Minute for Mission: Building Beloved Communities; Dismantling Structural Racism

Too often, I am reminded that few people associate the ministry of reparative justice with deep spiritual joy. While 2025 has been a year marked by discouraging economic and political developments, the Holy Spirit continues to work, steadily weaving unexpected, hope-filled threads into the fabric of our shared life.

This year, I am a witness to the Holy Spirit guiding us from despair and apathy toward new and joyful working possibilities.

In 2025, our work with mid council leaders in Puerto Rico, Alaska, South Carolina and Kansas has been especially life-giving. Through our seven mid council pilot programs, congregations of color with substantial economic challenges across the PC(USA) will soon receive support for up to three years of full-time transformative pastoral ministry.

Also, this year’s collaboration with the National Hispanic Latino Presbyterian Caucus, focused on uncovering and addressing historic inequities affecting Puerto Rican clergy, is strengthening relationships, fostering clearer collective understanding and opening new avenues for interdependent longevity. Even in these early stages, other caucuses are noticing the emerging possibilities and inquiring about collaborative opportunities for moving forward together.

The 2023 work of apology and reparation for the racist closure of Memorial Presbyterian Church in Juneau, Alaska, in 1963 has created a blessed opportunity for faithful follow-up with Native Alaskans. This year, with support from the Stated Clerk, we advanced toward the transgenerational goal of repatriating Raven Helmet. The Center for Repair and the Sitka tribes collaborated with the Kiks.ádi. clan to reclaim this sacred object, unethically possessed by Presbyterians and others for over a century, and thanks in part to a letter from the Stated Clerk, Raven Helmet is now on its way home.

This year, we began partnering with the Youth Desk at the Liberia Council of Churches to examine how the Presbyterian cofounded American Colonization Society impacted Indigenous Liberians and contributed to civil war. Currently, we are translating documents like the Confession of 1967 into Bassa and Kpelle, transforming two centuries of missed opportunities for theological dialogue into living opportunities for a blessed re-encounter. In Peru, through relationships nurtured by the Presbyterian Hunger Program, we supported the publication and English translation of the world’s first scholarly book advocating for Afro-Peruvian reparations.

God’s Spirit continues to move through faithful actions that have blessed us as witnesses. In 2025, the Presbytery of San Gabriel returned land to the Tongva tribe in a joyous public worship celebration, while the Presbytery of Baltimore established a reparative justice fund to respond to calls for justice from African American communities.

Looking ahead, the 2024 General Assembly’s decision to allocate proceeds from the sale of property derived from enslaved Afro-descendants will allow those funds to be returned to living descendants beginning in 2026 — a moment not only for celebration but also to marvel at our habitual shortsightedness concerning the power of God to move his people ever onward!

Rev. Jermaine Ross-Allam, Ministry Director, Center for the Repair of Historic Harms

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff:

Carla Sutton, Operations Admin, Operations, The Presbyterian Foundation
Jonathon Talbott, Administrative Support I/Receptionist, Operations, The Presbyterian Foundation

Let us pray:

Creator, we love you and rejoice in your justice and restoration; grant us eyes to see the unseen and courage to stay the course through the power of your Spirit. Amen.