Today in the Mission Yearbook - Thanks to grants, more than 40 PC(USA) new worshiping communities will get technology upgrades

Funds will help NWCs expand their reach

January 31, 2024

Light 4 the Darkness Fellowship offers in-person and hybrid support 

groups grounded in gardening, the arts and mental health resilience. 

(Contributed photo)

Technology has the power to connect people, but only when it is working and is scaled for growing with a community.

Recognizing how important technology is to spiritual leaders of communities, the Presbyterian Foundation has expanded its technology grant awards to include leaders of new worshiping communities this year. “The Presbyterian Foundation first offered this grant to pastors of congregations last year and expanded it to serve the leaders of new worshiping communities,” said the Rev. Nikki Collins, director of 1001 New Worshiping Communities, adding that “1001 and the Presbyterian Mission Agency are grateful for the opportunity to partner with the Presbyterian Foundation to extend these Lilly Foundation Inc. funds for new worshiping communities.” Collins also said that together over $150,000 was awarded to more than 40 new worshiping communities with particular technology needs. The awards of $5,000 or less will help them grow their communications channels and enhance their worship services and hybrid groups.

“The grant applications we received last year affirmed the need for technology grants for pastoral leaders serving small congregations, particularly churches of color, which have less resources available to them,” said the Rev. Dr. David Loleng, director of Church Financial Literacy and Leadership at the Presbyterian Foundation. “Just a few thousand dollars makes a world of difference to these pastoral leaders and the congregations they serve. The Presbyterian Foundation in partnership with the Presbyterian Mission Agency’s 1001 NWC program is honored to include the leaders of new worshiping communities this year as it was a wonderful way to extend this benefit and work together with our colleagues across the PC(USA).”

Grant applications were received Sept. 21 to Oct. 21, and awards were announced on Nov. 13.

These grants are important because ministry in the 21st century depends on technological savvy and tools. Most NWCs operate with limited funding, and leaders often supply their own laptops and other tech equipment for the purposes of ministry. But beyond the purchase of a laptop on which a leader can shape a worship service or send emails, many of these grants will bring technology tools to the communities they serve through internet access for after-school programs sponsored by the NWC, equipment for livestreaming worship and A/V equipment for growing gatherings.

Light 4 the Darkness Fellowship has welcomed more than 300

 people from around the world to address mental health 

challenges and the effects of isolation. (Contributed photograph)

“Our Wi-Fi is awful; we run everything off individual hotspots,” team members from Ebenezer: The People’s Cathedral in San Diego wrote on their grant application. The church, which seeks to help “the immigrant, under-resourced and often-exploited community come to life” in their neighborhood of Linda Vista, will use the funds to install a fiber network and update camera and AV equipment that is over 10 years old for their worship services.

Intercultural Mosaics in Davis, California, has a vision “to rejuvenate the faith for Millennials and Gen Zers beyond traditional church structures.” During the pandemic, the ministry engaged over 800 individuals across 25 ethnicities over Facebook and Zoom. Its website has over 40,000 subscribers but is quickly becoming outdated. According to its application, their limited social media reach and inadequate hybrid event equipment have become a hindrance to the global vision they have for evangelism and discipleship. The $5,000 grant will help the strategic vision to integrate better hybrid events, social media marketing and an updated website into a more seamless platform that attracts and sustains spiritual seekers.

Light 4 the Darkness Fellowship (L4TD) is also a multicultural ministry that “includes 25% African Americans, 12% Asian Americans, 5% Hispanics, 50% Caucasians and 8% who chose not to identify.” L4TD Fellowship has welcomed more than 300 people around the world through Zoom support groups and a focus on healing post-church and post-Christian trauma as it addresses the mental health challenges and the effects of isolation.

The grant funds will improve the technology platforms used by L4TD facilitators who lead their worshipful support groups and one-on-one sessions so that interruptions in sound or image quality don’t detract from the healing connections being forged.

Support and togetherness were what the Presbyterian Mission Agency and the Presbyterian Foundation hoped to convey in reaching these communities still in the innovating stages of their development as ministries.

“Working together reminds us all that we are not in this ministry alone, that there are resources beyond ourselves, and that sharing generously and faithfully shows the world the depth and breadth of God’s love,” said Collins.

 Beth Waltemath, Communications Strategist, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Today’s Focus: Presbyterian Foundation awards grants to 1001 New Worshiping Communities for technology upgrades

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Zenia Baker, Administrative I, Operations, Presbyterian Foundation
Amantha Barbee, Mission Engagement Advisor At Large, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)

Let us pray

God in Heaven, we thank you for your compassionate presence in our lives and ask that you help us to be a compassionate presence to the people around us, regardless of whom we may encounter. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - A Presbyterian in the US Senate who answers to a higher calling

Chris Coons of Delaware talks about his faith formation during a Georgetown University forum

January 30, 2024

U.S. Senator Chris Coons of Delaware is a longtime 

Presbyterian. He recently talked with the Rev. Jim Wallis 

about his faith formation. (Photo courtesy of Senator Coons)

U.S. Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, one of 11 Presbyterians in the Senate, recently spent an hour with the Rev. Jim Wallis talking about how his faith has helped carry him this far. Listen to his conversation with Wallis, director of Georgetown University’s Center on Faith + Justice, by going here. Coons appeared as part of the Center of Faith + Justice’s “Higher Calling” series.

Coons, who grew up in the Red Clay Creek Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, Delaware, completed his graduate studies at the Yale Law School and the Yale Divinity School at the same time. “I often kid my friends he is the only theologian senator I know,” Wallis said, until Georgia voters elected the Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock as one of their senators in 2021. “Chris Coons is a public servant who knows what the phrase ‘higher calling’ means.”

Coons said he’d been reading Wallis’ work for decades, beginning in Sojourners magazine. “I hope conversations like this can be commonplace, not rare,” he told Wallis while seated in Georgetown’s Riggs Library along with a large number of students, faculty and others.

He said he didn’t understand Presbyterianism “within the Reformed tradition” until he attended divinity school. At Red Clay Creek Presbyterian Church, his mother and father were “very active,” and the church offered “a great youth group. I was indifferent and didn’t pay much attention, but I absorbed in action what my parents’ faith meant to them.”

During the mid-1970s, his mother welcomed a refugee family from Vietnam. “My mom never talked about putting faith into action. She just got to work welcoming them,” Coons said. In time, each of the refugee family’s five children, who were about the ages of Coons and his siblings, earned undergraduate and graduate degrees.

One Sunday, Coons’ father volunteered to accompany a visiting preacher to the maximum-security prison in Smyrna, Delaware, where he developed a relationship with a man named Paul, who was serving a sentence for murdering his abusive father. On furlough weekends, Paul was welcomed into the Coons household.

“I had a chance to visit Paul later,” Coons said. “He said the kindness and trust my father showed him changed the trajectory of his life.”

Those actions undertaken by his parents “defined for me who is our neighbor,” Coons said. “That was because of our church.”

Nowadays his wife, Annie, works up to four days a week helping to vaccinate people in prison, caring for sex workers and helping those who are addicted.

Coons spent a semester of his junior year in college studying at the University of Nairobi in Kenya and serving as a volunteer relief worker. “It transformed my view,” Coons told Wallis, recalling his host family’s “radical hospitality and unbelievable kindness. I’d never been in a household that prayed 10 times a day.”

In 2010, Coons won election to the Senate, where he attends the weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast and has twice co-hosted the National Prayer Breakfast. He told Wallis he’s preached at half the Presbyterian churches in Delaware as well as at others. “It’s the most challenging and rewarding experience I’ve ever had,” he said. When he was considering ordination in the PC(USA), the thought of reading Scriptures in Hebrew and Greek — and passing ordination exams in both — helped lead him along his current career path instead.

“Ministry shouldn’t be defined by a clerical role,” Wallis said. “I would say your work in the Senate and the way you do it is your own kind of ministry.”

Coons identified current and former colleagues including Johnny Isakson, Orrin Hatch, Mike Lee and John Barrasso as “people I would not have gotten to know” without the weekly prayer breakfast.

With Coons’ packed schedule and all the pressure he and others are under, how, Wallis wondered, does he stay spiritually centered and humbled?

Coons said he reads Scripture nearly every day and feels grounded at the church he now attends, First and Central Presbyterian Church in Wilmington. “I try to find brief minutes of calm here and there in the craziness of the day,” Coons said.

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Today’s Focus: US Senator Chris Coons of Delaware answers to a higher calling

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Janelle Baker, Mission Specialist, Racial Equity & Women’s Intercultural Ministries, Presbyterian Mission Agency
Kristine Baker, Associate for Risk Management, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)

Let us pray

For those you have called to lead your church, O God, we give you thanks. Be with those who teach, preach and care for the least of these. And to all of your children, give the peace of Christ and the community of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Iowa City chooses like-minded neighbors to help live out the gospel

The Matthew 25 congregation shows what it means to be Christ’s eyes, hands and feet

January 29, 2024

The Matthew 25 ethos was instrumental to St. Andrew Presbyterian Church‘s plans for its new facility on the outskirts of Iowa City, Iowa.

From the spacious, modern building to the land surrounding it, St. Andrew aims to serve its community providing space for meeting and gathering resources and identifying like-minded neighbors to sell its surrounding property to.

“This is not building membership,” the Rev. W. Robert Martin III, St. Andrew’s lead pastor and head of staff says. “This is simply showing them by example what it means to be the eyes, hands and feet of Christ.”

Learn more about St. Andrew’s work in the video above.

Videography by Rich Copley with video editing by Alex Simon. Additional photography courtesy of St. Andrew Presbyterian Church.

Today’s Focus: St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Iowa City, a Matthew 25 congregation

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Khulan Baigalimaa, Trust Operations Administrator-Funds Services, Presbyterian Foundation
Charles Baker, Production Clerk I, Presbyterian Distribution Service, (A Corp)

Let us pray

Gracious God, open our hearts and minds, and teach us to be abundantly generous with all that we have. Help us not to be timid but to boldly proclaim your good work in this world. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Minnesota’s only Black-led PC(USA) church addresses the opportunity gap for Black youth

Churches ‘have to be about the business of taking care of young people,’ says co-pastor of Liberty Community Church

January 27, 2024

Video URL: https://vimeo.com/882184911

The 21st Century Academy is part of the ministry of Liberty 

Community Church. Liberty Community Church in Minneapolis, 

Minnesota has created numerous programs to address systemic 

issues in its community. Liberty is a Matthew 25 church. 

(Photo by Rich Copley/Presbyterian Mission Agency)

“We have to be about the business of taking care of young people. It can’t be all about just us here within the church confines. It’s got to be about other people,” said the Rev. Dr. Ralph Galloway, co-pastor of Liberty Community Church.

As a new church development more than 20 years ago, Liberty Community Church listened to the voices of young people in their community to develop programs that would improve their sense of safety and hope for the future. A survey conducted by two teenagers set in motion an evolving and expanding set of services that started with youth drop-in services and a Freedom School in the summer. Today, after-school and youth programs focused on academics, arts enrichment, financial literacy and college enrollment bolster the efforts of the congregation to “close the school-to-prison pipeline” and pave a path to advanced education and financial opportunity for their community.

“I’m not amazed; how could it not grow? It’s the result of love and dedication,” said the Rev. Jermaine Ross-Allam, the founding executive director of the church’s 21st Century Academy, describing how the after-school program that he helped to start under the mentorship of the Revs. Drs. Ralph and Alika Galloway has blossomed over the years to serve young scholars in kindergarten through 12th grade in North Minneapolis. At a time when Historically Black Colleges and Universities struggle and historically Black Presbyterian churches face closures due to the long legacy of slavery and structural racism resulting in the historic racial wealth gap, Ross-Allam, who is now the director for the PC(USA)’s Center for the Repair of Historic Harms, lifts up the African American community’s belief in and commitment to education and faith and the opportunities church communities have to foster them together.

“Working with the Revs. Galloway really showed me that it is important for us to take that tradition and continue to build on it,” said Ross-Allam. “It makes sense to have a church building. It makes sense to have educated clergy. It makes sense to use the space available to educate children. And it makes sense to pray without ceasing for their well-being.”

Prayer is essential for building on our tradition of faithful community education and expanding programs that serve the community in life-giving ways, according to Ross-Allam: “It makes sense to pray and to continually be inspired about ways to further the interests of our people, our community, our faith, and to give more life and to give more hope.”

 Beth Waltemath, Communications Strategist, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Today’s Focus: Black-led PC(USA) church addresses the opportunity gap for Black youth

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Molly Atkinson, Administrative Assistant, 1001 New Worshiping Communities, Presbyterian Mission Agency
Yesenia Ayala, Mission Specialist, Financial Aid for Service, Theology, Formation & Evangelism, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray

God of every generation, we gratefully praise you for calling and claiming people of every time and place — guiding us and inviting us to follow you. Be with us on our pilgrimage, granting us refuge in this ever-changing world until our hearts find peace and rest in you. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - New CEO brings 20 years’ experience in international nonprofit leadership and development to the PC(USA)’s Ghost Ranch

Leadership transition ushers in a bright new chapter of impact for the world-renowned education and retreat center in New Mexico

January 28, 2024

David Evans is the new chief executive officer at Ghost 

Ranch Education & Retreat Center. (Photo courtesy of 

Ghost Ranch)

Ghost Ranch Education & Retreat Center, related to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), has appointed David Evans as chief executive officer, effective Jan. 15.

A seasoned nonprofit leader, Evans brings more than 20 years of experience in international nonprofit leadership and development to the role. His career is marked by social and environmental justice, humanitarian aid and community empowerment around the globe including the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia and the American Northwest.

“Ghost Ranch is on the threshold of a new era, following a year of transition,” said the Rev. Dr. Tim Hart-Andersen, president of the National Ghost Ranch Foundation Board. “David Evans will bring to the Ranch unique leadership savvy and experience to take us into that new chapter. The future of Ghost Ranch looks bright!”

Evans said, “Ghost Ranch is not just a place; it’s where my passion for exploration and community was kindled. As a child, the Chimney Rock Trail was a tough challenge that helped me learn so much about myself. Now, as CEO, my aspiration is for every visitor to Ghost Ranch to discover their own spark of curiosity, embrace difficulties, and experience rejuvenation.”

Evans’ experience includes executive leadership in complex situations and multicultural organizations, managing teams, and working to maximize nonprofit budgets. He began his career in fund development at Mercy Corps and has since served as director, head of office, regional director and country director for various initiatives. Most recently, Evans was the Mekong Regional Director at EarthRights International and Country Director at Muslim Aid in Myanmar, two roles which required passionate advocacy, steady leadership and creative problem-solving to address human rights crises.

Ghost Ranch Education & Retreat Center is on 21,000 gorgeous 

acres in northern New Mexico. (Photo courtesy of Ghost Ranch)

“David combines deep experience with leading large and small teams in complex international contexts with a passion for conservation, humanitarian aid and the arts,” said Chris Kempes, board member and search chair. “I couldn’t be more excited for David to lead Ghost Ranch into its next phase.” In partnership with other senior staff members, Evans will develop a strategic vision for the long-term financial and environmental sustainability of Ghost Ranch.

“What impressed me the most is David’s passion for social justice, the environment, and desire to build relationships with people in Rio Arriba County and beyond, all of which aligns with our mission and values,” said the Rev. Dr. Byron Wade, General Presbyter for the Presbytery of Western North Carolina and member of the NGRF Search Committee. “I am looking forward to his leadership!”

As a child, Evans visited Ghost Ranch with his family, who were active in the PC(USA). At the Ranch, Evans’ mother taught workshops, his father participated in seminars, his sister joined the summer college staff, and he himself developed a love for exploration and community. This connection strengthens Evans’ leadership expertise with a deep love of the Ranch. The NGRF Board said it looks forward to emerging from a year of transition to become stronger than ever and well-positioned for future years of service.

Ghost Ranch Education & Retreat Center encompasses 21,000 acres in northern New Mexico. At the Ranch, guests experience quiet contemplation, music and art, spiritual centering, fascinating museums, natural beauty, and physical activity. Ghost Ranch was a home and studio of Georgia O’Keeffe, as well as the subject of many of her paintings. Ghost Ranch is operated by The National Ghost Ranch Foundation and owned by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Learn more here.

Ghost Ranch Education & Retreat Center, Special to Presbyterian News Service

Today’s Focus: David Evans, new CEO at Ghost Ranch Education & Retreat Center

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Nadia Ayoub, Mission co-worker serving in Greece, World Mission, Presbyterian Mission Agency
Tracy Babcock, Kitchen Assistant, Stony Point Center, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray

Eternal God, thank you for the signs of new life that give us hope during life’s dark times. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Church of Scotland’s moderator of the General Assembly takes a turn on ‘A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast’

The Rt. Rev. Sally Foster-Fulton, who grew up in South Carolina, compares the Scottish church with its U.S. counterpart

January 26, 2024

The Rt. Rev. Sally Foster-Fulton is Moderator of the 

General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. (Photo 

courtesy of the Church of Scotland)

The Rt. Rev. Sally Foster-Fulton, moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, recently took her turn in front of the “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” microphone, chatting with hosts Simon Doong and the Rev. Lee Catoe about some of the ways the “Mother Church” and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) are similar and yet different. Listen to their 53-minute conversation here. Foster-Fulton is introduced at the five-minute mark.

Born and raised in South Carolina and married to the Rev. Stuart Fulton, a fellow Church of Scotland minister, Foster-Fulton shares at least one thing in common with Catoe: Both hail from South Carolina. “I expect my accent’s going to get thicker and thicker as we talk,” she joked early on in the conversation.

Like the PC(USA), the Church of Scotland is working to be “as ecumenical as we possibly can be,” Foster-Fulton said. Seven years ago, the Church of Scotland and the Church of England signed the Columba Declaration, which Foster-Fulton described as “a declaration of friendship and partnership and an acknowledgement of our desire to move closer together and to work more intentionally in partnership.”

It’s also signed the St Margaret Declaration with the Catholic Church of Scotland. “We are meeting more regularly together, and we are working more closely together,” she said.

The Saint Andrew Declaration signed during the most recent General Assembly “moves us toward ecumenical partnership and working very closely together” with the Scottish Episcopal Church. “We have a similar partnership with the United Reformed Church,” she said.

“I’m incredibly inspired by this,” Foster-Fulton said. “What lights my fire is there’s a lot of potential for interfaith work.”

The Church of Scotland is moving from 43 presbyteries to 12, “and we’re moving the resourcing from the center into those more local spaces,” she said. “That’s not without its challenges. It also means that buildings will be closing, and churches will be amalgamating. It’s not a very good witness to our environmental commitments to have five Churches of Scotland you could throw a rock and hit from one place.”

“It’s about making those difficult decisions so that we can kind of put our money where our morals are,” Foster-Fulton said.

“A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” with the Rev. 

Lee Catoe and Simon Doong drops each Thursday.

Denominations on both sides of the Atlantic are in different places on their journeys to environmental justice, she said. The Church of Scotland has divested from fossil fuel companies and is “trying to get our carbon footprint down to zero” in the next few years. “We’re trying to get our own house in order because the big house is on fire,” Foster-Fulton said. It helps that “the climate targets for the Scottish government are well ahead of other spaces.”

She said churches must be “on the forefront” of racial, gender and climate justice. “It matters what we do and what we say. That makes us relevant and gives our voice accountability and authenticity in those spaces. If we’re not actively working to bring justice for the poorest and most marginalized, then what are we about?”

In the runup to the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum, Foster-Fulton helped create space for respectful dialogue between campaigners on both sides of the debate.

In conversations that can become “quite fraught,” it’s important to say, “We are never going to find common ground if we spend too much time defending our corner,” she said. She told the story of one facilitator who asked everyone gathered to stand up if they could, telling them, “In your mind, think of all the baggage you’re bringing here with you. And he said, ‘Put it down. Let’s come clean into this space and really deeply listen to each other. There are so many things we are not going to agree on, but there are many things we do agree on already.’ It was a phenomenal experience.”

Find previous episodes of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” here.

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Today’s Focus: ‘A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast’

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Shelby Andrews, 1001 Apprentice, 1001 New Worshiping Communities, Presbyterian Mission Agency
Jeffrey Arnold, Executive Director, Association of Presbyterian Colleges & Universities (APCU)

Let us pray

Loving God, we know that the church is not a building but the congregation that worships within. Help us to live this truth. May we honor you by giving what we have while trusting that you will provide what we need. Amen.

The Voice of the Martyrs - UPDATE: India now designated as a "restricted nation."

India Now a “Restricted Nation”

Radical Hindus in India have become increasingly violent and open in their persecution of Christians in recent decades. While The Voice of the Martyrs had previously designated India as a “hostile area,” that designation has been escalated to “restricted nation” to reflect the current reality for Christians there. Since India’s election of Narendra Modi as prime minister in 2014 and his reelection in 2019, our brothers and sisters in Christ have experienced a marked increase in opposition and violent attacks. This persecution under Prime Minister Modi is occurring in a country that has been called the world’s largest democracy and that claims to allow its citizens the constitutional freedom to profess, practice and propagate their religion. VOM’s designation of “restricted nation” is normally reserved for countries with federal laws restricting Christian worship and witness, but India’s situation is unique. Modi’s leadership has advanced not a law but an ideology called Hindutva, or Hindu purity, that has resulted in the persecution of Christians. This ideology is Hindu nationalism at its core with the goal of creating a “pure” Hindu nation. Hindutva, as embraced and promoted by Prime Minister Modi, has created an unquestionably restrictive environment for Christians throughout the subcontinent. Historically, the persecution of Christians in India has occurred mostly at the leading edge of gospel ministry, in predominantly Hindu areas. The situation has changed. “Now, this is the full-fledged urging of Hindu nationalism, which is to eliminate Christians from the ‘Hindu homeland.’” —COLE RICHARDS, VOM PRESIDENT You can learn more about India’s designation change in the Special Report included with your February magazine, which should be reaching your mailbox soon. For an overview on persecution in India and ways to pray, select the button below. PRAY FOR INDIA Christians in India are facing increased opposition and imprisonment from Hindu nationalists, who seek to eradicate their witness for Christ and establish a purely Hindu nation. Despite beatings, arrests and even the murder of loved ones, persecuted Christians in India faithfully continue to advance God’s kingdom. Today, you can stand with them to help meet their needs and encourage them as they share the gospel at great cost. Your gift will help Christians who have suffered persecution or whose family members have been killed or imprisoned in India. Your gift will also equip front-line workers with Bibles and ministry tools they need for discipleship and outreach efforts in India. HELP CHRISTIANS IN INDIA

Please forward this email to Christian friends who will be inspired to pray for and support our persecuted Christian family.

Share this special opportunity with your friends and family.

The Voice of the Martyrs - Take time now to pray for persecuted Christians in Sudan

Urgent Need for Prayer

As two Islamist generals and their opposing armies wage a battle for control of Sudan, millions of people in and around the capital, Khartoum, are paying the price. Thousands of civilians have been killed and wounded in the crossfire. And Christians have been specifically targeted. Both generals — Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, head of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) — are ardent Islamists notorious for their crimes against humanity. Soldiers under their command have terrorized, bombed and killed civilians in Darfur, the Nuba Mountains and other regions of Sudan. As members of former President Omar al-Bashir’s inner circle, the generals participated in the 2019 coup that expelled the president from power. After al-Bashir’s expulsion from office, many Sudanese had hoped for political reform and greater tolerance, particularly toward the Christian community. But the opposite has occurred. Christians have been targeted and killed, with some reportedly shot by snipers in the recent fighting. Nearly 4 million Sudanese have been forced to flee their homes, taking refuge in neighboring countries or in other parts of Sudan. Amid the ongoing fighting, we invite you to pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ in Sudan. Select the button below to access a prayer you can pray right now. A PRAYER FOR SUDAN

Please forward this email to Christian friends who will be inspired to pray for and support our persecuted Christian family.

Share this special opportunity with your friends and family.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - PC(USA) podcast explores the difficulties of modern-day ministry

The authors of ‘Wounded Pastors’ are the guests on ‘A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast’

January 25, 2024

Ahead of the publication of their Westminster John Knox Press book “Wounded Pastors: Navigating Burnout, Finding Healing and Discerning the Future of Your Minister,” authors the Rev. Carol Howard and the Rev. Dr. James Fenimore told the hosts of the podcast “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” that one helpful step congregations can take to help ease the anxiety present in many congregations is to stop blaming their pastors for not doing enough.

While “there are ineffective pastors out there,” Fenimore, a former Methodist minister who’s now a licensed marriage and family therapist, told “A Matter of Faith” hosts the Rev. Lee Catoe and Simon Doong, there’s also “this kind of blanket sense that pastors are the problem.” The thinking among some congregants and even some mid council leaders is, “if they were better pastors, we wouldn’t have these issues.”

Listen to the 55-minute podcast here. Howard and Fenimore are introduced at the 4:35 mark.

Howard, a Presbyterian pastor and sought-after speaker, said a friend who’s an associate pastor told her that a church member visited this pastor on his first day in a new calling. “I own you,” the man told the pastor. “I give x-amount of money to the church, and that pays your salary. I own you.”

The Rev. Carol Howard

Those pressures “are on top of [pastors] wanting to save the church in some way and our own savior complexes, thinking that if we just work harder or longer, we can turn this around,” Howard said. “It’s hard to create boundaries in a system that doesn’t have them.”

“We’re trying to build this beloved community together,” Howard said of pastoral-congregational relationships. “We’re trying to be vulnerable and we’re trying to be loving toward each other, but that also puts us in really uncomfortable positions where we may not have the same professional guardrails that many professions have.”

Fenimore employed a medical description.

“Sometimes it’s like we are the doctors and they’re the patients and the patients are telling us what the treatment’s going to be and it doesn’t matter what we say,” he said.

For Fenimore, it’s a boundary issue. “We’re trying to build a congregation and do all the work we’re trying to do. At the same time, we have to in a sense appease the congregation so we don’t lost our job.”

For clergy, burnout often happens “when we start to take it personally,” Fenimore said. Understanding it’s not personal comes “when we start to recognize this is a systemic response to the potential death of a congregation and the fear it’s generating” among “the people we are serving, people who have been part of that system for maybe all of their lives.”

The Rev. Dr. James Fenimore

“We’re merely a lightning rod,” he said. “We have to ground ourselves in a way to make sure … it’s not destroying us, that we are allowing it to just pass through us.”

“I always have to remind myself that pastor 20 year ago was not that much more awesome than I am,” Howard said with a laugh. “As we think about healing, we realize we are part of this system that’s pretty anxious, and we understand what happens in anxious congregations. … There might be people who triangulate, who cut off — and there might be people who get really angry.”

“I know we used to talk about self-care,” she said. “We would sometimes talk about taking your day off, and that was it. But there’s so much more now that we need to navigate when it comes to boundaries.”

She encourages those who construct the worship service to celebrate the fact they help to create a service each week that includes art, music, a sermon and more. “There’s so much that we’re doing as pastors that’s fantastic,” Howard said.

Listen to past or upcoming editions of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” here.

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Today’s Focus: ‘A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast’

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Monty Anderson, Vice President, COO & Corporate Treasurer, Presbyterian Publishing Corporation
Rachel Anderson, Mission Associate for Strategy and Implementation, Global Connections, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray

Lord God, remind us that the tables we gather around are not ours but yours. Give us your eyes to see beyond until all are shoulder to shoulder, worshiping and serving to your glory. Amen.