Today in the Mission Yearbook - Sunday at the border

Presbyterian border ministry leads a pilgrimage of prayer, lament, repentance and commitment at the wall

July 31, 2021

The Rev. Mark Adams, in the red hood, begins to gather participants at the U.S.-Mexico border. (Photo by Jenea Sanchez)

On a cool Arizona Sunday afternoon, mission co-workers Miriam Maldonado Escobar and the Rev. Mark Adams gathered with group of Christians on the border between Agua Prieta, Mexico, and Douglas, Arizona, for a prayer pilgrimage in solidarity with the “Not Another Foot” movement to call for an end of the massive border wall spanning the entire Southern border of the United States.

“We come here today with groups all along the border who are calling out ‘not another foot,’ a call to halt the continued destruction of God’s Creation,” said Adams. “At this border between two nations we come together as a common humanity to join our voices and to commit ourselves to working for the day when walls will not divide us and where borders will be places of encounter and not division.”

While some physically gathered at the border, a larger group from different faith traditions, different places and different perspectives gathered by Zoom to participate in the first of three stops of prayer and reflection.

The gathering marked the end of President Joseph Biden’s first week in office, where one of his first official acts was to pause construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall and review its contracts and funding. The order terminated the national emergency for the Southern border that President Donald Trump issued on February 15, 2019.

After a reading of Scripture, Jocabed Gallegos, Mexican coordinator of global partner Frontera de Cristo, where she works with Maldonado Escobar and Adams, offered a reflection. She moved to Agua Prieta in 1990 when the border was a very different place. Her friends sometimes crossed to go to the swimming pool in Douglas without going through the port of entry. Many families she knew would cross to go to the only mega grocery store in the area to shop. When border patrol agents stopped them, the agents would sometimes give them a lift to the store and even wait to drive them back if they had the time.

A few poles and some barbed wire were the only things that divided the two communities.

“When we started having this wall imposed on us, the relationship between our two communities changed,” she said. “People started to fear what was on the other side and the harmony that existed between our two communities changed with it. The policies became harsher and we started seeing more and more people hurt. Coyotes began charging exorbitant amounts of money to carry people across this new border. Migration policies changed. More and more pain came to this valley, but God calls us to tear down borders in the name of the Divine.”

Gallegos challenged those assembled to love and respect God’s Creation. She said construction of the physical wall also represented the destruction of Creation. “When we join together as brothers and sisters in Christ, we are saying we want peace and justice and we want to establish the bonds of unity that have been torn apart,” Gallegos said.

Having hosted many U.S. groups before the pandemic, Gallegos was reminded of someone who had asked if she thought it was possible that the wall would ever be demolished. Another woman in her group said, “That’s what we used to say about the Berlin Wall and we saw it fall.” She said, “Whether it’s us or those who come behind us, we must take steps to make sure there is harmony among us.”

After songs and prayer, the group journeyed 35 miles along the border road, making stops for prayer and reflection at Silver Creek Mile, at the boundary of the San Bernardino Wildlife Refuge in Arizona and the final stop in Guadalupe Canyon, where a 100-foot-deep gash has been cut into the rugged mountain in order to put a 30-foot fence in it. The service concluded with participants committing to work for the restoration of God’s Creation.

Anna Valer Clark, founder of the Cuenca Los Ojos Foundation, reflected on restoration. “The work we have done has started the water flowing in the streams again, and the animals have begun to find this water,” Valer Clark said.

Kathy Melvin, Director of Mission Communications, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us join in prayer for: 

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff

Susan Reimann, Board of Pensions
Martha Reisner, Board of Pensions

Let us pray

Gracious God, we thank you for the opportunity to share your love in real and tangible ways with our brothers and sisters. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - With glad and generous hearts

Love requires only one skill — caring for others

July 30, 2021

Annie Spratt via Unsplash

Over the past year amid a pandemic, protests and politics, I often heard many pastors, elders and mid council staff say that they are having a particularly hard time making ends meet. People aren’t giving the way they used to give. These churches and presbyteries are struggling to do more with less, and it’s the same way at the place where I currently serve, the Presbyterian Mission Agency — which has had a 40% reduction of our workforce over the past 10 years. In the end, the need is becoming greater and greater.

 And then I read Luke’s account of the early church in Acts 2:44–45: “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” I read this text and I think about how the way we give today is so different than the way it was for the early church. I think about how when things were so bad for them, far worse than they are for us today, these early Christians reached in their pockets a little deeper and gave to one another — even to the ones they didn’t even know.

And do you know what happened? They didn’t go into the red. They didn’t lose everything. They didn’t close their doors. They didn’t die.

Instead, they thrived. Luke tells us: “And day by day, the Lord added to their number those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47).

They grew — not only in numbers, but also in faith — in their discipleship to Jesus Christ.

There’s an old story about a person of faith who had an audience with God. One day, this follower said to God, “God, I would like to know what heaven and hell are like.”

In a vision, God showed this disciple two doors. Inside the first one, in the middle of the room, was a large round table with a large pot of stew. It smelled delicious and made the person’s mouth water, but the people sitting around the table were thin, emaciated and sickly. They appeared to be starving. They were holding spoons with very long handles and each found it possible to reach into the pot of stew and take a spoonful, but because the handle was longer than their arms, it was impossible to get the spoons back into their mouths. Even if they set their spoons down on the table to pull it closer, everything spilled out.

This startled disciple shuddered at the sight of their misery and suffering, and God said, “You have just seen hell.”

Behind the second door, the room appeared exactly the same. There was the large round table with the large pot of delicious stew. The people had the same long-handled spoons, but they were well nourished, healthy and plump, laughing, singing and talking — enjoying themselves.

The follower said, “I don’t understand.”

“It is simple,” God smiled and said, “Love requires only one skill. These people learned to feed one another. Those who are greedy think only of themselves.”

And Luke wrote: “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day, the Lord added to their number those who were being saved” (Acts 2:44–47).

May it be so for us.

 Chris Roseland, Lead Mission Engagement Advisor, Mission Engagement & Support, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff

James Reese, Presbyterian Foundation
Sharon Reid, Office of the General Assembly

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.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Dismantling racism together in West Virginia

Momentum grows for what began as an adult Sunday school class focus

July 29, 2021

J. Spenser Darden

What started off as an initiative of the adult Sunday school class at First Presbyterian Church in Morgantown, West Virginia, has grown to a wider community-based effort now called Dismantling Racism Together.

During a recent session, a group of about 30 people, including several from the church, heard from someone who dismantles racism as part of his work — J. Spenser Darden, director of Diversity Initiatives and Community Engagement at West Virginia University.

“Disruptors are seen as negative,” Darden said early on in their online session together. “But by not disrupting, you’re serving as the problem.”

Power and privileged are framed through social norms, and Darden had this example: Most of us were taught to keep our elbows off the table while dining. Why? When the group’s only answer was, “Because Mom said so,” Darden said he’d looked it up. The real reason goes back to the early days of furniture-making in England, which produced dinner tables far ricketier than the sturdy tables built today. “People were knocking tables over just by putting their elbows on them,” he said. Mom’s admonition became a social norm, which he said are “unexamined, unplanned” rules “that we learn and then perpetuate. We don’t think about who sets the norms, who benefits and what happens when we don’t follow them.”

Governments, churches, educational institutions and others “teach us how to act and how to respond, which in turn become social norms,” Darden said. Some norms are justifications, such as thinking that I have worked hard and deserve everything I have. “Few people would say they didn’t work hard and had things handed to them,” he said. “But there are certain things whiteness gives access to,” including voting and land ownership. “My being a man,” he said, “is one of my most salient privileges.”

“Privilege doesn’t mean it wasn’t hard,” he added, “but it’s only held by certain identities, and the categories can be fluid,” such as wealth or religion.

Oppression is both overt — such as the Ku Klux Klan — or covert, “so subtle it’s not readily obvious, even to the intended target,” he said. Consider the Color Run, a religious and cultural holiday that began in India as a response to that nation’s strict caste system.

When celebrating the Color Run made its way to the United States, “we decided we would run a 5K, charge people $35 and donate it to charity,” he said. “It devalues the culture.”

While acts of overt oppression are becoming increasingly illegal, covert oppression, including what Darden called “the myth of meritocracy” and the ideas of American exceptionalism and America as a melting pot, remain. “But I’m a good person. People like me,” we might say, according to Darden. “You can be a good person who has done racist, sexist and ableist things.”

After briefly tracing the history of enslaved people and indentured servants in the American Colonies —including Bacon’s Rebellion, which occurred in Virginia in 1675-76 — Darden noted that recognized status began shifting in England and later in the Colonies from being Christian to being white, “a category of mattering in society,” Darden said. “Whiteness is the people that society recognizes as society.”

Eventually, just about everything — including housing, health care, religion, education, capitalism, music, wealth, the legal system, policing and employment among them — “are all watered with racist ideas,” he said. “We have to repent and nurture in a new way.”

“It’s difficult and time-consuming work, and it’s frankly unpopular,” Darden said. “But it’s important work.”

 Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff

Dreama Reams, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)
Lorraine Hopman, Presbyterian Investment & Loan Program

Let us pray

Guide, nurture and sustain, O God, all those whom you call into your ministry and service. May they, in whatever calling of yours they follow, find in you the direction to lead your people faithfully in and to your will and purpose for their individual and communal lives. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - ‘God is With Us Always Even in a Pandemic’

The book is for children, youth, and anyone else who may need a reminder of God’s presence and love

July 28, 2021

Inspired by their grandchildren, three friends and members of Sunnyvale Presbyterian Church in Sunnyvale, California, have created a new children’s book, “God is With Us Always Even in a Pandemic.”

Since the book’s release in November, retired Christian educator and author Miriam Kishi, illustrator Jim Peterson and painter Lucy Janjigian have joined first- through fifth-grade students from Sunnyvale Presbyterian Church in an online reading. In addition to Peterson’s illustrations and Janjigian’s paintings, the book provides space for children to draw their own pictures of activities missed with friends and new experiences with family, such as sleeping in a tent or making mud pies.

“The children enjoyed talking with Lucy about her paintings and they asked Jim how he made the pictures,” Kishi said. “They talked about how it feels to do school at home, how they miss their friends and about knowing God is with them. We were just blown away. It was such a neat experience.” She said all three are available to host virtual readings and discussions with young people from other churches within the Presbytery of San Jose and throughout the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

A friend of Janjigian also read the book to a group of senior citizens who discussed things they’ve had to give up, such as hugs and in-person visits with family. For both discussion groups thus far, the reminder of God’s loving presence has been reassuring, Kishi said.

Kishi and Janjigian collaborated to create another children’s book about a year and a half ago titled “God Is With Us Always Even in a Tsunami.” Kishi worked as a Christian educator at six churches between 1965 and 2007 and served on the cabinet of the Association of Presbyterian Church Educators (APCE) for four years. Soon after the coronavirus became news in March, Kishi felt led to write a new picture book and reached out to Janjigian and Peterson.

Peterson has trained spiritual directors in three northern California spiritual formation programs for more than two decades. His drawings have been published in several technical books and other training materials, but this is his first children’s book. As a youth he believed the most important question in life is “the question of God.” In work and in life, he has discerned that his only agenda is to assist others in “becoming more aware of God’s presence and responding even more faithfully to God’s love and invitations.”

Janjigian, who was born in Jerusalem from Armenian descent, shares two of her paintings in the book, “World on Edge” and “Passages.” As the daughter of survivors of the Armenian genocide, Janjigian has been a refugee herself and, at age 17, also worked with the United Nations Relief Works & Agency (UNRWA) interviewing Palestinian families in refugee camps. She understands firsthand what is feels like to be displaced from all that is familiar.

 Tammy Warren, Communications Associate, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff

Vaughn Ratliff, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)
Becky Rayner, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)

Let us pray

Father, thanks for the joy of being shared by you, in all our diversity and brokenness, with those you love. Grant us grace to embrace your blessings as we journey with others in this amazing adventure of life. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Interpreting the Bible and proclaiming God’s Word faithfully

The Preaching Lab seeks to train ‘prophets of justice’

July 27, 2021

The Rev. Kamal Hassan is pastor of Sojourner Truth Presbyterian Church in Richmond, California.

The Rev. Kamal Hassan used a cartoon to open his turn to lead a recent edition of The Preaching Lab, a five-part online workshop offered by New Hope Presbyterian Church in Anaheim, California.

Hassan’s cartoon had Jesus speaking to some first century scholars. “The difference between me and you,” he tells them, “is that you use Scripture to determine what love means, and I use love to determine what Scripture means.”

Hassan, pastor at Sojourner Truth Presbyterian Church in Richmond, California, also employed a pair of articles by Sojourner Truth, the outspoken advocate for abolition and women’s rights, and the Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney, who teaches the Hebrew Bible at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, Texas, to explain the dangers brought on by interpreting biblical texts in the wrong way.

For Sojourner Truth, “God is a god of the oppressed,” Hassan said of the namesake of the church he serves. In her eyes, God’s character is one of liberator, “and anyone who uses Scripture for purposes of oppression and denying the divine image in a Black body is a heretic.” Hers was a minoritized voice, since “the right recognized interpretation of Scripture then was that God made white people masters and Black people slaves.” While “Sunday after Sunday, sermons were preached to support those ideas,” when Black people “had our own unsupervised services, it was the God of the oppressed we called upon and preached about,” Hassan said.

Gafney “asks similar questions, but she is looking at gender and sexuality,” according to Hassan. “As wrong as people have been on the race issue, they have been just as wrong on the female characteristics in the image of God.”

The Bible “was written by different people at different times in different circumstances,” Hassan said. “They are arguing different points of view.” It’s important to be able to “take these things apart, look at them closely, have some sense of what they meant to the people at the time they were written, and determine what applies and what does not apply to the times we live in,” he said. “Our understanding is literary, not literal. It’s not a museum piece. It’s a living Word that still speaks to us anew.”

Pivoting toward proclamation, Hassan said preaching the gospel faithfully means preaching it “from the underside of history — from the margin and the manger, not the palace. Because we — as Sojourner did — live in a time of contested Christianity, the religion of empire is the one that predominates — in our churches, in our pulpits and in our minds.”

“Everything you are saying relates to who Jesus was — marginalized, oppressed, born into poverty,” replied the Rev. Chineta Goodjoin, New Hope’s pastor. “We look at his life and his humanity and bring that into our interpretation of God’s Word. He brought Jesus [into the world] as oppressed as he was, and he remained that way. Ultimately, we see a God of love, even in his oppression. We are to interpret the Scripture through that lens of love.”

“The manger was intentional,” said the Rev. Dr. Alice Ridgill, associate general presbyter for the Presbytery of Charlotte, who was in on the call. “The announcement of his birth to shepherds — that’s a great model for seeing it from the margins.”

Preachers have, of course, decisions to make about which Bible translation to use as they proclaim the Word. Hassan used the New Revision Standard Version and the New International Version translations of Matthew 1:19 to point out marked differences. In the former, Joseph plans to divorce Mary quietly because he’s a righteous man. In the latter, it’s because he’s faithful to the law.

“I have to decide, will I preach that he didn’t divorce because he was a good guy, or that it required him to turn his back on his tradition — a tradition that if your betrothed is found to be pregnant, don’t marry her. Get rid of her, and if you are really feeling froggy, you can have her stoned to death,” Hassan said. “Which Joseph am I going to preach?”

“I have to think about who I am preaching to,” he said.

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff

Edward Ramsey, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)
Robert Ratcliff, Presbyterian Publishing Corporation

Let us pray

O God, we thank you for the ministry of the Church to those in need. We ask that as you strengthen the compassionate ministry of your faithful servants, you reveal the depths of your love. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Expanding the narrative: Women and the Reformation

Women involved in new video series describe the project’s significance

July 26, 2021

The T-shirt that the Rev. Dr. Kerri Allen wore during Tuesday’s “Just Talk Live” show co-hosted by Lee Catoe and Destini Hodges. (Screenshot)

On the premier edition of season two of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) online show “Just Talk Live,” Presbyterian women who participated in new video series from Theoacademy on Expanding the Narrative: Women and the Reformation” described why this project is so important to them.

One of the video series producers, the Rev. Beth Olker of Racial Equity & Women’s Intercultural Ministries, said that a denominational study showing that gender discrimination is still very pervasive in the PC(USA) helped put the six-part video series in motion.

That 2016 study, which can be downloaded here, included two basic findings. One was that gender discrimination is still pervasive in the PC(USA). Eight out of 10 female teaching elders said they’ve experienced discrimination, harassment or prejudicial comments due to gender, while 4 out of 10 felt gender bias was in play in hiring, for a promotion or selection for an official position in the PC(USA). Yet almost half of PC(USA) church members don’t think there are any issues in their churches with gender prejudice or bias.

“The next step was to say, ‘What are we not doing?’” Olker said. “And we realized what we’re not doing is putting out the stories of women — and the story now of our gender nonbinary folks — in our preaching, in our teaching, and in our storytelling.”

That realization led to a gathering of female theologians, pastors and professors, and out of that came the brainchild for these conversations with women about the Reformation. While producers have been going around the country doing interviews with women in leadership who are in various stages of their lives, Olker said her favorite part was a dialogue between women and nonbinary folks.

“They said they knew women had a role in the Reformation because they’ve seen it in their church and in the history books,” she said. “But they asked, ‘Why aren’t we telling those stories? What stories are being neglected?’’’

The Rev. Dr. Kerri Allen, director of mission and spiritual care for Aurora Health Care in the Milwaukee and Chicago areas, and Dr. Shannon Craigo-Snell, professor of Theology at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, participated in some of the interviews in the video series.

In one of those conversations, Olker referred to another “Expanding the Narrative” producer, the Rev. Dr. Elizabeth Hinson-Hasty, who asked Craigo-Snell, “What was the most important day in the Reformation?” Her reply was “today,” because for her the Reformation isn’t just a time period that happened over 500 years ago.

“It’s a movement within the Christian tradition that is still going,” Craigo-Snell said. “It’s a way of doing theology and Christian practice that is focused on what we are doing today and tomorrow. It’s very forward-thinking.”

Allen said the “Expanding the Narrative” video series is a great resource to generate conversation about what the Reformation really means, both for individuals and also for conversation within a community. To her the Reformation as an ongoing process means the questions being asked by the church change for the times, we are living in.

“How are we responding to the questions being asked now, and how we are going to respond to them in the future?” she said. “I have to wonder about Jan. 6, where we have an insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. Think about the way we as clergy people, as preachers and teachers, could’ve been different. What could we have we been doing?”

Allen thinks this too is part of our Reformed heritage. We look at what has happened in the past, she said, and we take history seriously to help inform us so that we can continue reforming based on our past experiences.

“And to really be open to the Holy Spirit on how we might do things differently as a community,” she said.

“This project tells the truth,” added Craigo-Snell. “We live in a broken world and that brokenness becomes a part of us. Buit through truth-telling and in the repentance that comes afterward, God can open up possibilities and a new future that doesn’t look like the past.”

Paul Seebeck, Communications Strategist, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff

Jason Raff, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)
Hery Ramambasoa, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray

Bountiful God of hope, you sent your son, Jesus, so that all may have life and live it abundantly. We thank you. May freedom and dignity multiply throughout the world, as witness to your love and compassion. Let the people sing: Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Global partners working to help Mediterranean refugees

Hope breaking out in the face of overwhelming odds

July 25, 2021

A garden at the Pikpa camp that was closed by the Italian government. (Photo by Kathy Melvin)

On Oct. 3, 2013, the world watched in horror as photos emerged of a boat full of migrants from the horn of Africa, seeking refuge on the Italian island of Lampedusa, sank, killing more than 350 people.

Paolo Naso, a layperson in the Waldensian Church and national coordinator for Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) global partner Mediterranean Hope’s Refugee and Migrant Program, was one of those people. Mediterranean Hope had been active in welcoming and walking alongside migrants and refugees in Italy and advocating for just policies. In an instant the organization knew it was not enough.

Naso was one of the speakers at a recent webinar offered by the Office of Public Witness (OPW), Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) and Presbyterian World Mission on the migration crisis in Southern Europe, moderated by Luciano Kovacs, coordinator of World Mission’s Office of the Middle East and Europe.

“History and current global polices in the Global North are hugely responsible for causing people to forcibly leave their countries,” he said when introducing the speakers. “A study by Brown University in 2020 analyzed data related to forced migrations from countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Somalia and the Philippines, following the U.S.-led war on terror from 2001-2019. These conflicts have caused 36,869,026 refugees and internally displaced people. Many of these forced migrants reached the coasts of Italy and Greece. Today we will learn what churches and [nongovernmental organizations] in those countries are doing to alleviate the suffering of so many people.”

Mediterranean Hope knew it must develop a creative strategy to facilitate a legal and sustainable process of migration, especially for those who are most vulnerable.

In their research they discovered a forgotten, never-implemented article in the Italian Constitution and offered a proposal to the government to open humanitarian corridors from some North African countries. Article 10 said, “A foreign national, who is denied  — in his or her country — the enjoyment of the democratic freedoms established by this Constitution shall be entitled to the right of asylum in the Republic under such conditions as shall be established by law.”

With a plan and support, they would arrive in Italy welcomed by churches, and begin a process of integration.

The Italian government experimented with an Italian humanitarian corridor and succeeded in accommodating thousands of people who arrived legally and with dignity.

More recently France, Germany and Belgium have adopted similar policies. The humanitarian corridors became the model to offer a safe passage to safe countries and facilitate the process of integration.

He paraphrased a quote from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as motivation for their actions. “There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe no politic nor popular, but one must take the position because conscience tells us it is right. It is important to our faith.”

Also speaking from Mediterranean Hope was Ibrahim Diabate, born in Ivory Coast, who, thanks to a scholarship, became an intercultural mediator and legal operative on behalf of migrants. For the last two years, he has been on Mediterranean Hope’s staff as a cultural ambassador in Calabria, Italy.

Diabate said Calabria is an area of poverty and social discrimination, organized crime and exploited people. It is a lush area of the country where citrus is grown. Migrants become laborers who cannot afford to buy even necessities.

“There are not poor countries and rich countries in the world, but we are all part of the world together,” he said. “We are all children of God. The same blood runs in all our veins. How can I live when you deny me my rights? How can I live when you treat me as a slave? How can I live when you consider me less?”

The final speaker was human rights activist Efi Latsoudi, one of the founders of Lesvos Solidarity, a grassroots organization based on Lesvos Island in Greece. Lesvos Solidarity runs educational, psychosocial and medical programs for refugees and has a strong advocacy program for refugees’ rights. Latsoudi is the founder of the open refugee camp Pikpa, an autonomous and self-run camp for vulnerable refugees, which was forcibly closed by the Greek authorities in October 2020.

Kathy Melvin, Director of Mission Communications, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff

Douglas Portz, Board of Pensions
Elonzer Purkins, Office of the General Assembly

Let us pray

Thank you, great God and Father, who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to your power that is at work within us. To you be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus, throughout all the world and all generations. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Youth trip raises justice questions

Teens now ask what they can do to help farmworkers

July 24, 2021

The Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church youth pray with an organizer from United Farmworkers. The teens ventured beyond their community to hear firsthand the stories of the injustices farmworkers experience. Keris Dahlkamp

Before the pandemic hit, high schoolers from the Lafayette- Orinda Presbyterian Church youth group in Lafayette, California, would spend a week of their summer serving a community in need. In July 2019, they went to the community of Salinas, about 100 miles from Lafayette. Some teens in the group were less than enthused. That quickly changed once they arrived.

The youth served in food banks, a homeless shelter and an organic farm. They also assisted in summer school programs for children of migrant farmworkers. Each encounter the youth had deepened a connection and love for a community — and people — that they typically did not meet, bringing them face to face with those Jesus was talking about in Matthew 25 when he mentioned giving water to the thirsty and setting free those imprisoned.

Despite the experiences that the youth group had that opened their eyes to the advocacy work that needed to be done, the residents of Salinas still experience many challenges. Similar to the outcries from the Black Lives Matter movement and its allies, farmworkers and their families often face racial injustice in the form of inadequate education, infrastructure and even threats of deportation.

But in Salinas, and throughout many other parts of California’s central valley, the Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian youth also learned that communities of color also face another injustice — environmental.

Amanda Young, a Lafayette-Orinda senior who participated in the 2019 trip, said, “While the fields were pretty to look at, there’s no doubt in my mind that they contain dangerous pesticides that harm the farmworkers and those who live nearby.”

Much of the life of a farmworker revolves around the care and cultivation of crops. On factory farms, this means that many farmworkers are exposed to harmful pesticides. Pesticides flow into the river systems or are swept up in chemical drifts as the daily winds pick up. Pesticides cause added harm to the elderly, sick and children.

According to UC Berkeley’s Center for the Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas, heightened rates of ADHD, asthma and other long-term problems are prevalent in the children of Salinas due to their exposure.

Oscar Ramos, a teacher at Sherwood Elementary School in Salinas who partnered with Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian, said the fieldworkers “are threatened a lot; either you take the job, or you get out. They are not told about the types of pesticides that are used or the side effects of those pesticides.”

Ramos, who worked in the fields with his family as a boy, said that farmworkers often do not get briefed by farm owners on how to keep their families safe from the residues that stay on their clothes and hands.

For example, washing work clothes separate from children’s clothes, taking a shower before hugging and leaving shoes outside all help prevent exposure.

Chemicals such as chlorpyrifos, along with oil leaked into streams from nearby drilling at the San Ardo Oil Field, can and will harm the environment along the Salinas River. The river feeds into the working-class cities of San Lucas, King City, Greenfield, Soledad, Gonzales, Spreckels and Salinas.

Local elementary school children and adult residents spoke with the Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian youth team about the importance of advocating for the people experiencing this kind of systemic racism, raising questions for the youth such as: What is the duty of people of faith when presented with such issues of environmental injustice? And, what role might congregations play in advocating for marginalized communities that are not their own?

“I have always been taught that God wants us to love all of our neighbors and that we should also acknowledge all of the amazing things God has created on earth. It’s important that we remember both of these things because the poor, under-represented people of the world are the ones who have unfairly experienced the gravest effects of climate change and environmental injustice,” said Young.

The Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian youth are eager to visit the community of Salinas again.

They are especially eager now that they have firsthand knowledge of how the food that feeds so many is grown — the conditions farmers work in, the hands that dig into the soil and the families impacted by the use of chemicals.

 Keris Dahlkamp, long-distance student at Dubuque Theological Seminary and director of youth ministries at Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church, Lafayette, California

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff

Cristina Pitts, Presbyterian Mission Agency
Irv Porter, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray

Gracious God, we hear your call to love our neighbors, and we know that you intend for us to care for both their physical and their spiritual needs. Help us to respond to this hungry, thirsty world with love that pours from river of living water that you have placed in the hearts of those who believe. In the name of Jesus Christ, who is living water for our bodies and our souls. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Is your digital ministry leaving out people with disabilities?

How to welcome all into the 21st century

July 23, 2021

Here are some interesting statistics that you might not know: In 2018, a Centers for Disease Control report revealed that one in four U.S. adults — 61 million — had a disability. According to the Collaborative on Faith and Disability, 84% of people with disabilities claim a faith tradition that is important to them. Yet only 10% of faith communities do any congregation-wide disability awareness. This was before the pandemic. Now in a time of digital worship, Bible studies and meetings, being part of a faith community can be more challenging for those living with a disability.

While in theory, technology provides a more accessible way to tune in to worship for some with disabilities, the theory falls short in practice for various reasons. Many people with disabilities are working hard to pay their rent and medical bills, and don’t necessarily have enough money left over for the tools they need to worship digitally, such as a computer, tablet or cellphone. Some who do can’t afford internet service.

Then there are the shortcomings of the actual technology itself. People who are blind, for example, rely on good audio and links and websites that are accessible with a screen reader.

Deb Trevino, a Presbyterians for Disability Concerns leadership member, who experiences the world as a totally blind woman, says, “Church is about the fellowship and care we give one another, and I can’t find that in a virtual church service. Apart from radio productions of sermons, I haven’t found anything with good audio. I mourn the loss of services in the church.”

Like Trevino, Laura and Randy Windsor, members of Hope Community Presbyterian Church of Lakeland, Florida, miss the personal interaction with their church family. On Wednesday evenings, they join a Zoom Bible study. “Online is OK, but we can’t talk to anyone,” they said. Laura and Randy have cerebral palsy. Speech can be challenging for others to understand (especially virtually), and typing in the Zoom chat box is not an option for them. The Windsors, though, found a solution to be part of the study’s sharing of prayer concerns. Their caregiver for the night will send a text message to Laura and Randy’s small group leader, who then shares the couple’s prayer concerns with the group.

What Mikaela Coppedge from First Presbyterian Church in Bloomington, Indiana, misses about not being able to attend church physically is the opportunity she had to share her gifts by assisting with the church’s coffee cart.

“We would sell fair-trade hot chocolate, coffee, tea and chocolate. It made me feel like I’m part of the team, because I got to help people and then I got to see their smiling faces. I felt good knowing I was helping out the farmers,” said Coppedge, who lives in a group home that has had to follow strict policies to protect the health and safety of Coppedge and her housemates. Her congregation, though, has found ways to include her on Sunday mornings by inviting her to be a liturgist and integrating a recording of her reading Scripture into the digital worship service. Coppedge has taken it upon herself to minister to others by calling church members to “check in on people to see how they are doing.”

The need to connect is a spiritual need she has, Coppedge said, and one that she knows others have as well. All churches have a “Mikaela Coppedge” in them — people with gifts who are not given the space to use them, especially those with disabilities. How can your church make worship more accessible and more inclusive? How can people with disabilities in your congregation, who may often be overlooked, share their gifts in the age of digital ministry?

 Sarah VanderZee McKenney, PC(USA) minister serving as the spiritual support coordinator for Stone Belt Arc, Bloomington, Indiana, member of Presbyterians for Disability Concerns

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff

Jim Phares, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)
John Piazza, Board of Pensions

Let us pray

Heavenly Father, in all that we say and do, may we reflect Christ’s love for all people everywhere. Help us all to look beyond our differences and concentrate on what we share as your children. Amen.