Today in the Mission Yearbook - ‘We’ve come this far by faith’ Louisville’s Grace Hope Presbyterian Church proclaims on its 125th birthday

When dealing with frenemies, can take our cue from Jesus, says the Rev. Jermaine Ross-Allam: ‘We come in peace, and we mean business’

May 31, 2023

Blessed by insightful and prophetic preaching by the Rev. Jermaine Ross-Allam, the director of the PC(USA)’s Center for the Repair of Historic Harms, more than 100 people joined in a joyous worship service recently celebrating the first 125 years of service in the Louisville community by Grace Hope Presbyterian Church.

“That’s a long doggone time to be in service to the Lord,” said Grace Hope’s pastor, the Rev. Dr. Angela Johnson. “Today is not about us. It’s about what God is doing.”

The visitors were every bit as joyous as Grace Hope members and friends attending the 90-minute service. Among those in attendance were the Rev. Dr. Diane Givens Moffett, president and executive director of the Presbyterian Mission Agency, and the Rev. Dr. John Odom, general presbyter of Mid-Kentucky Presbytery.

“Thank you for the work you’re doing,” Moffett said after being publicly thanked by Johnson for attending the celebration.

Among the hymns those gathered sang with gusto was “We’ve Come This Far by Faith,” which has been the church’s theme song. “Praise is what gets us through, in good times and in bad,” Johnson said. “We’ve been through some things and we’re still here.”

Ruling Elder Anna Bibbs shared a story depicting “Grace Hope at its best,” recalling how church members used to gather just before Thanksgiving to prepare food boxes each containing a complete meal for 25 or 30 families in need. “It was like an assembly line. We made sure every box got everything each family needed,” Bibbs said. “It used to take us all day. We were tired, but it was a good kind of tired because we were helping people. It never ceases to amaze me how God uses even the smallest thing for good.”

“We don’t have to wait until we cross the chilly Jordan before we have hope!” Johnson said. “We praise God for 125 years of hope, and we pray that God keeps on keeping on.”

Ross-Allam used Luke 19:28–42, an account of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, as his preaching text. “It’s rare we tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth of how Jesus landed on the empire’s short list for a historical lynching,” he said.

The sign outside Grace Hope Presbyterian Church invited the community to celebrate its 125th anniversary. (Photo by Mike Ferguson)

Ross-Allam touched briefly on Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, first asking God to “remove this cup from me,” then uttering what Ross-Allam called among the most holy words ever spoken: “yet not my will but yours be done.”

Before Good Friday, Jesus got himself into what the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis used to call “good trouble,” Ross-Allam said. “There is good trouble in the making once we turn our face to the Jerusalem of our time and place,” he said.

Jesus’ “frenemies,” the Pharisees, tried to warn Jesus after he’d entered the city to cries of “Hosanna,” Ross-Allam noted. Working people, the elderly and Jesus’ disciples “got so rowdy it made people a little bit nervous,” he said. It rankled them “that maybe someone was calling into question their legitimacy,” he said, when people in the crowd “removed articles of their humble outer clothing and laid them along the path where the Messiah was about to cross.”

The Pharisees “pulled Jesus to the side and said, ‘Teacher, make your disciples stop shouting,’” Ross-Allam said. “I think about this warning, putting a muzzle on Jesus’ fan club … Let us read ourselves into the text a little bit when the Pharisees say to Jesus, ‘Shush!’”

As the first director of the Center for the Repair of Historic Harms, Ross-Allam said he works “in the name of God and in service to God’s people” and operates with this message: “I come in peace, and I mean business.”

“I have eyes to see and ears to hear, just like everyone else,” he said. “It’s my prayer that God transforms the work of the Center into God’s holy work.”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Samantha Davis, Associate for Gender & Racial Justice, Racial Equity & Intercultural Women’s Ministry, Presbyterian Mission Agency
DeEtte Decker, Director, Communications Ministry, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray

Gracious God, may we be bold to proclaim the good news of your love for us and for your whole world. May we reach out to support our neighbors and offer them kindness, hope and sanctuary. May we listen with care and respect. May we share our own experience of the gospel with joy. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Award-winning poet Tim Lilburn connects to the land through contemplative practice

Union Theological Seminary’s Insight Project hosts interdisciplinary conversation

May 30, 2023

Dr. Tim Lilburn

“I didn’t know how to be where I was,” award-winning poet and essayist Dr. Tim Lilburn said in a public Zoom lecture recently held by Union Theological Seminary in New York City. The lecture was the fifth public forum of The Insight Project, which is described on its website as “a multi-year program series that seeks to put theology in conversation with a wide range of partners in the humanities, social sciences and the natural sciences.”

“At its core, The Insight Project seeks to redefine our understanding of theology not simply through the reformulation of doctrine, but through a reframing of the imagination,” said the host of the event, the Rev. Dr. John J. Thatamanil, Insight’s director and Professor of Theology and World Religions, before acknowledging the presence of the generous alumnus, Dr. Mary Coelho, who funds Insight.

According to its webpage, Coelho’s goal for Insight is to “deepen discourse around the ‘big questions’ and to provide space — particularly for students — to engage in dynamic, interdisciplinary conversations across curricular boundaries.”

Presenting on the topic “Faith, Contemplation and the Land,” Lilburn, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and professor at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, is the first poet and professor of creative writing to participate. He is the author of 12 books of poetry and three collections of essays, including “Living in the World as if it Were Home,” “Going Home” and “The Larger Conversation: Contemplation and Place.”

Dr. Mary Coelho

Thatamanil described Lilburn’s meditations as recovering the ancient philosophers’ grasp of science as a spiritual pursuit. “It’s one of the intentions of this lecture series to cultivate in theology students and theologians more broadly an attention to the sciences,” noting that how Lilburn uses the word “physique” or “phusis” “is very much a part of the ancient tradition’s conception of physics in antiquity as understood to be part of the spiritual life.”

Before describing his journey to reconcile his spiritual and physical realities within the metaphysical and aesthetic traditions in which he trained, Lilburn described a moment of epiphany that transformed his faith, art and scholarship, turning his preoccupation with the transcendent into a desire to be rooted in the natural world and at home in the particularities of place.

The Rev. Dr. John J. Thatamanil

Until his early 40s, Lilburn admitted “place was completely irrelevant” to his intellectual projects; rather he was “preoccupied by the structure of cognition and the pure desire to know.” Then, in the summer of 1990, he experienced a “transformative blow” while walking from a public library through a park in Regina, the capital of Canada’s Saskatchewan province. A big storm was coming in, but pedestrians were going about their typical business: walking in and out of public buildings, hotels, churches and shops or milling about the park, except for a few members of the Cree nation who were watching the storm approach from the South.

“It became clear to me that the Cree men who were in the park, without a doubt, came from the ground. They seemed to be rooted in that place. But everything else in that moment was floating … even I was floating,” Lilburn said. The buildings felt to him to be unmoored from the Earth. “The beautiful Baptist church and the venerable Hotel Saskatchewan were caught up in a nostalgia for metropolitan centers of powers.” Lilburn saw in the people, the buildings and the culture they represented a desire not to be grounded in the present Earth but to be acknowledged within a tradition of power shaped by a Western past and obsessed with an exalted future vision.

“The Cree men obviously had no need for this kind of approval,” Lilburn explained, in contrast to his own unattachment in the middle of his own life, after a career moving around the Pacific Northwest and Canada to teach at universities. “It wasn’t just me that was disconnected, but the culture that shaped me, most of the books in the library on whose steps I stood, all of the religious practices and political ambitions within the culture that shaped me were dreaming of another place and hoping for an affirmation from another place.”

Beth Waltemath, Communications Associate, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Deb Davies, Manager, Meeting Services, Office of the General Assembly
Allison Davis, Digitization Coordinator, Presbyterian Historical Society

Let us pray

O God of love greater than we can imagine, teach us how to love all your children as you have loved us, especially those who suffer unnecessarily. Give us boldness to argue and plead for your reign, especially in your house. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Memorial Day

A Time to Remember. A Time for Care.

May 29, 2023

“One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead.”
– J.R.R. Tolkien (1892 – 1973)

In 1916, J.R.R. Tolkien was a 24-year-old soldier fighting in the Battle of the Somme. He was wounded in action, joining over 1 million other British, French and German casualties. Like many others, his military service left an indelible impression on his life and on those around him. England has over 60,000 war memorials, some dating to the 1600s, and each, while made of stone, metal or fabric, is in reality a living remembrance of the sacrifices made by a service member and a way to honor the sacrifices of those left behind.

This weekend is Memorial Day, and it represents more than just a holiday on the calendar. It is a time set aside to remember people. It is time set aside to remember those who fell in the service of our country, and it is time set aside to care for those left behind: fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, friends and loved ones. Across the nation, many will take time out of their day to honor those who have fallen while fighting in the service of their country at places like Valley Forge, the trenches at Argonne, the hills of Cuba, the beaches at Normandy, Okinawa, Korea, Vietnam, Beirut, in the streets of Mogadishu, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq. While for some it will be patriotic, for many others it will be deeply personal.

Our denomination has over 120 chaplains serving in the military and Veterans Administration hospitals and many have either “personally come under the shadow of war and have fully felt its oppression” or are ministering within a broader community where that reality is an indelible part of their life journey. While it will be a day for remembrance, as chaplains it is more importantly a time to share a prayer, offer a shoulder to cry on, to counsel, or to walk in silence, but never alone. And hopefully, become an indelible support in a time of remembering.

While some of us will never know or fully understand the sacrifices made when a father, mother, son or daughter are sent off to war, there are many who will. And they will need communities of care, support and compassion. And that is the church. And that is why we celebrate Memorial Day.

Psalm 34:18: “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.”

Rev. Dennis Hysom, Executive Director, Presbyterian Federal Chaplaincies

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
April Davenport, Associate General Counsel, Legal Services, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)
Kathie Davenport, Program Administrator, Church Engagement, Board of Pensions

Let us pray:

Eternal and living God, surely your goodness and your mercies have followed us all the days of our lives. On this Memorial Day, we pause to remember that our blessings, liberties and rights have been secured at great sacrifice to others. Loving Lord, we ask you to console and strengthen those who mourn the loss of their loved ones. May this Memorial Day be a time to remember the grief of our loss and turn our eyes forward seeking the fruit of your peace ahead. Amen.

Minute for Mission: Pentecost Offering

How Did They Do That?

“… building up the Body of Christ.” Ephesians 4:12

May 28, 2023

How many times have we seen a modern building, an historic landmark, a great cathedral or a monument and thought, “How did they do that?” Regardless of when it was built, the skill and craftsmanship needed to not only imagine it, but to make it sturdy enough to safely and securely withstand the test of time, boggles the mind.

But what of people? We watch, listen and read as sports legends, great orators, talented musicians of every style of performance and brilliant writers astound us with their skills. And even though we know that the raw talent that leads to great skill is honed through years of practice, patience and persistence, we still look with awe at these accomplishments and say, “How did/do they do that?”

They did it because someone saw a spark. A spark that with the right teaching, coaching, leadership and practice could lead to great things.

Someone working with Good Success Academies in New Jersey recognized Tariq’s academic potential and helped him pursue his dream of studying computer science. A Young Adult Volunteer named Yuriko, which means “lily girl” in Japanese, blossomed in Peru, while a shy teenager named Grace boldly connected with her peers at a statewide youth conference.

How did they do that? They were lifted up, they were mentored and they were encouraged to grow into the person God was calling them to be. Fanning that spark, the raw talents and abilities within young people throughout the church and beyond builds strong and gifted leaders that God can use.

Your support of the Pentecost Offering assures that these young people of God have opportunities to participate in programs as varied as the Young Adult Volunteer Program, Presbyterian Youth Triennium and other ministries with youth, and the Educate a Child, Transform the World national initiative. Each leads to interacting with educators, mentors and leaders committed to building these youngest members of the body of Christ into the people God would have them become.

On this day of Pentecost, God gave the gift of the Holy Spirit to empower witnesses to the resurrection. How can you help young people to build a foundation of faith?

Special Offerings

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Leon Davis, Dishwasher, Stony Point Center, Presbyterian Mission Agency
Nora D’Ambrosio, Reservation Specialist, Stony Point Center, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray

Empowering God, Pentecost Sunday reminds us of the Spirit’s power to transform lives. Help each of us to hear the Spirit’s call every day of our lives. May we follow that call and build up the body of Christ. Amen.

Minute for Mission: 1001 New Worshiping Communities

May 27, 2023

Nikki Collins (provided)

Today is the day the liturgical calendar turns green. 

Ordinary Time … the long expanse of days without festival or celebration.

It’s as if all that fire of Pentecost has burned out overnight and the Holy Winds have blown right out to sea. Yesterday was a great and mysterious day, but it’s time to get back to work and on with life as we’ve known it. Blow out the birthday candles. The Church is another year older, feeling her age in her joints and in her responsibilities.

So, let’s get on with it.

And, yet, in many places in the world, Monday is a public holiday — Whit Monday — the day after Whit Sunday or Pentecost. Whit is for white — the color of baptismal garments, as Pentecost was a time of baptism for new believers throughout the history of the Church.

Marking Whit Monday declares things don’t just go right back to normal.

It is a new day — a new season — a new era. 

God has poured Holy Spirit on all people.

And it is hardly ordinary. The prophet says our sons and daughters will prophesy. Our old men will dream dreams, and our young men will see visions.

Do we dare?

Do we dare to dream with the Spirit of God for more than just one day?

Are we willing to scout for this Spirit’s movement in the midst of the regular and the routine?

What would happen if we let holy fire challenge our expectations of the ordinary exchanges and encounters of our daily lives?

What if we yielded to fresh winds and foreign tongues and gained a new perspective on God’s will for God’s world?

What if we got carried away — not just for a day — but for many days?

The story of Pentecost and the lectionary texts for today invite us to listen anew for the voice of the Spirit in and through the wisdom of the ages — and beyond it. 

The fire did not go out on the day after the faithful gathered in Jerusalem years ago. Yes, we celebrate another birthday of the Church. We are older, hopefully wiser, and certainly still called to follow God wherever the Spirit leads.

Do we dare?

Nikki Collins, Coordinator, 1001 New Worshiping Communities

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Patricia Curtis, Production Clerk, Hubbard Press, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)
Dana Dages, Digital Project Manager, Communications Ministry, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray

Come, Holy Spirit, and fill us with love for neighbor and stranger. Show us your love for the people around us and send us to befriend them and serve them and welcome them in your grace and in your power.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Presbyterians in two Mississippi presbyteries are aiding their neighbors in need after tornadoes

Churches in Leland and Greenville house first responders, and the mayor of Leland lends his limo service to help the people of devastated Rolling Fork get supplies

May 26, 2023

Tornadoes did significant damage to rural communities in Mississippi. (Photo courtesy of State Farm attribution license)

When tornadoes leveled neighboring Rolling Fork, Mississippi, in March, it didn’t take long for members and friends of Leland Presbyterian Church to spring into action to help neighbors who’d lost everything.

According to the Rev. Ann Kelly, pastor of the 130-member church about 40 minutes north of Rolling Fork, Leland members and friends showed up to staff a shelter for affected residents and one at the church to house first responders. They provided meals and accepted donations of toiletries and other essential items, toys, clothing, bedding and period products.

“Our mayor [Kenny Thomas] owns a limo service and a party bus,” Kelly said Wednesday. “He has made arrangements to go to Rolling Fork to pick up people so they can fill up on supplies.”

As the nearest PC(USA) church to Rolling Fork, one of the Mississippi communities most devasted by the EF-4 tornadoes, “We will work with Presbyterian Disaster Assistance to figure out how best to meet the needs,” Kelly said. “We want to be able to do what we can.”

Several of the first responders came from the congregation itself. Farmers who attend the Leland church had just completed their planting season, and “they had the freedom to put tarps on houses and use their [heavy] equipment for cleanup,” Kelly said. “It’s so early it’s hard to know what our niche is, but we’re working to discern what that is.”

The Rev. Dr. Greg Goodwiller, the executive presbyter and stated clerk at St. Andrew Presbytery in northern Mississippi who’s also the executive for the Synod of Living Waters, said he welcomed a three-member PDA National Response Team. The team worked with St. Andrew Presbytery and the Presbytery of Mississippi, which covers the southern two-thirds of the state, “to help us get a better assessment,” Goodwiller said. Based in Oxford, Mississippi, Goodwiller visited the Mississippi Delta and also stopped at First Presbyterian Church in Amory, Mississippi, which sustained some storm damage, including a collapsed chimney.

“I think our people are pumped about being in a place to help, particularly our folks in Leland,” Goodwiller said. “They’re talking about converting a floor of their education building into a long-term site for groups to come and work and stay” as they respond to the communities that need help.

“I think Presbyterians will be quite engaged in recovery efforts,” Goodwiller said, and that includes First Presbyterian Church in Greenville, Mississippi, which is about 15 minutes west of Leland and is also being used as a staging area for responders. “We are working with PDA to get engaged.”

The Rev. Bob Madsen, regional presbyter for both the Presbytery of Mississippi and the Presbytery of South Alabama, said he’s grateful PDA “transcends denominational boundaries to minister to persons in need.”

“Having served a congregation in Gulf Shores, Alabama, that benefited from the generosity of PDA [donors] following Hurricane Ivan in 2004, having had the opportunity to work through PDA following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and also in response to flooding in Nashville, Tennessee, I know firsthand what good work PDA does,” Madsen said.

The Rev. Jim Kirk, PDA’s Associate for Disaster Response in the U.S.A., said that while PC(USA) churches in the region were for the most part undamaged by the tornadoes, the immediate response  showed “the connectional nature of the Church.”

“There is pretty significant engagement,” Kirk noted. “Both presbyteries want to do everything they can to bring resources to help those impacted. … It’s a wonderful example of how, as a connected denomination, resources can be brought into impacted communities.”

“Through the generosity of Presbyterians around the denomination,” Kirk said, “PDA is able to partner with the presbyteries to ensure denominational support.”

To help Presbyterian Disaster Assistance respond quickly to catastrophic events, including the Mississippi tornadoes, make a gift by clicking here.

 Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Jayne Culp, Program Assistant/Moderator Assistant, Office of the General Assembly
Norma Cunningham, Accountant/Investments & Audits, Presbyterian Foundation

Let us pray

Creator of all we see and all we cannot see, your Spirit has been with us from the beginning and will be with us through all time. We thank you for the gift of life, and for the gift of the earth that is our home. May we live with gratitude in our hearts each day as we seek to be faithful witnesses of your good news. Amen.

Minute for Mission: Africa Day

May 25, 2023

Africa Day, commemorated on May 25, celebrates the vibrancy and diversity of Africa’s societies and cultures, marks the progress achieved toward liberation of the continent’s peoples, lifts up a vision of pan-African unity and cooperation, and invites reflection on the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead.

Sixty years ago today, representatives of 30 independent African states came together in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to create the Organization of African Unity (OAU). The OAU expressed the vision of an African continent that was free and united, a continent whose people enjoyed dignity, equality, and control of their own destinies.  The organization’s Charter spelled out its purposes:

To promote the unity and solidarity of the African States;

To coordinate and intensify their cooperation and efforts to achieve a better life for the peoples of Africa;

To defend their sovereignty, their territorial integrity and independence;

To eradicate all forms of colonialism from Africa; and

To promote international cooperation, having due regard to the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

By 1994, when South Africa’s transition to democratic rule marked the culmination of the struggle for decolonization of the continent, the OAU’s membership had grown to 54 countries. African leaders recognised a need to refocus the OAU’s purpose from political liberation to inclusive social and economic development. As a result, the OAU relaunched itself in 2002 as the African Union (AU) to underscore this shift of emphasis to international cooperation to achieve prosperity, security and good governance through democratic institutions. The All Africa Conference of Churches engages in advocacy at the AU through its liaison office in Addis Ababa.

For the PC(USA), this should be a day for giving thanks for our African partners, appreciating what we learn by walking with them, and praying — and acting — for justice and peace in Africa. We are inspired and challenged by the diverse range of creative ministries that our ecclesial partners pursue in 20 countries across the continent to enable all to experience life in abundance. And we are grateful for the generosity and hospitality that our partners show in inviting PC(USA) mission co-workers to accompany aspects of their work.

Some of these extraordinary ministries include:

• The Presbyterian Coordination of Ministries with Vulnerable Children initiative of the Presbyterian Community of the Congo (CPC) that has moved from conventional, institutionalized care of children to comprehensive, congregation-based care in the community and includes training of child protection advocates.
• The commitment of the Church of Jesus Christ in Madagascar (FJKM) to equip all of its churches and schools to be “green” institutions, building on the church’s successful Fruits, Vegetables and Environmental Education program.
• The Church of Central Africa Presbyterian’s “Educate our Girls” program, which ensures access to education for girls who became pregnant during Covid-related school lockdowns and who might otherwise have been compelled to drop out of school to care for their infant.
• The “1 Evangelist/1 Well” initiative of the Evangelical Church of the Republic of Niger (EERN) that seeks to ensure that communities have access to both clean water and “living water”.

As we celebrate Africa Day, let us give thanks for the ways that God is working in the world through our gifted and faithful partners in Africa!

Douglas J. Tilton, Regional Liaison for Southern Africa, Presbyterian World Mission

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Octavia Craig, Treasury Assistant, Purchasing, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)
Barry Creech, Deputy Executive Director for Budget, Board, General Assembly and Administration, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray

Creator and Ever-Creating God, your love and grace connect your people in ways that constantly amaze us. We are grateful that you call us to walk together on our journey, and we give thanks for siblings with whom we can share joys and burdens. Help us to be humble companions, acknowledging one another’s gifts, as we seek to ensure that all may experience the fullness of life promised in Christ.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Empowering clergy and other church leaders to help care for congregants’ mental health

Webinar by Synod of the Covenant and Science for the Church looks at what’s working in Michigan and Ohio’

May 24, 2023

Dr. Addie Weaver

Wrapping up their three-part series on Mental Health, Science and the Church, the Synod of the Covenant and its partner, Science for the Church, recently offered an hourlong conversation on churches and church leaders who are offering mental health services to congregants and to their communities. Watch the webinar here.

The panelists gathered by the Rev. Dr. Chip Hardwick, Synod of the Covenant executive, and the Rev. Drew Rick-Miller, project co-director for Science for the Church, were:

• Addie Weaver, Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Michigan.
• Ikeshia Smith, a clinical psychologist in Canton, Ohio.
• Susan Jennings, minister for pastoral care and mission at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Dr. Ikeshia Smith

Weaver’s presentation focused on Raising Our Spirits Together, a clergy and science partnership designed to increase access to treatment for depression in rural Michigan.

“Michigan is a pretty rural state, where clergy are serving as de facto mental health providers already,” Weaver said. Together with colleagues, Weaver talked to clergy in the southeastern part of the state “about how we might be able to collaborate, bringing together mental health intervention, science, clergy knowledge and expertise, the visual and performing arts and technology” to create a program “that would support clergy in meeting the needs of their congregants and their communities in a way that would not be a significant burden,” Weaver said.

Raising Our Spirits Together integrates cognitive behavioral therapy “with elements clergy already are doing to support folks,” including praying, active listening, engaging congregants in church activities, and helping them focus on “the positive, using Scripture to lift folks up,” Weaver said.

The Rev. Susan Jennings

In cognitive behavioral therapy, “We want to help people be able to understand the importance of taking action and doing things even when you don’t feel like it,” Weaver said. “Clergy said, ‘We do that a lot when we talk to people with depression. We invite them to come to fellowship hall on Sunday nights for Bible study. We invite them to come to Wednesday night groups when we’re writing cards to our congregants who are in the hospital or nursing home care.’”

“There are nice ways to build a program that emphasize the strengths of mental health treatments,” Weaver said. “We always have a Scripture that connects, and time for prayer requests.”

The partnership works for many reasons, according to Weaver. “Clergy get in a really authentic way the fact that their congregants are suffering,” Weaver said. Church members and friends “have unmet mental health needs, especially in the rural context. There are a lot of barriers people face in order to access care,” including the shortage of providers, especially in rural areas. In addition, “many people are much more comfortable seeking help from clergy, family or friends.”

The Rev. Drew Rick-Miller

Smith is part of Mind Your Business, an organization founded in November 2019 by Minister Marquez Johnson. “He realized a lot of people in churches were talking to their pastor about things the pastor was not equipped to handle,” Smith said. “His vision was to help leaders help people cope with everyday stress. We are there to be a support to them.” A tenet of Mind Your Business is “It’s OK not to be OK.”

Up to 10 people usually show up for sessions, and sometimes the crowd swells to about two dozen. Mind Your Business seeks out mental health providers in the communities it serves and operates The Hub, which helps people with utility bills and food.

One of the biggest impacts has been on people suffering grief and loss, Smith said. “You’d be surprised how many individuals are carrying around something very, very heavy,” Smith said.

Two months ago, Mind Your Business helped 20 pastors complete a course on mental health first aid training “to understand the symptoms,” Smith said. That helps them tell congregants, “Here’s what I can do while we’re connecting you with a mental health provider.”

Jennings leads the Mental Health Referral Panel at Westminster Presbyterian Church, which has published a booklet helpful to Grand Rapids residents. Since the panel’s founding in 2015, 180 individuals and couples have been served, “and there has been increased education and awareness through adult education and faith formation programs,” Jennings said.

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Donna Costa, Food Service Manager, Stony Point Conference Center, Presbyterian Mission Agency
Amanda Craft, Manager, Immigration Advocacy, Office of the General Assembly

Let us pray

Holy God, you call us to love you with our minds. Bless those who are devoted to study and teaching. By their fruits strengthen our minds and wills and so bless your church. In Christ’s name we pray, Amen.

Ministry Matters - Good news for all | Without beginning and without end

Will all be saved? Good news for all by Will Willimon   The Holy Spirit puts constant pressure upon the church, causing the church never to be content in being the stable, select few of the spiritually elite but rather keeping the church in motion, always reaching out, always on the move with the good news for all. Read here

But can the nose worship, too? Without beginning and without end by William McDonald   You knew you would be asked to lead devotions at the upcoming district lay leadership retreat, and, sure enough, you were. You thought a bit about what to do, which brought to mind the sort of devotional life you grew up with in United Methodism. There was the time-honored The Upper Room, sitting on top of your grandmother’s Bible. Read here

How do we negotiate the constant barrage of information and messages that infiltrate our lives? Practicing attention in the digital age by Deanna Thompson   If Christian communities are to be the hands and feet of Christ in the actual and virtual world today, cultivating ways of attending closely to the stories and the needs of those who suffer is a major task before us. If the church’s self-understanding is as the body of Christ, then it makes sense to study how Jesus paid attention to those who suffered. Read here

Getting a second wind in your sermon for Pentecost Sunday Readying the church for worship this Pentecost Sunday

Bringing Pentecost to the kids in worship this week