in that finance committee or in that session meeting,” he says. “Folks have something to respond to and to talk about and to say, ‘Gosh, we thought we were doing terrible. Turns out we're doing pretty well in this category, but we are trailing behind in another category.’”

The assessment’s report is broken down into three sections, highlighting criteria congregations are “Doing Well In,” “Needs Attention,” or “For Immediate Review.” Categories analyzed are Endowments & Major Givers, Leadership, Planning, Participation & Online Giving, Capital Campaigns, Building an Endowment, Bequests & Planned Giving, Preaching & Communication, and Deficits & Debt.

“There are two directions that it sends you,” Mattison says. “One is it gives you this self-help immediately: it produces a report and says, Hey, this is an area that really needs attention for you, and here's the different resources that we provide for you.”

One of the most common online resources the report points congregations toward is Stewardship Navigator, a tool for Presbyterian congregations that offers practical help with everything from a narrative budget builder and stewardship campaign ideas to examples of thank you notes, a brochure maker and multimedia educational tools.

Dozens of other resources include helps for legacy giving, charitable trusts, the church financial leadership academy and coaching, the annual Stewardship Kaleidoscope conference, endowment resources, and the Presbyterian Investment and Loan Program are included as links to relevant areas in the assessment report.

Mattison says the second direction the tool recommends is to seek the help of a Presbyterian Foundation Ministry Relations Officer (MRO).

Since the tool is available to all congregations, and churches of different sizes have different financial needs, he says offering additional resources along with the report allows the assessment tool to scale to serve the entire denomination.

Gregg Brekke for the Presbyterian Foundation (Click here to read original PNS story)

Let us join in prayer for:

• Susan Jackson-Dowd, Executive Director, Presbyterian Women 
• Linda Jacobsen, Executive Vice President, Church Engagement, Board of Pensions 

Let us pray:

O God, when the world’s needs seem to overwhelm our ability to help, let us remember that you ask us to give what we have, not what we do not have. By your Spirit, we can do more than we ever dreamed. Give us faith to trust your Word and obey your commands through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: Scripture says to ‘make a joyful noise,’ not a perfect noise

Hunter Steinitz

When Hunter Steinitz, M.Div., co-moderator of Presbyterians for Disability Concerns (PDC), once said that if the dedicated team of PDC volunteers had a motto, it might be, “We are small but mighty,” she could just as well have been describing the workshop she co-led recently.

Titled “Inclusion is Worship,” the workshop at the Association of Partners in Christian Education (APCE) 2025 Annual Event attracted a “small” group from across the PC(USA), all “mightily” advocating for disability inclusion in church and society.

And calling for action now.

“The problem isn’t with the disability,” Steinitz said, “but with the barriers that get in the way.”

And yet despite the many barriers to full inclusion, attendees offered signs of hope.

“Our church is pretty much all accessible except for one upstairs room,” one participant shared with the group, “so that a girl with disabilities couldn’t go to the youth group room. Then, because they made a policy that no church activities can happen in a non-accessible space, the youth group room moved. I thought that was so amazing because often their reaction is to not do the right thing. I was thrilled with how that worked out.”

At the workshop, Steinitz — a ruling elder at Riverview United Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh and the oldest woman in the U.S. with a rare genetic skin condition called Harlequin ichthyosis — was joined on Zoom by PDC clerk Marijo Hockley, M.Div., and in Memphis by the Rev. Dr. Deborah Huggins, PDC co-moderator, who shared in facilitating the conversation.

The Rev. Dr. Deborah Huggins

Huggins, associate pastor of youth and children at Central Presbyterian Church in Summit, New Jersey, is also president of the Presbyterian Health, Education, and Welfare Association (PHEWA). Hockley serves as the community life coordinator for New Life Presbyterian Church in Sterling Heights, Michigan.

As participants considered together — and in small groups — how and whether people with disabilities are embraced and included in their respective worship spaces, Huggins appealed to Steinitz and Hockley as disability liberation theologians for their guidance on interpreting relevant passages from Scripture.

“It can be very difficult for people with disabilities to lean back and find the hope that we have [in Jesus],” Hockley began. “Jesus heals them not because there is something wrong with them, but because there’s something wrong with society. … Because society is ill, Jesus heals the person with disabilities.”

In the broader context of biblical exegesis, Steinitz further explained the workshop’s title, “Inclusion is Worship.”

“Inclusion is worship because the body of Christ is made up of all these diverse members, all of them with a role to play,” said Steinitz, referencing 1 Corinthians 12:12. “That is very much true of people of faith with disabilities. Because they have gifts that they want to share, it’s all about giving them the opportunity.”

Both Steinitz and Hockley emphasized that while churchgoers have the expectation that everything be perfect, that’s not what scripture teaches.

“As many of you know, it’s hard for people to sit still and be perfect all the time,” said Steinitz. “But what does Scripture say? ‘Make a joyful noise’ — not a perfect noise, not a well-rehearsed noise, but a joyful noise.”

Added Hockley, “Worship is not a Broadway show. We should be a faith family when we’re sitting in church. Things are not going to be perfect, but they are perfect in the eyes of God.”

Using a handout designed by PDC, participants began to build customized action plans for their own worship settings. They received — and were able to suggest additions to — a “Worship is Inclusion” resource list.

Attendees also received a copy of “Speaking Words that Welcome,” a QuickSheet produced by the PC(USA) Interim Unified Agency’s Office of Christian Formation.

If the workshop had a single takeaway, it was perhaps the charge to be creative.

“You don’t just have to preach from the pulpit or be liturgist from the chancel,” Huggins said. “Church isn’t perfect. Church will always be messy.”

For more information about Presbyterians for Disability Concerns or to contact a Disability Consultant, click here.

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

Let us join in prayer for:

• Daniel Johnson, Engineer, Building Services, Administrative Services Group (A Corp) 
• Christopher Jackson, Senior Vice President, Human Resources, Board of Pensions 

Let us pray:

Lord, strengthen, guide, and bless us as we labor together to bring your love to those who need it most. We thank you for those who serve. May their obedient efforts continue to bear fruit in the lives of many. In your name we pray. Amen.