Minute for Mission: Reformation Sunday

October 31, 2021

Image of Martin Luther from Pearl Digital Collections. Courtesy of the Presbyterian Historical Society

Up until 1521, it had been relatively safe to show an interest in the writings and teachings of Martin Luther (1483–1546). When Luther refused to recant his writings in opposition to various doctrines and practices of the Roman Catholic Church, the Edict of Worms was signed by Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, on May 25, 1521, officially declaring Luther a heretic and an outlaw.

The decree “forbid anyone from this time forward to dare, either by words or by deeds, to receive, defend, sustain, or favor the said Martin Luther.” The Edict declared Luther to be an obstinate heretic and banned the reading or possession of his writings. It further called for his capture.

Luther escaped to safety at the Wartburg Castle under the protection of Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, where he proceeded to translate the New Testament into German. Luther had become a prolific writer, fully embracing the new technology of the printing press to widely disseminate his teachings. Attempts to carry out the Edict were largely unsuccessful and the movement for Reform swept across much of Northern Europe, forever changing the face of Christianity. We owe a debt of gratitude to all who have fought for their convictions and beliefs at any cost as we continue the work of building the Kingdom of God. 

For more on the Reformation, visit history.pcusa.org/rs.

Kristen Gaydos, Communications and Development Associate, Presbyterian Historical Society

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Cherrie Burch, Senior Accounting Clerk, Presbyterian Foundation
Becky Burton, Data Representative, Relationship & Development Operations, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray

God of grace, support us in the work of reform you call us to. Enhance our abilities to listen and care for each other. Strengthen our commitment to re-form our human world in the way of your son Jesus Christ. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - The preacher as doubter

Speaker, author, activist and public theologian Brian McLaren talks doubt and faith at the Festival of Homiletics

October 30, 2021

Brian McLaren

Preachers, Brian McLaren told more than 1,400 people viewing the Festival of Homiletics online recently, must also be doubters. If they need role models, the author, speaker, activist and public theologian said, preachers have to look no further than Jesus and Paul.

Five times during the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus uses the “you have heard that it was said … but I say to you …” approach that McLaren said was not cynical. Jesus is saying the first part of each phrase had filled its function, “and it’s time to move forward now.”

For Paul, “the only thing that matters is faith expressing itself in love,” McLaren said during a talk he titled “When the Preacher is the Doubter.”

McLaren asked viewers to think of the things that virtually all Christians used to believe, but now few do. Among them: the Earth-centered universe, an impassible God who experiences neither pain nor pleasure, the efficacy of saints’ relics and indulgences.

Consider as well the beliefs “that are now under serious negotiation,” McLaren said.

“Your doubts are not the enemy of faith,” McLaren told his audience, many of them preachers. “Your doubts are the enemy of authoritarianism.”

“It’s not doubt that harms your faith,” said McLaren, a former pastor and English professor. “It is the dishonesty about your doubts.”

So often, he said, students begin their seminary studies with a “simple, innocent, naïve faith, and it’s soon torn to shreds. Most learn to incorporate [what they learn] into their faith, and their faith grows.” Then they go off to serve congregations “where people don’t want to hear about what they learned in seminary.” Many clergy start suppressing their questions and doubts.

McLaren outlined four stages of faith and doubt: Simplicity, Complexity, Perplexity and Harmony.

Simplicity is faith before doubt. Authority figures serve as answer men. One has faith in an authoritative tradition.

Complexity is marked with pragmatism. Authorities are coaches who teach us how to think for ourselves. Faith is about managing and fixing doubt. Faith is an imperfect but salvageable tradition.

Perplexity is about relativism. Authority figures are seen as iconoclasts. “From this view, it doesn’t seem like the whole story,” he said. People at this stage of faith doubt corrupt, failed or dangerous traditions.

Harmony includes integration and non-dualism. Authority figures are mystics, visionaries and saints. People in the harmony stage are often young people, McLaren said, and faith and doubt are held in creative tension.

Think about faith like the rings in a tree, he said. “Doubt happens at the end of a stage when it stops working,” McLaren said. “Doubt is the portal that drives us out of an old stage and into a new season of growth.”

Preach to all four congregations, he said, all the stages, and challenge congregants to move on to the next stage.

For those in simplicity, offer them clarity and confidence, but emphasize humility. Encourage learning and model growth, not perfection. Preachers can explain “how our own doubts helped us grow,” McLaren said.

For those in complexity, offer options and emphasize curiosity. Model unknowing and not “know-it-allness,” he advised.

For those in perplexity, offer them meaning in stories and emphasize honesty. Encourage the model of reverence “in the face of mystery.”

For those in harmony, “we offer the contemplative practices of silence and the arts,” McLaren said. “We emphasize beauty and encourage testimony and we model authenticity.” For people in the stage of faith, emphasize what needs to continue and de-emphasize what doesn’t, he said.

He encouraged his listeners to “be a good pastor to yourself. You are a human being. You are growing and developing, and you have your unique journey through life’s stages. You need friends who accept you and understand you where you are.”

Doubt is “not just about you,” McLaren said. “There are dark, dangerous and deadly elements of the Christian religion that demagogues and authoritarians have learned to manipulate.” It’s time to call it what it is — false and immoral, he said.

“If we don’t, more and more people will throw [their faith] away, treasures and all,” McLaren said.

 Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Lucy Bryant, Manager, Online Services, Presbyterian Foundation
Monica Buonincontri, Director, Enterprise Marketing, Board of Pensions

Let us pray

Gracious God, grant us the humility and strength to follow your call wherever it may lead, whether close to home or on distant shores. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Shining light in the darkness

New worshiping community leader for those with mental health variances discovers the community as ‘God in the flesh’

October 29, 2021

Pet therapy has been an important piece of the Light for the Darkness ministry. The Rev. Thirza Sayers’ dog assists in community groups and brings a certain ease to the atmosphere. (Photo by Neil E. Das)

From February through April, the Rev. Thirza Sayers was in bed, in another space of darkness.

The leader of Light for the Darkness, a new worshiping community that serves as a mental health ministry in the Presbytery of Giddings Lovejoy and pastor at Hillside Presbyterian Church in House Springs, Missouri, has lived with treatment-resistant major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder for 30 years. Then came post-traumatic stress disorder. This combination, treated with 20 Electroconvulsive Therapy sessions, sidelined her from 2013 to 2017, when she took mental health disability leave.

When Sayers reemerged, the founder of what was then Caritas, the Rev. Dr. Johanna McCune Wagner, invited her to start leading groups for people with mental health variances. Then in 2019, Wagner received a call to pastor First Presbyterian Church of Concord in California.

“She told me, ‘Either you’re in charge or it’s finished,’” Sayers said.

She rebirthed it and named it according to the mission they were going to follow found in John 1:5: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

Light in the darkness is what Sayers experienced this year in her illness, she said. Her psychiatrist took her off the four medications she was on in case she was reacting to one of them. Physically limited, she was unable to do her yoga or bike, which were crucial elements to maintaining her mood.

“So often I felt God was absent in the darkness of 2013 to 2017,” she said. “But God was with me this time. I had learned where to look for God. And I stayed connected and asked for help from friends, family and community, which was essential in not letting the darkness overwhelm.”

They responded to her cries for help by walking her dog. Sending cards. Cleaning her house. Bringing meals. Chauffeuring her to doctors — and praying.

“It was as if God was in the flesh,” Sayers said. “They were doing these things as Christ’s body.”

For Sayers, this is what Light for the Darkness is about. Helping each other with “glimpses of light.” Reminding each other that God is in fact present, where hope lives and grace abounds.

Because the Presbytery of Giddings-Lovejoy was spotlighting its NWCs, presbytery leaders asked Sayers to produce a brief video about Light for the Darkness. Coincidentally, Sayers needed a video that she could use to introduce the group via social media to people looking for spiritual mental health recovery.

So, members in the Light for the Darkness community offered their voices, including Pat, who’s been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Watch the video here.

“Pat and some others thought his part might have been an estranging, but I thought it was important too that we have good representation of the spectrum,” Sayers said. “Pat actually helps destigmatizes it and creates more awareness.”

Light for the Darkness also has a video called “The Coming of the Holy Spirit.” Watch it here.

Last year, as the pandemic was raging, creating a video was a way for Sayers to bring a glimpse of light into the darkness in another way, sharing the creativity of her gifted friends, some of whom were struggling to find work. They included the videographer, the composer, the fire artist, the visual prayer artist and the narrator.

In 2012, the 220th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) declared a commitment to this churchwide movement that would result in the creation of 1001 worshiping communities over 10 years. At a grassroots level, nearly 600 diverse new worshiping communities have formed across the nation. 

Paul Seebeck, Communications Strategist, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Vernon Broyles, Volunteer, Office of the General Assembly
Laura Bryan, Coordinator, Financial Aid for Service, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray

God, how grateful we are for the creative presence of your Spirit. For all that speak of your salvation, we give you thanks. Continue to breathe life into all of us — send us into our neighborhoods and communities in service, so that the world you love might bless your name. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - ‘They correct themselves when they become aware of things they need to change’

Dr. Grace Y. Kao, a Christian ethicist, says teaching undergraduates for the first time in years has been life-giving

October 28, 2021

Dr. Grace Y. Kao

The Rev. Dr. Lee Hinson-Hasty of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s Committee on Theological Education, host of the podcast “Leading Theologically,” likes to start off the Facebook Live events by asking his guest, “What is making you come alive?”

Dr. Grace Y. Kao (pronounced “Gow”), professor of Christian Ethics at the Claremont School of Theology in Claremont, California, told Hinson-Hasty during a recent podcast it’s “this next generation” of students.

“I’m teaching undergraduates for the first time in a decade,” Kao said. “It’s their commitment to social justice. They’re trying to be antiracist and they’re taking steps to be more environmentally sustainable. They correct themselves when they become aware of things they need to change. What’s making me come alive is them, frankly.”

What’s giving those students that drive, that hope, asked Hinson-Hasty, senior director for Theological Education Funds Development for COTE and the Presbyterian Foundation.

It’s “a confluence of factors,” Kao responded. The Black Lives Matter movement is part of it, Kao said, but “while we were all stuck at home,” students asked, “What about the environment? Why are young people changing their eating and consumer habits and pressing the business sector and the public sector to clean up their acts? I think the fact that ordinary folks can have a platform” by doing something akin to what Kao and Hinson-Hasty were doing at the time, using social media to exchange ideas, “has something to do with it. I think the dissemination of power has something to do with it. I don’t know all the reasons people are coming alive and taking charge, but I’m appreciating it.”

When Kao sees gifts in her students, particularly the potential to teach in higher education, “I want to encourage them. You can only pay things forward — you can never pay [her own mentors] back. So, I try to nurture the next generation of talent when I find it.”

Kao said she’s working on two projects in addition to her teaching. One’s a monograph that develops a theology of reparations for Asian Americans, aggrieved by actions including the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. In Hawaii, she noted, generations of Asian Americans have apologized to Native Hawaiians, and the U.S. government has apologized to the former kingdom of Hawaii. Such acts, Kao said, have economic repercussions and can result in the redistribution of land.

“Asian Americans are in a unique position,” Kao said. “They’ve been on both sides.”

Kao is also completing a manuscript on surrogacy, drawing from a Christian ethical perspective. She herself was a surrogate for a friend, and, she said, “people would ask me questions.”  

Two years ago, Kao gave a paper on the topic to the Society of Christian Ethics, wondering if she’d get “tarred and feathered. The treatment of embryos is a sensitive issue, but it was well-received.”

On the rise in consciousness regarding recent anti-Asian American and Pacific Islander acts of violence, Kao said campuses across the country are undertaking significant Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts, “and for very appropriate reasons, they are focused on anti-Black racism.” What’s next, Kao said, is “talking about cross-racial solidarity.”

In the aftermath of 9/11, religion scholars were often asked, “What does the Koran really say about” whatever topic interested the questioner, Kao recalled. “As a religion scholar, you want to move beyond that first question to talk about how we build a racially just society.” Now that the national consciousness is being raised, “what is next is getting into the messiness, the nuances.”

Asked by Hinson-Hasty to deliver a blessing or charge following the 30-minute interview, Kao turned to “my shero,” the Presbyterian activist Yuri Kochiyama, who made the 1993 documentary “Passion for Justice.” Had she lived (Kochiyama died in 2014), Kochiyama, who was interned for two years during World War II, would have celebrated her 100th birthday on Wednesday. Kao paraphrased Kochiyama’s message: “Remember that consciousness is power. Consciousness is education and knowledge. Consciousness is becoming aware. Consciousness-raising is pertinent for power. Be sure that power will not be abusively used, but be used for building trust and goodwill, domestically and internationally. Tomorrow’s world is yours to build.”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Lorraine Brown, Associate for Finance & Building Operations, Presbyterian Historical Society
Andrew Browne, Senior Vice President, Church Relations, Board of Pensions

Let us pray

King of the universe, you see the faithful deeds of your servants. Bless the work of their hands. We trust in you, Lord of hosts, friend of the lowly. We bless your mighty name! Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - ‘No one comes to this table because they deserve to’

Adoption story illustrates communion table grace at the Festival of Homiletics

October 27, 2021

The Rev. Dr. Craig Barnes

One night when the Rev. Dr. Craig Barnes was a boy, his father woke him up and introduced him to his new brother, Roger.

Barnes’ father was the pastor of a church in a poor community, and Roger came to services with his mother. The pastor had talked to the family and tried to help the mother and father with their addictions, to no avail.

One night, Roger couldn’t wake his parents up, and when the police arrived, they confirmed the mother and father had died of heroin overdoses. Rev. Barnes volunteered to take the boy home for the night, having no other family to go to.

“Somewhere on the drive from the projects, my father decided that he was going to adopt Roger,” Barnes recalled to nearly 1,000 people in the audience for the recent virtual Festival of Homiletics.

Barnes, president and professor of Pastoral Ministry at Princeton Theological Seminary, was lecturing on “Preaching with Bread and Wine,” and for him, his father’s willingness to bring Roger into their family was emblematic of the communion table.

“That night, Roger became my father’s heir and my joint heir,” Barnes said. “He didn’t earn that. He didn’t even ask for it. I’m not even sure he wanted it.

“But it was a grace that was given to him.”

It wasn’t quite as easy as it sounds, though, Barnes said. His parents believed in old-school piety and “loved rules,” Barnes said. Meanwhile, raised by heroin addicts, Roger was unaccustomed to rules and came to hear the phrase, “Roger, we don’t do that here,” mainly from his mother, particularly at the dinner table.

Slowly, Barnes said, his brother’s life was transformed, just like our lives are transformed each time we come to the communion table.

Barnes talked about a moment that passes between pastors and members of the congregation as they come forward to receive communion.

“Throughout the week, the pastor is constantly encountering ‘why?’ questions,” Barnes said. “’Why did my child die?’ ‘Why do evil people prosper?’ ‘Why didn’t God help me when I prayed? And I prayed.’ The question has to be asked, even though the pastor knows it’s never going to be satisfactorily answered, not with an answer that can stand up to that question: ‘Why? Why?’”

Then, in worship, the pastor stands at the front of the church.

“People come one after another,” Barnes said. “There is a very tender moment that is known only, really, to clergy. And that’s that moment when the next person comes up and looks at the pastor. And just for a moment, we glimpse into each other’s eyes, and we remember the husband who has cancer, remember the child who’s in jail, remember the other child who’s in Afghanistan, remember the wife that was just buried a couple of months ago, remember the devastating diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. One after another, it just keeps coming. And all I can say is, ‘The body of Christ. The cup of salvation.’ It’s all it needs to be said at that moment, because it’s their moment of communion.”

It is a moment where the truth of their lives and the holy are blended.

“This table clearly proclaims that grace precedes faith,” Barnes said. “No one comes to this table because they deserve to. We come because we need to. We bring all that stuff I was talking about, because we need to commune with a savior.”

At the height of the Vietnam War, Roger enlisted in the Army and was sent into combat.

One day, the family received a telegram that Roger had been killed in combat. Later they learned that Roger died in an act of heroism that saved other lives, and his mother asked, how did the frightened boy they brought into their family become a hero?

“Mama, I know the answer to that,” Barnes recalled telling her. “It was all of those table lessons, because he was paying attention to the grace that he had received.’

“If we attend to the grace of this table, to the grace that is always offered when the word is proclaimed, lives are being converted.”

 Rich Copley, Communications Strategist, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Kendra Bright, Operations & Accounting Associate, Presbyterian Publishing Corporation
Christian Brooks, Representative for Domestic Poverty & Environmental Issues, Office of Public Witness, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray

Gracious God, thank you for the mission and ministry of congregations. By your Spirit, guide all your people, that your love and grace may abound as we faithfully follow where you lead. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.

Called Out to Serve!

Mark Your Calendars for Saturday, November 13th!

a zoom gathering with Rev. Dr. Alonzo Johnson, PCUSA

Called out to Serve: Living Out our Missional Identity in Christ – YES, Even During Covid.

9:30 am-11:30 am Matthew 25 and Self-Development of People challenge us to see the world and be in relationships right where we are, and not just far away. Using examples from Black Presbyterian missional trailblazers such as Thelma Adair, Gayraud Wilmore and Edler Hawkins, this interactive workshop will equip participants with missional strategies centered around identity, discipleship, relationship building and asset mapping to create and leverage congregational/ communal power in engaging issues in the local church!

11:45 am-12:15 pm Rev. Dr. Alonzo Johnson and Margaret Mwale from SDOP will talk briefly about the ministry of SDOP and how you and your Presbyteries can be engaged.

Click HERE to Read More and Register

                            

News from Presbyterian World Mission – October 2021

Mission Matters In this month’s Mission Matters, mission co-worker Doug Dicks shares his reflection on why mission matters in the context of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Read Mission Matters →

PC(USA) and Czech church (ECCB) host conference The Evangelical Church of the Czech Brethren (ECCB) and PC(USA) hosted a virtual conference focusing on youth involvement recently. Destini Hodges, interim YAV coordinator, served as a co-host. The Church supports Christian witness in the Czech Republic through a partnership with ECCB. (Photo by Jacob Adamson via Unsplash) Learn more → Stated Clerk calls for prayer, lament and action Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the PC(USA), calls for the U.S. to critically analyze our foreign policy in light of recent events that have transpired in Haiti. (Photo by Tijo Conseillant) Learn more →

Congo Mission Network holds free virtual conferences this fall The Congo Mission Network is holding free virtual monthly mini-conferences this fall. Dates and topics include: November 13: "The Church’s Work with Vulnerable Children" December 11: "Christian Literature: How it Is Used in Every Aspect of the Church’s Work." Register here →

Mission co-worker serves as pastor for Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy The Rev. Jessica Derise, a mission co-worker for 18 months, is able to serve in person for the first time as interim chaplain for the Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy. She is reviving a congregation fatigued by Covid restrictions and Zoom worship. (Photo provided) Learn more → PC(USA) ministries call for support of African farmers The Presbyterian World Mission’s Africa office joined three PC(USA) ministries and more than 200 organizations in backing a letter from the Alliance for Food Sovereignty (AFSA) calling on major donors to support small-scale farmers in Africa. (Photo by Valery Nodem) Learn more →

Join the Koballs in answering the call of Matthew 25! In Peru, where Jed and Jenny Koball serve as mission co-workers, outside interests have ruptured the time-honored relationship that its people share with the earth. Greedy corporations — by cutting down ancient forests, polluting rivers and bleeding the earth of its resources — have subjected Indigenous people to a life of staggering poverty although they are surrounded by nature’s riches. To love our neighbors — especially the "least of these" — we must come together to stop the poisoning, the destruction and the wastefulness that cause profound suffering and loss. Thank you for standing with the Koballs and others by standing against the exploitation of resources that leads to the exploitation of people. Thank you for joining with the PC(USA) in living out the Matthew 25 vision to eradicate systemic poverty, as together we help restore and protect God’s Creation. Give online →

SAVE THE DATE: Giving Tuesday is November 30, 2021! The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s Giving Tuesday campaign is a virtual celebration of the collective power of Presbyterian generosity, as we profess by our actions—and with our gifts—that we can accomplish far more together than any one of us can do alone. This year, we will host an eight-hour livestream, broadcast from multiple locations across the United States, where we will share how your gifts support the mission of the Church as we live out Jesus’ call for us in Matthew 25. We invite you to join with Presbyterians from near and far for worship, fun with some familiar faces, and an unparalleled opportunity for your generosity to make a lasting impact around the country and around the world. Give now →

Border ministry chooses welcome and hospitality The Migrant Resource Center, located in Mexico just across the border from Douglas, Arizona, has served more than 16,000 men, women, and children with coffee, meals, water, first aid and clothing. Rev. Mark Adams and wife Miriam Maldonado Escobar – a fellow mission co-worker – connects people and organizations across the border. (Photo by Sister Judy Bourg) Learn more → Arab and Israeli women work toward just peace Sindyanna of Galilee, a PMA global partner and grassroots group of Arab and Jewish women, is working to share its vision of peaceful co-existence in the region. (Photo by Oren Shalev) Learn more →

We invite you to join us on this journey to become a Matthew 25 church In Matthew 25, the call is loud and clear: we must actively engage in the world around us, so our faith comes alive and we wake up to new possibilities. Becoming a Matthew 25 church involves working to build congregational vitality, dismantle structural racism and eradicate systemic poverty. Over 1,000 churches, mid councils and groups have accepted the Matthew 25 invitation. You too can help our denomination become a more relevant presence in the world. Read more →

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