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.

Mission Yearbook: ‘Leading Theologically’ hosts reflect on season of discernment

After completing a season of “Leading Theologically” focused on discernment, the Rev. Zoë Garry, associate director of Theological Education Funds Development for the Presbyterian Foundation, invited her colleague, the Rev. Bill Davis, to the final edition this season to explore some of the highlights from five previous editions. Watch the installment here.

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Garry asked Davis the question she asked each of the previous guests: At what point in your ministry did discernment become an important practice?

For Davis, it was his first call out of seminary, when he served as an associate program director at Calvin Center, the camp and conference center of the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta. Davis helped launch the Common Soul program, which they spelled both “soul” and “sole,” “pointing out that we share a common faith and a common walk,” he said.

The program was designed to help young adults discern their call into ministry, either inside the church or outside, according to Davis. Young adults in the program worked in roles including environmental education staffers and lifeguards and also in church settings, giving them experience in children and youth ministry. Over three years, about half of the 18 young adults in the program ended up going to seminary while others discerned calls not to attend seminary but stay in the ministry of camps and conference centers.

“Part of discernment is figuring out what God is calling you to do, but also what God is calling you not to do,” Davis told Garry. 

That reminded Garry of her conversation with the Rev. Dr. Gini Norris-Lane, executive director of UKirk. “Our early 20s is a directional period of many of us,” Garry said. “We can obviously change our life at any moment, but our 20s is a time for pointing us where we’ll go later in life.” She asked Davis: What can we as the wider church learn from UKirk and other young adult ministries like Camp Soul?

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The Rev. Zoë Garry

One lesson about ministry involving young adults is that “to get critical mass, you have to have partnerships and creativity about thinking outside the box,” Davis said. “The gift of UKirk is it’s a place where people come to ask questions, a place and a space where folks welcome young adults who might not be in school but are working in the town.” It’s also “a place to ask questions of faith — big questions like purpose, why I matter, why my degree matters, and how do I figure out how to live as a faithful follower of Jesus seeking justice, not only for myself but for the community I find myself part of.”

“In order to welcome younger folk into the church, we have to be broadly accepting,” Davis said, “and that’s something UKirks do better than others. I think that is the gift Gini provides the denomination and the world — helping people welcome holistically and whole-heartedly.”

In the second episode with the Rev. Tim Yi, youth pastor at Community Church of Seattle, as her guest, Garry discussed “the intentionality of space” and the creation of “trusted relationships with leaders and with youth.” She asked Davis what he as a parent is looking for in youth groups and children’s ministry.

Davis said one of his children sings each week in a youth choir of about 50 children. There are adults in the room, of course, but high schoolers also attend to mentor students and help each section to come together. “My eldest has gotten to know a high school vocalist really well,” Davis said. “When we talk about discernment, I think about the intergenerational nature of community discernment.”

“I think that’s one of the most important things the church offers,” Garry said, “this intersectional and intergenerational space. I’ve always loved that about churches.”

Garry later added, “It’s been an absolute delight getting to have these amazing conversations with what I’ve been untangling for this past year: What does it mean to be in conversation with God in this place and time?” She thanked Davis “for the opportunity to have been able to explore that this season.”

Learn more about the Theological Education Fund at the Presbyterian Foundation here.

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Let us join in prayer for:

Marsha Stearley, Desktop Support Analyst, Information Technology Infrastructure, Administrative Services Group
Elaine Stepp, Operations Reconciliation Specialist, Operations, The Presbyterian Foundation           

Let us pray:

God of all peoples and places, we thank you for the spirit of courage that you grant to our partners and share with us so that we might join our voices in pursuit of a world where people come before profits. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: Utah and Pennsylvania governors join to speak on saving democracy

They both married their high school sweethearts, and both have four children. Both are governors, and both are Gen Xers. Both are recovering lawyers who are people of faith — one a Jew, the other a Mormon.

The main difference between Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Utah Gov. Spencer Cox is the letter designation following their name — a “D” for Shapiro and an “R” for Cox.

With NBC News’ Savannah Guthrie serving as moderator, the two governors recently spoke as part of Washington National Cathedral’s Better Way Initiative in a program called “Toward a Better Politics.” Listen to their conversation here. 

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Washington National Cathedral hosted the "Toward a Better Politics" discussion last week (Photo by Bob Bowie via Unsplash).

On the day in September that political activist Charlie Kirk was killed on the campus of Utah Valley University in Orem, Cox spoke to Utahns and to the nation. “When that very dark day happened in my state, the first call I got was from this guy, Gov. Shapiro,” Cox said. “He gave me some advice that changed what I was going to say when I stepped in front of that camera for the first time. He told me to speak with moral clarity and to speak from the heart.”

“I don’t care what color his politics are,” Cox said of his friend and fellow governor. “In that moment, we were two Americans who were deeply saddened and struggling. I’m grateful there’s somebody I can trust.”

Shapiro went back to a day in April 2025; the day he and his family had just concluded their Passover Seder. After the family had retired to the living quarters of the governor’s residence, an arsonist broke in and fired Molotov cocktails throughout the home. Wielding a metal hammer, Cody Balmer, who’s serving a sentence of 25–50 years for his crimes, testified that he’d planned to use the hammer to kill Shapiro, the governor said.

“I never looked to myself to being any sort of expert on political violence or frankly needing to engage in a national conversation about political violence until I saw Spencer Cox in the wake of the killing of Charlie Kirk handle that matter in the way he did,” Shapiro said. “It was at that moment I thought, I need to have this conversation and it needs to be with Spencer — not just because I respect the heck out of him as a governor … but because I think this is a necessary conversation that has to happen in our country if we’re going to get out of this, and this is the man I want to have this conversation with, given the strength of his leadership in a really dark moment in his state.”

The April 2025 event left Shapiro feeling “extraordinarily guilty as a dad, that doing this job that I love and so believe in put my kids’ lives at risk, put my wife’s life at risk. That’s a hard thing to work through.”

“But as a family we also understand that you can’t allow that violence to force you off stage and to force you out of doing the work that is so unbelievably important right now … at a time when the nation really needs us to come together and drown out those voices of hate, drown out that violence and instead focus on our common humanity.”

While leading the National Governors Association, Cox launched Disagree Better, an effort to help depolarize the nation. Cox pointed to the work of Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Kleinfeld “has studied political violence across cultures and over time,” Cox said. “She was the one who got me the most interested and the most nervous. She said we’re passing all the checkpoints toward ultimately failed states and things like civil war.” Those are terms Cox said he hates to use, “but if we don’t make a course correction, that’s where this leads.”

“We have to fight for our ability to engage,” Cox said. “We have to put our stake in the ground and say, ‘We’re going to have events like this and others where we can disagree and disagree passionately and try to convince others to believe what we believe in, because that’s what it means to be an American.’”

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

Let us join in prayer for:

Roger Spalding, Prospect Research Analyst, Funds Development Operations, Administrative Services Group

Let us pray:

Creator God, teach us to see our neighbors with compassion and tenderness and to receive them into our homes and churches. Teach us also to be instruments of your peace, today and always. Amen.