Mission Yearbook: Montreat hosts young adults for ‘Strains of Joy’

College students live between worlds during winter break — no longer quite home, not yet back at school, suspended in the in-between space where old friends meet new identities and the foundations laid by hometown churches brush against the formation of campus ministries. A feeling of limbo characterizes early young adulthood, regardless of whether an individual is presently pursuing higher education or not. It’s one of many strains of struggle and surprising opportunities evoked in the winter’s young adult conference at Montreat Conference Center.

Video URL: https://vimeo.com/1151897823?fl=pl&fe=sh

On a Friday evening, more than 600 young adults and their group leaders chose to embrace the liminality of their lives, gathering at Anderson Auditorium for the opening of the annual Montreat College Conference, where the theme “Strains of Joy” promised to name what many feel but can’t quite articulate.

The conference brought together young adults for what Montreat President Richard DuBose called an opportunity for radical honesty.

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Richard Dubose welcomes 600 college students to Montreat College Conference held in early January. (All photos and video by Kristen Gaydos).

Aware of how the competing priorities that young adults face as they step into independence impact how they pursue Christian community in this time of life, DuBose emphasized that choosing to attend the conference over other winter break options was significant not just individually but communally.

“You could have stayed at home a few more days. You could earn a couple extra bucks while you’re home for Christmas, but you decided to come here,” he said, adding: “I think that’s going to be an important decision that you made for yourself, but I also want you to know that that’s an important decision that you’ve made for all the other people that are here.”

The welcome prayer led by an organizing team of young adults set an inclusive tone. One of the organizers, Rain from The Grove Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, prayed that “every child of God will know that they are loved unconditionally by their siblings in Christ, regardless of their race, their ethnicity, their ability, their gender identity and expression, sexual orientation or religious experience.”

Many attendees arrived in groups organized through PC(USA)-related colleges, campus ministries of secular universities or their home churches, creating a diverse mix of religious backgrounds and geographic regions. The Georgia Lodge, for example, hosted students from The Table at the University of Georgia, Georgia College and Trinity Presbyterian Church in Atlanta.

“I’ve been coming since the beginning of college,” said Audrey Markham, who was in her fifth year at the conference. Markham, a University of Georgia graduate, was attending the conference in a new capacity as a Young Adult Volunteer with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). This time, she lived with six other young adult volunteers while working at a nonprofit serving survivors of human trafficking in New Orleans. She co-led a workshop to tell college students about her experience and to invite them to consider a year of service after graduation.

Individuals without a group were also welcome. The Rev. Dr. Gini Norris-Lane, executive director of UKirk Collegiate Ministries, the national organization that supports more than 200 Presbyterian campus ministries, led a small group specifically for solo attendees.

The first evening’s worship featured musicians Blue Setzer on vocals and percussion and De’ Patton on keyboard, followed by preaching from the Rev. Natarsha Sanders, who challenged attendees to reconsider their understanding of joy through James 1:2–4.

Sanders, who works with racial equity and women’s intercultural ministries with the Unified Agency of the PC(USA), pressed fundamental questions: “When is the last time you've been able to count your joy? When is the last time you’ve ever even thought about it? Do you know what joy is? Are you still straining to see?”

She emphasized that joy emerges through trials that produce perseverance, which leads to wholeness, according to the Book of James. “James is telling us to count it all joy, not just for joy’s sake,” Sanders said, “because the tests produce perseverance. Our perseverance produces wholeness. And what are we here for? Other than to be made whole.”

Beth Waltemath, Communications Strategist, Presbyterian Life & Witness (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Julie Tonini, Director of Production, Publishing & Editorial, Presbyterian Publishing Program
Joel Townsend, Desktop Support Analyst, Administrative Services Group

Let us pray:

For children who learn in schools, for teachers who help them learn, and for the many ways all of us learn of your world, we give you thanks, O Lord. Amen.

Minute for Mission: World Day Against Trafficking in Persons

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor… to proclaim release to the captives and let the oppressed go free.” — Luke 4:18

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When Jesus announced his mission in the synagogue at Nazareth, he declared God's concern for those whose freedom had been taken away. Today, those words challenge the church to confront one of the most devastating forms of modern-day slavery: human trafficking.

Human trafficking is the exploitation of people through force, fraud, or coercion for labor, sexual exploitation, domestic servitude or other forms of abuse. Although often hidden from public view, trafficking affects communities across the globe and throughout the United States. In 2024 alone, the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline received reports of nearly 32,309 signals and 11,999 potential trafficking cases involving more than 21,865 potential victims. Human trafficking has been reported in every state, affecting people in urban, suburban, rural and tribal communities. Globally, the crisis continues to grow. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reports a 25% increase in detected trafficking victims compared to pre-pandemic levels. Forced labor has now surpassed sexual exploitation as the most detected form of trafficking, accounting for 42% of identified victims worldwide. Women and girls continue to be disproportionately affected, representing 61% of trafficking victims globally.

Scripture consistently calls God’s people to protect the vulnerable. Proverbs 31:8–9 urges us to “speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves,” while Micah 6:8 reminds us to “do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God.” Human trafficking flourishes where poverty, migration pressures, conflict, discrimination and economic desperation create opportunities for exploitation. As followers of Christ, we are called not only to care for survivors but also to address the conditions that make trafficking possible. Faith communities can respond by educating congregations, supporting survivor-centered ministries, advocating for just policies, and creating safe spaces where vulnerable people are protected and valued. On this World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, may we join Christ’s work of liberation and become instruments of justice, healing and hope.

Elder Rene Anita Chombeng, Ph.D., previously served as the Immigrant Organizing Coordinator for the Presbytery of the Pacific.

Let us join in prayer for:

Nicki Thomas, Gift Processing Associate, Funds Development Operations, Administrative Services Group
Edward Thompson, Senior Church Consultant and Director of Inter Agency Relations, Board of Pensions

Let us pray:

God of freedom and justice, you created every person in your image and desire an abundant life for all. Open our eyes to those suffering in silence through trafficking and exploitation. Strengthen survivors, comfort those who grieve, and empower your church to be a refuge of safety, dignity and hope. Give us the courage to speak for the voiceless and work for a world where all people can live in freedom. Through Jesus Christ, who came to set the captives free. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: Author explores faith beyond patriarchal limits

It turns out that the proverbial old witch in the woods has much to teach the faithful about liberating feminine wisdom from Christian patriarchy.

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Angela J. Herrington (contributed photo)

Angela J. Herrington, a spiritual coach and author whose “Embracing the Old Witch in the Woods” was published in October, was a recent guest on “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast.” Listen to her 62-minute conversation with hosts the Rev. Lee Catoe and Simon Doong here.

The majority of Christian theology is “rooted in this idea that the first woman broke the world by being disobedient, by being selfish and manipulative,” Herrington told the hosts. “That’s what we’re taught.”

In the Bible, the second main pillar is Mary, the mother of Jesus, “who is the exact opposite, we’re told, of Eve,” Herrington said. “Either we’re perfect or we break the world. We bounce back and forth between ‘I want to be good, but oh, I’m made bad.’”

Women are taught “that it’s very tempting to flip to the other side and be the evil woman, the manipulative woman, if it serves us,” she said. “We’re raised to be responsible not only for ourselves, but for all the people around us, without ever acknowledging that other people are responsible for themselves.” That can leave women “depleted and edgy and spiritually can be just devastating.”

“I’ve seen so many people walk away from the church because everything they were taught in church was suffocating any sort of spiritual connection or any sort of spiritual flourishing. It was actually healthier for them to leave,” Herrington said. “I’m not mad at people for leaving. I’m mad at us as a church for making leaving the better option for someone who is spiritually hungry for connection.”

Noting that witch language has long been demonized, Catoe asked Herrington to talk about it.

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“Before the outline for the book was even cemented, this visual of the old witch in the woods was there,” Herrington said, adding that to her, “everything we are told to be afraid of, everything we’re told not to be, everything that is naturally strong and resilient and wise within us that threatens unjust systems” has been ”labeled the old witch.”

The old witch who lives in the woods is there either by choice or “because she’s been pushed out there by the community that doesn’t understand her. She has no redeeming value in the eyes of a system that wants to exploit people,” Herrington said. “Maybe we shouldn’t be afraid of that. Maybe we shouldn’t be afraid of our intuition or our generational connection with our ancestors. Maybe we shouldn’t be afraid of our bodies in the way we’ve been taught to.”

Why, Herrington wondered, “is this little old woman who knows how to give you herbs when you’ve hurt yourself, knows how to make a poultice for a cut, knows how to deliver a baby or when the wind is changing — why is that the biggest evil in the world? The answer is it’s a threat to evil systems that want to exploit people and want to commodify those services.”

Asked by Doong how men can help empower women to resist patriarchy, Herrington had a frank response: “You can’t, until you root out your own bias, until you figure out what pieces of you unknowingly uphold that system,” she said. “If we go barging into vulnerable populations wanting to be an ally with the best of intentions but we haven’t done our own work, all we’re doing is undermining those healthy little pockets of people and putting the responsibility of fixing us on their shoulders, when they’re already facing these huge oppressive systems.”

Do some work first, she suggested. “Make sure you have people helping you with the work and that you’re compensating them for their time,” Herrington said. The people who benefit most from an unjust system “should be shouldering the majority of the weight for fixing it,” she said, “and that includes figuring out where we still benefit from it.”

New episodes of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” drop every Thursday. Listen to previous editions here.

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

Let us join in prayer for:

Jonathon Talbott, Administrative Support I/Receptionist, Operations, The Presbyterian Foundation
Tom Taylor. President and CEO, Executive Office, The Presbyterian Foundation    

Let us pray:

Gracious God, you have called us to bring your good news to all people. Help us to minister faithfully in our congregations and neighborhoods to your children of all ages, so that all will know of your love. In the matchless name of Jesus. Amen.

World Communion Offering Season: Love Kindness (Micah 6:8)

World Communion Offering Oct. 4 The first World Communion Offering will be received this year as directed by the 226th General Assembly (2024). We have spent the year exploring the call from Micah 6:8 and how it is related to the work of the ministries supported by the three Special Offerings. For the World Communion Offering, the scriptural focus is on loving kindness, which is expressed in action, often involving mercy, faithfulness and steadfast commitment. This Offering supports the causes of: racial justice gender justice peacemaking global witness ecumenical and interfaith relations Find examples of work being supported by your gifts starting on page 6 of the Leader’s Guide. Download the Leader’s Guide Ideas for World Communion Sunday Check out page 3 of the Leader's Guide for ideas for engagement on World Communion Sunday and the World Communion Offering. You can also download the World Communion Sunday worship liturgy to help make planning a meaningful worship easy. This year’s worship was created in partnership with the Presbyterian Association of Musicians. Download Worship Liturgy If you have any questions about this new Offering, we’re here to help. Reply to this email or give us a call using the number below.  Thank you for generously supporting the World Communion Offering.   If you have any questions, reply to this email or call us at (800) 728-7228, Ext. 5047.

Copyright © 2026 Special Offerings, All rights reserved.

Mission Yearbook: Podcast guests discuss ritual, lineage and liberation

The Rev. Lucy Waechter Webb and Nicole Bauman, who facilitate Weaving New Ritual, a yearlong community of practice designed to help people from white Christian lineage reclaim ritual fluency, were the guests on a recent episode of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast.” Listen to their 48-minute conversation with hosts Simon Doong and the Rev. Lee Catoe here.

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Nicole Bauman (contributed photo)

Bauman, who has a background in farming, intentional community, yoga and doula work, told the hosts they grew up in “a social justice-oriented Anabaptist community” that “reckoned questions in their own way,” including this one: What does it mean to show up for collective liberation as Christian people?

While Bauman told the hosts they find themselves “stepping away from institutional church spaces,” for Bauman the question is, “How can I find ways to reclaim the heart of these stories and the liberatory potential in these stories and practices?”

Weaving New Ritual completed its initial cohort late in 2025 and is forming another for 2026. “One thing we’re up to is inviting folks to practice holding more and more complexity and contradictions,” Waechter Webb said. “One of the phrases we say over and over is, can we keep feeling for the blessings and the burdens?” Among the tasks for cohort members is “being able to withstand receiving feedback that I had impact in the world in a way that was harmful and I want to be open and receive that without losing my dignity and with capacity to be in the work of repair,” she said.

Part of Waechter Webb’s emphasis is on reaching back toward “pre-Christian ancestors and pre-Christian practice,” which “flattens the complexity of who we are and what has made us today.”

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New editions of "A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast" drop every Thursday.

“When we continue to distance ourselves from our people, we cede that ground and we give up the power of institutional spaces like churches to be in the work on non-compliance inside the rise of authoritarianism in this country,” she said. The work is “a political project just as much as it is a spiritual project. We hold the fight for material change and cultural change all at once.”

“I want to name explicitly that our project holds a very expansive invitation for how people relate to their Christian lineage,” she said. “This is not a project to try to get people to practice Christianity or start a new Christian community. We’re specifically saying, ‘this is part of your lineage. … What’s your relationship to this lineage now? How do the blessings and burdens of that lineage keep transforming you?’”

According to Bauman, members of the initial cohort wrestled with questions including “how do we not stay separate from our people who are also of Christian lineage but have a different theology and politics than we do?”

The cohort was “a theologically diverse group of people” and included pastors, seminarians and others active in their churches. “We had people who grew up in the church and left 25 years ago and people who grew up in atheist homes who didn’t know the story of Jesus,” Waechter Webb said. “We are a scrappy group of people trying to figure out how to make this kind of work happen in the world.”

“I think the work they’re doing is so important,” Doong told Catoe as the podcast came to a close. “It’s important for white folks and folks with white Christian lineage to think about the ways our ancestry, faith and traditions come together and ways we can reshape that if we want to.”

Learn more about the cohort of Weaving New Ritual here. Listen to previous editions of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” here.

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

Let us join in prayer for:

Sarah Sullivan, Assistant General Counsel, Legal & Risk Management, Administrative Service Group
Carla Sutton, Operations Admin, Operations, The Presbyterian Foundation

Let us pray:

God, we thank you that you are always a step ahead of us, preparing us through our circumstances for ministries of which we are yet unaware. Help us to trust you even when we are unable to trace you. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: Fathers and figures are subject of author’s podcast discussion

Patton Dodd nearly walked away from completing his memoir “The Father You Get: And the Ones You Make, Believe In and Become,” published in September. It was painful writing about his father, and even about some of the men who’d become father figures for him.

But complete the book he did, and he spent about 50 minutes talking about it with Simon Doong and the Rev. Lee Catoe, the hosts of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast.” Listen to their conversation here.

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Dodd, the executive director of storytelling and communications for the H.E. Butt Foundation, told the hosts he’s settled on presence as the sign of what healthy fatherhood looks like.

“Ideal fatherhood has a lot to do with just being present in your children’s lives, showing up over and over again in all sorts of seasons and situations, and being able to attend to them and their stories as they actually are and not what you wish they would be,” he said. “Settling on presence was in some ways a response to my own experience when I was a kid was my dad offered no presence. He was there,” Dodd said, but was “kind of absent and negligent.”

“I don’t think that’s uncommon,” Dodd said. “I’m a dad and I try to be a good dad, but I also struggle with presence.”

Writing his memoir involved researching his father’s story. He learned that his father, who’s deceased, “had tropes [about fatherhood] in mind and tried to live up to them and failed.” His father fell short in some traditional masculine ideals including competing and achieving success, Dodd said, and struggled to hold down a job. “I think he was falling short of those masculine ideals, but he never questioned them,” Dodd said. “I think it would have done him a lot of good to blow up those concepts and figure out his relationship to them instead of trying and failing to live up to them” and “transferring those masculinity ideals to me.”

Dodd and his wife have three children. “Once my kids were adolescents, I probably had more sympathy for some of my dad’s mistakes and failures. It’s challenging to be a parent,” he told the hosts. “One thing that happened over the course of being a dad is I shifted from anger to something like grief. Anger is a simpler emotion and it’s full of blame.” Being a father “humbled me a little bit” and “shifted that predominant emotion to one of grieving the loss of the man he could have been and wasn’t in our home.”

“I’m still fully aware of his faults,” Dodd said, “but I’m shifting how I respond to them.”

Catoe asked how better understanding his father has reframed Dodd’s concept of God as a father.

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“I’ve always struggled with the idea of God as a father. It’s not a comfortable concept for me,” Dodd said. While in college, “a lot of well-meaning people encouraged me to lean into this idea of God as a loving father.” At one prayer meeting, Dodd was encouraged to think of God sitting in a rocking chair, where God’s children could climb up and be comforted by God. “That person meant well, but I was totally turned off by that image,” Dodd said, “and I felt guilty for not wanting to think of God that way.”

Even though Jesus taught the disciples to pray to “our father,” “I don’t think it’s the only way to approach the loving and parental presence of God,” Dodd said.

When Dodd left home for college, “my mother made the gift of telling me, ‘you’re going to need a male mentor in your life.’ She said, ‘I’m praying you’ll find someone whose wing you can get under, because there’s a lot you haven’t gotten yet.’”

“I came to terms with my own agency in seeking and making father figures,” he told Catoe and Doong. “I turned it into a verb, ‘father figuring,’ as something we do.”

“Nurturing is something we need,” he said, “but it’s also important we have agency in those relationships.”

New installments of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” drop every Thursday. Listen to previous editions here.

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

Let us join in prayer for:

Rebecca Storti, Director, Project Operations, The Board of Pensions
Shawnda Styles, Senior Accounting Clerk, Controllers, The Presbyterian Foundation           

Let us pray:

Gracious God, we give you thanks for allowing us to be a part of building a kingdom in which all people are equal. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: Pittsburgh Presbytery wipes out more than $14 million of medical debt for families

This year, thousands of Allegheny County residents got letters telling them that the medical debt that has been hanging over their heads has been wiped out — paid for by contributions from the members of the 117 churches in Pittsburgh Presbytery.

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Photo by Patty Brito via Unsplash

Late last year, Presbyterian church members donated nearly $75,000 as part of a campaign with the national nonprofit group Undue Medical Debt — enough to eliminate more than $14 million in outstanding bills. The coalition exceeded its initial goal to raise $65,000.

Undue Medical Debt purchases medical debts belonging to those least able to pay from health care providers and other organizations for pennies on the dollar, meaning every dollar donated erases $100 or more of medical debt. But unlike commercial bill collectors, the group doesn’t badger people to pay off the debt themselves. Instead, it finds organizations and individuals who are willing to donate money to eliminate these debts. In Pennsylvania, nearly 1 in 15 adults carries medical debt. In Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, the average person with medical debt in collections carries a balance of nearly $1,000.

The Pittsburgh Presbytery campaign was spearheaded by its Matthew 25 On The Move ministry team, a group that embraces Jesus’ commandment to provide care to the “least of these.” Part of the group’s mission is to address systemic poverty, a purpose which is served by this campaign. The Rev. Dr. Judith Slater, pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Duquesne and a leader of the Matthew 25 group, said that the impact of the donations is tremendous.

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The Rev. Jessica McClure Archer

“Undue tells us that people who have received this debt relief in the past often have trouble believing it is real, for it seems too good to be true,” Slater said. “But once they realize it is real, they often say that it feels like a huge weight has been lifted from them and they can move forward in their lives and have a chance for a new life.”

She added that “this was truly a mustard-seed endeavor,” referencing a biblical parable about a small seed providing abundant growth. “Individuals and churches gave what they could, from one dollar to thousands of dollars.” One congregation, at the former Concord Presbyterian Church, donated $20,000 from the proceeds of the recent sale of its building.

Members of Pittsburgh Presbytery churches were influenced to donate by video testimonies such as this one from local residents who were burdened with medical debt.

One church member recalled the time her daughter went through five hospital stays before she turned 5, because of ongoing problems with RSV infections. Even though the family had health insurance, she said, “our claims fell into insurance policy loopholes and exclusions … and our medical bills racked up.” Eventually, the family’s debts were sold to a collection agency, and “all of a sudden, the debt collector began sending scathing letters and calling multiple times a day. It made me feel less than human; it was one of the most stressful times of my life.”

“I cannot tell you the peace of mind it would have given me to receive a letter saying, ‘I’ve got you. Your debt is forgiven. Go focus on keeping your child comfortable.’”

“This initiative demonstrated the power and potential of our collective witness to walk alongside our community and care for our neighbors in meaningful, life-changing ways,” said the Rev. Jessica McClure Archer, general minister of Pittsburgh Presbytery. “When our churches come together, we are able to share God’s love far greater and wider than our own churches’ four walls. We embody what it means to be the Body of Christ — broken for the sake of grace, healing and justice — in a world that can often feel cruel and unforgiving.”

There is no application process for this medical debt relief, and it cannot be requested. 

Medical debt affects at least 100 million people in the U.S., who collectively owe about $220 billion to hospitals, doctors and other organizations. Medical debt comprises a majority of all collections listed on personal credit reports and is the leading cause of bankruptcies in the U.S.

Pittsburgh Presbytery (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Tim Stepp, Associate Director, Internal Audit, Administrative Services Group
Andrea Stevens, Gift Planning Specialist, Development Office, The Presbyterian Foundation

Let us pray:

Gracious God, give us humble hearts so that we can recognize the gifts of others and encourage the use of those gifts for the edification of your church. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ, the one who teaches us your ways. Amen.