Mission Yearbook: APCE workshop focuses on expanding partnerships between churches and schools to help neighbors

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The Rev. Suzanne Parker Miller

Dressed in a “I [heart] public schools” T-shirt and clerical collar, the Rev. Suzanne Parker Miller, an ordained Moravian pastor and the founder and executive director of Pastors for North Carolina Children, led an interactive workshop during the Annual Event of the Association of Partners in Christian Education titled “Expanding Church & School Partnerships to Help Neighbors Thrive.”

Parker Miller sprinkled her workshop with food references, including welcoming “the cookie dough principle” for discussion, in which “half-baked ideas are OK” and calling “both popcorn and crockpots welcome.”

She asked participants: What are your churches doing in partnership with local schools?

One reported that her church, which is across the street from a public high school, collects hygiene products and winter coats, gloves and hats, and has provided “snack support” for faculty and other school staff. The school uses the church’s sanctuary for its concerts.

Another said the congregation, “after asking what they need,” provides classroom supplies that teachers would otherwise have to purchase themselves. The church also supplies bags of hard candy for children while they’re taking state-mandated tests. It opened its building and, importantly, its wi-fi capability during the pandemic.

A third reported that after a series of school shootings, pastors and others on staff “had a daily presence” at a nearby school and served as hall monitors.

“One church I know of feeds teachers’ breakfast early in the year and has a wall with prayer requests [from school staff] for the year,” Parker Miller said. “Church members took those and prayed for educators throughout the year. It was meaningful for the staff.”

Churches that participate in advocacy “have to answer the ‘we don’t do politics’ argument,” she said. “If we aren’t talking about politics, we aren’t talking about the gospel. Politics is how we govern and live together. What we don’t like is partisanship.”

According to Parker Miller, the growth in Christian nationalism has increased the need for even more advocacy connected to school vouchers, the defunding of public education, book bans, the placement of the Ten Commandments in classrooms and “chaplains” replacing school counselors.

Christian nationalism shows up in schools in several forms, she noted, including release time for religious education and prayer in schools.

“If your goal is to proselytize,” she said, “please stay away [from public schools].”

She said that if the goal is to begin or enhance the church’s partnership with a local school, here are some questions to consider:

• Who in the church might be interested in participating?
• What gifts and talents does the church have to share?
• How much time, energy and resources does the church have to allocate to this partnership?
• Who in the church already has a connection to a school?
• What are the demographics of the school, including how many students receive free and reduced lunches, are Spanish speakers and are academically gifted?
• What barriers might get in the way?
• What groups in the community are in partnership with the school already?
• Who do we need to meet with to explore the idea? Who are the stakeholders?
• What are the greatest needs of the school, according to the principal, counselor, social worker, nurse, teachers, the PTA and others?

She also left participants with these tips for forming and maintaining effective partnerships:

• The students and the school are always the priority — not the church and its needs.
• All glory is for God, and not the church’s ego.
• Don’t create more work for the school.
• Joining a team with other community partners is a great way to start. Silos are not helpful.
• Treat all children with respect and equality. Don’t play favorites or create jealousy.

Learn more about church and school partnerships here.

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Nora Baez, Lead Reservation Specialist, Stony Point Center, Presbyterian Life & Witness
Amber Baker, Donor Advised Fund Specialist, Operations, Presbyterian Foundation                                

Let us pray:

God of us all, we give thanks that you bridge the gaps of age, language and culture. Guide us as we partner with our brothers and sisters around the world and give us open hearts and minds to hear your voice. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: APCE event speaker preaches that ‘You are enough’

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Miatta Willson, associate for the Office of Christian Formation in the PC(USA), at the 2026 APCE event.

When a parishioner facing job loss amid government chaos asked the Rev. MaryAnn McKibben Dana “What is even the point?” she felt utterly unprepared to answer.

The Washington, D.C.-area pastor had just listened to the man describe jumping through bureaucratic hoops under constant threat of termination while grieving his cousin's untimely death. McKibben Dana's instinct was to seek expert guidance, more training, better tools — anything to fill what felt like a deficit in her pastoral toolkit.

“I thought to myself, I am not equipped for this moment of ministry,” McKibben Dana told hundreds of Christian educators gathered at the Association of Partners in Christian Education Annual Event. “Anybody else feeling that way?”

Her solution was to invite a mentor to meet with area clergy, hoping for concrete skills to address the trauma their congregations faced. Instead, the mentor spent the entire day focusing on the pastors themselves — their gifts, their leadership and their inherent capacity.

“I remember feeling so frustrated,” McKibben Dana said. “Just pour some stuff into my brain. I don’t know enough for this moment.”

But her mentor, trained in family systems theory, kept redirecting them. “What you have to offer is you. There’s no magic category of information that’s going to make this easier," she said. "It’s just you, and you are enough.”

That message became the foundation of McKibben Dana’s keynote address on self-love, the second of four daily themes drawn from Jesus' greatest commandment. The Annual Event was held in Pittsburgh, the hometown of Presbyterian icon Fred Rogers.

The conference followed a progression with sermons by the Rev. Theresa Cho and workshops tying to the daily themes explored in each keynote address. On the first day, the Rev. Paul Roberts addressed the command to “Love God.” The next day, McKibben Dana explored “Love Self,” while “Love Neighbor” was the topic for Rabbi Evan Moffic the following day, and on the last day, workshops and closing worship held space to contemplate what it means to “Love Others.”

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The Rev. MaryAnn McKibben Dana

McKibben Dana opened by sharing her husband's childhood encounter with Rogers, whose mother attended the church in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where her husband’s father was pastor. True to form, Rogers bypassed the pastor to focus entirely on the 3-year-old boy.

“It’s all about the kids, and that is who he was,” McKibben Dana said, calling Rogers “our patron saint,” whose spirit infused the gathering themed around love in all its dimensions.

McKibben Dana challenged Rogers’ famous advice to “look for the helpers” during difficult times, arguing it creates an unhealthy hierarchy between helper and helped. Drawing on physician Rachel Naomi Remen’s work, she distinguished helping — which implies inequality and creates debt — from serving, which recognizes the relationship between equals.

“"When I help, I feel satisfaction, but when I serve, I have a feeling of gratitude,” McKibben Dana said, quoting Remen. “Service rests on a basic premise that the nature of life is sacred.”

She grounded her talk in the mantra “we are creative, resourceful and whole” — words from coaching training that undergird her leadership work and her book “Better Than Normal.” 

McKibben Dana used statistics about the “median American” named Jessica to illustrate how societal structures cater to averages rather than celebrating human diversity. She screened a video of artist-activist Alok Vaid-Menon explaining how gender-nonconforming people face violence because they remind others of the authenticity they’ve repressed in themselves.

“Can you help me get free?” Vaid-Menon asked. “Not can you help me help you?”

McKibben Dana connected this to Genesis 1’s sevenfold repetition of “God saw that it was good,” arguing that religion isn’t about solving wickedness but helping people touch what was always true.

She closed with a story from the TV show “Shrinking” about a woman named Grace who escaped an abusive relationship only after hearing friends’ testimonies about her inherent goodness.

“It is grace that allows us to love self with our heart, soul, mind and strength,” McKibben Dana said.

Beth Waltemath, Communications Strategist, Presbyterian Life & Witness (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Christopher Abney, VP, Director of IT, Presbyterian Foundation
Ruth Adams, Director, Assistance Program, Engagement & Church Relations, The Board of Pensions

Let us pray:

Lord, you have called us to bring your good news. Help us to minister faithfully in our congregations, neighborhoods and municipalities so that your love may be known and your church may be strengthened. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Homework for the teachers

Pastor and educator Rodger Nishioka offers up an APCE talk centered on a single verse from Isaiah

June 11,  2022

The Rev. Dr. Rodger Nishioka preached during closing worship at the Presbyterian Church Camp and Conference Center’s Gathering as One online conference. (Screen shot)

During his engaging mini-plenary, the Rev. Dr. Rodger Nishioka gave educators attending the annual event of the Association of Partners in Christian Education in Chicago a homework assignment: Memorize Isaiah 50:4 and recite it to the folks back home if they ask what you learned at the “Circle of Faith” event of the organization formerly known as the Association of Presbyterian Church Educators.

In case you too want to set the verse to memory, the New Revised Standard Version renders Isaiah 50:4 this way: “The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens — wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught.”

Just what defines the tongue of a teacher? Nishioka, the senior associate pastor and director of adult faith formation at Village Presbyterian Church in Prairie Village, Kansas, recalls the wisdom of his seventh-grade social studies teacher, Mrs. Williams. When students complained about too much homework or how they considered certain topics irrelevant, Mrs. Williams would have none of it. “You don’t know what you need,” she would tell the students. “Do not complain about what you’ve got.”

“That’s the tongue of a teacher,” Nishioka said. “Brilliant and spot on.”

Weary people deserve a word from their teachers, he said, adding, “If we don’t have a word to share, what are we doing here?”

The word translated “sustain” is the Hebrew verb “ezer,” which can also mean “help” or “uplift.” In Hebrew it’s an imperfect verb, Nishioka explained, which means the action is ongoing and incomplete. As such, “sustain” is a good translation, according to Nishioka: “that I may know how to sustain continually.”

“Morning by morning — what does that make us think of,” and some in the crowd started singing the appropriate lyrics from the refrain of “Great is Thy Faithfulness.”

Every day, God wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught, the verse says. Nishioka asked attendees for their interpretation, then offered one himself.

“We are called to be lifelong learners. We have the word to share and the tongues of teachers. Every day God wakes us up to listen as those who are taught, to be lifelong learners,” Nishioka said. “We need to grow so we can provide a word” to students, whether they’re children or young adults, “and we can’t do that if we don’t have the substance of lifelong learning.”

Then he asked, what is the word given to us?

One answer may be found in the hymn “Listen to the Word That God Has Spoken”: “Listen to the word that God has spoken; listen to the One who is close at hand; listen to the voice that began Creation; listen even if you don’t understand.”

“That last line — it is totally messing with you and me as educators,” Nishioka said with a smile. “We have prefaced our lives on helping people understand. Here we are hearing we may be called upon to share a word we don’t understand.”

“It is less about you, Nishioka,” he reminds himself. “This really is about the nature of God. To be faithful, you share that word and trust that it will sustain the weary.”

Again he asked, what is the word we are being asked to share?

“You have got to have that,” Nishioka said. “Our people are weary, and we are being less than faithful to our call if we don’t have that word to share.”

Nishioka brought three words forward as examples. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once said, “All of the Hebrew scriptures can be summarized in one word: Remember!”

Share your word, Nishioka urged conference-goers, and they did not hesitate, calling out “faithful,” “enough,” “kindness,” “trust,” “connection,” “generous,” “Christ,” “promise,” and other words.

“God has given us the word. The sustaining is ongoing,” Nishioka said. “It has gone before us, it’s happening now and it will continue. Thanks be to God.”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Edward Thompson, Senior Church Consultant, Louisville, KY, Board of Pensions
Mark Thomson, Senior Designer, Communications Ministry, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray

God of the young and the old, we thank you for the opportunity to learn and grow together. Continue to stretch our boundaries, that we may ever grow into the people you have created us to be. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Join the liberating movement of love

APCE preacher, plenary speaker encourages worshipers to use the public arena for justice

June 10,  2022

The Rev. Dr. Lis Valle-Ruiz

To set the stage for her “Circles of faith, Circle of Empowerment” message from Hebrews 11:23-28, the Rev. Dr. Lis Valle-Ruiz proclaimed during the recently renamed Association of Partners in Christian Education conference that attendees were going to experience the Holy Spirit throughout their whole body.

“Turn on the fire,” she said.

As digital flames of fire appeared as a backdrop, Valle-Ruiz, director of community worship at McCormick Theological Seminary, encouraged conference-goers meeting in Chicago to think of the person they identified with the most among the heroes of faith mentioned in Hebrews 11.

And as these words of music, “Circle of faith, circle of empowerment” began to fill the air, Valle-Ruiz encouraged worshipers to write that name down, then find new member of their tribe to share it with.

Valle-Ruiz wondered aloud if the Israelites wandering in the desert were like the people in the room, talking the whole time, laughing, or complaining.

With that, Valle-Ruiz told those in attendance they would have to move again. But first she directed their attention to Hebrews 11:24–25, which states, “Moses refused to be called a son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to share ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.”

“In the social-political scale of things, Moses chose to go down,” she said.

According to Valle-Ruiz, the preacher in Hebrews is telling his audience — and us — that in dangerous, difficult times, we need to stay in the struggle.

Maybe, like Moses, we are being called today to step down and stay the struggle, she said, in a movement of liberation that plays itself out in vulnerable situations.

“Maybe even as vulnerable that we could die in the struggle,” she said. “Now, many of you don’t look like you would die in the struggle.”

Using the story of Bree Newsome, who was arrested in 2015 for scaling a flagpole outside the state capitol in Columbia, South Carolina, and taking down the Confederate flag that flew there, Valle-Ruiz said,

“That morning, this Black woman woke up knowing she could die.”

But another activist, a white man, was hugging the pole as law enforcement officers arrived to force Newsome down. The officers chose not to put him at risk, allowing her to come down with the flag before arresting them both.

“He wasn’t there to climb the pole or be the hero,” Valle said. “Who is the unnamed hero of faith that you know?”

Think of the names people don’t remember, she said, the ones who go down in social-political terms to help others.

Valle-Ruiz challenged worshipers to think of a group of people they could join to enter into the struggle for liberation. “We need to liberate ourselves from the illusions that we can be the hero who empowers people,” she said.

Only God has that kind of power. The giver of faith, she said, empowers each person. But too often our systems take that power away from people.

“Our job is to take a step back so that others’ power can be seen,” she said, “power they’ve had from the very beginning. Write down the name of the village you know that you can commit to not as a hero but unnamed member.”

During the plenary, the Rev. Russ May, co-founder of an intentional Moravian Community, Anthony’s Plot, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, shared the story of Minneapolis firefighter Genevieve Hansen.

“We got a lot of work to do if we want to empower our circles for the kind of love Jesus talked about, which gives its life for another,” the Rev. Russ May, co-founder of an intentional Moravian Community, Anthony’s Plot, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina,  said. Referencing a Cornel West quote, May added that “justice is what that kind of love looks like in the public arena.”

“Friends, we’ve got a lot of work to do, if we want to empower our circles for that brand of love … as justice.”

Paul Seebeck, Communications Strategist, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff

Tom Taylor, President & Chief Executive Officer, Presbyterian Foundation
Erica Thomasson, Help Desk Technician, Presbyterian Foundation

Let us pray

Dear Lord, thank you for the blessings brought to the many who have been called to serve your mission. We pray that you would bless them throughout their lives as they serve others in Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Lasting impressions

The Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis takes APCE attendees back to the foundations of faith formation

June 9,  2022

The Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, senior pastor at Middle Church in New York City, delivered a mini-plenary talk to APCE attendees Thursday. (Photo courtesy of Middle Church)

The Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis recently recalled for the renamed Association of Partners in Christian Education the scene — including tastes, smells and lasting impressions — of the first time she took communion when she was 7½ years old.

Her dad was a deacon. It was his job to deliver cubes of bread and tiny glasses of grape juice to the congregation, including those seated in the Lewis pew. But it was her mother, whom Lewis called “Pastor Mommie” despite her mother’s lack of formal training or ordination, who taught Lewis all she needed to know about the Lord’s Supper.

“When the bread comes,” the senior pastor of Middle Church in New York City recalled, “I take a little square. My mother leans into my ear and says, ‘This bread means God will always love you.’ Then I ate the bread, delicious Hawaiian bread that was so good, yeasty and honey sweet. I can conjure up that feeling right now. It’s right there.”

Then the cup was served, “those little cups of Welch’s Grape Juice that are a child’s delight.” Her mother again whispered in her ear: “This cup means that God will never leave you.”

“I got that puckery Welch’s Grape Juice taste, and I was so moved. It was the beginning of a love affair between me and God, conducted, mensched and matched by my mom.”

Lewis’ mother died 4½ years ago. “Her dying was like another birth for me. The conversations we were having, the Midrash she was doing with me in her hospital room was almost like that first birthing with the bread and the cup,” Lewis said. “It was full of stares and silences and nods of recognition and hoarse talking, because she had cancer.”

“There was this holy sending into the world that finished growing me up,” said Lewis, whose most recent book is “Fierce Love: A Bold Path to Ferocious Courage and Rule-Breaking Kindness that Can Heal the World.” “She was pushing me out into the world with this fierce, simple love.”

Imagine, she said, Christian education that “tries to be with the person, that says, ‘This is how we will create curriculum materials: What is a 4-year-old worried about? What is a teenager wrestling with?’”

That way, “We aren’t trying to squeeze people into the boxes we have already outgrown, but creating a more playful, more grace-filled, more joyful and fun container in which they come to love this God who is love.”

“I want to urge you to think about what our intention is,” Lewis said. “Is it to keep our institution going? Or is it our intention to make the whole world the church, a Howard Thurman kind of church where God is everywhere, or a 1 John church, where God is love?”

“How about that, church? Now what?” Lewis asked. “What is your canon? What texts help us make people fall in love and stay in love with God?”

“If you want your church to live, I want your church to love — fiercely, not timidly,” with a love “that understands we are inextricably connected to one another.” It’s the kind of love where “when a child’s tummy growls, you are hungry. I want you to be an adherent to the fierce love gospel” in which “the saved ones are only saved because everyone is saved.”

Living a fierce love gospel means we “live a life of love, share our resources and live a life of peace.” On top of that, “I want to convert you to this fiercest love of all, to own your own exegetical power. What’s love got to do with it? I want that to be your song. Order your steps in love. Let love guide your feet while you run this race.”

“Nobody gets to God but through love,” Lewis said, “but everyone can get to God through love.”

“There is someone in your congregation who needs to break bread and hear, ‘God will always love you,’ and drink a cup and know there isn’t anything they can do that would make God leave them,” Lewis said. “That will save their life. Let’s save some lives, my friends.”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff

Bryan Taylor, Administrative II, Operations, Presbyterian Foundation
Nancy Taylor, Executive Director, Presbyterian Historical Society

Let us pray

Lord, you have called us to bring your good news. Help us to minister faithfully in our congregations, neighborhoods, and municipalities so that your love may be known, and your church may be strengthened. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - A picture is worth a thousand words

APCE preacher pulls out ‘a mental photo album’ of her family of faith

June 7,  2022

The Rev. Shannon Johnson Kershner, pastor of Chicago’s Fourth Presbyterian Church, preached during opening worship Wednesday during the Association of Presbyterian Church Educators’ event. (Screenshot)

During opening worship at the Association of Presbyterian Church Educators annual gathering, the Rev. Shannon Johnson Kershner asked some 500 participants gathered in person and 200 joining online to put on “their glasses of imagination.”

Preaching from Hebrews 11, the pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago confessed that even though she rarely take pictures — she’s always too late to capture the moment — she had a few she wanted to share with the gathering.

“So, let me pull out my mental photo album,” she said.

Then she began to describe the photos on the first page, the faces of homelessness in Chicago, taken by a retired professor of photography.

• Thomas, now middle aged, first experienced homeless at 14 when his uncle kicked him out of the house when his father died.
• Cecelia with two young children. Leaving an abusive marriage, she had nowhere to go — no one to trust.
• A Bulgarian refuge with health issues, which led to him losing his job and an eventual eviction.

“Now imagine the next snapshot,” she said. “The 2021 gathering for APCE, in this very space, the room and streets [in the background] are empty.”

For Kershner, the emptiness and loneliness of each of these images express long and deep grief, which can still be all-encompassing in this third year of the pandemic.

“But something is missing from my photo album,” she said. “The text in Hebrews might give us a clue. For the preacher is giving hearers visual pictures.  Jesus as a reflection of God’s glory. Jesus as the head of God’s house. Jesus as our high priest.”

And then at APCE’s “Circle of Faith: 50 + 1” gathering — a celebration of the organization’s 50th anniversary — Kershner showed “snapshots from her family faith album” of Abraham and Sarah, the parents of our faith.

In Hebrews, there’s an impressive shot of them, showing how they left everything to follow God’s command to get up and go, she said.  But look back in Genesis. There’s one of Abram, as he’s known then, telling everyone in Egypt that Sarai is his sister to avoid being killed. And another of  Sarah standing in front of Hagar and Hagar’s child Ishmael, sending them to the desert where they could die.

“Her cruelty and indifference were fueled by mistrust that God was not going to do as God promised,” Kershner said. “These older pictures are of doubt, fear and brokenness.”

Referring to Hebrews 11:11, which states that “faith is the reality of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen,” she said, “We’ve only been looking at things the world can see.”

What would it look like, she wondered, if we considered things unseen in these pictures?

“What would happen if we let our holy hope define reality, instead of only our eyes?” she asked.

Then there were more pictures to show, to remind those gathered of their connections to the circle of faith — and to their larger shared story.

• A baby picture of Isaac, showing God bringing life out bareness.
• Hagar in the wilderness, where she named God for the first time as “the God who sees.”
• Abram looking at the stars, hearing God promising that he and Sarai will be a blessing to every generation.

For Kershner, these snapshots remind us to frame our lives in God’s promises and mercy, and show us that God can still be God in the midst of our doubt and fear.

Kershner’s final picture was of  Friendship Presbyterian Church in Chicago’s Northwest Side — of a building under construction, with big colorful letters making up the word W-E-L-C-O-M-E outside of the first floor.

Friendship Presbyterian Church has never had its own building. The faith community first met in a train depot and then a theatre. Now the church is creating space, but it’s not just for members and friends to worship.

Friendship is creating a community center with their most vulnerable members and neighbors in mind, to share resources, build community and develop skills and knowledge.

“It’s for those experiencing housing and food insecurities, for those with physical disabilities or experiencing mental illness, for veterans and LGBTQIA+ folks,” Kershner said.

Paul Seebeck, Communications Strategist, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff

Carla Sutton, Administrative 1, Operations, Presbyterian Foundation
Joe Tackett, Planning & Development Officer, Trust Services, Presbyterian Foundation

Let us pray

Dear God, we praise you and give thanks for all you have given us. May we share our abundance with others in your mission to this world. May we welcome and share with all and celebrate the richness of your love and mercy. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - The church from a doorkeeper’s perspective

APCE closing worship features an insightful tour of the doors inside a Houston church

August 13, 2021

 

The Rev. Keatan King is associate pastor at St. Philip Presbyterian Church in Houston. (Photo courtesy of APCE)

Psalm 84 contains at least one oft-quoted line: “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than live in the tents of wickedness.”

The Rev. Keatan King figured she’d show, rather than tell, a crowd of 1,000 or so people attending closing worship during the first-ever online national gathering of the Association of Presbyterian Church Educators. Her sermon, “Hope,” took APCEans from station to station  inside the church she serves, St. Philip Presbyterian Church in Houston, from the perspective of a doorkeeper.

“I have wandered these empty halls for months,” King said, “remembering with gratitude the thresholds we helped people cross.”

On her video journey, King first stopped at a Sunday school classroom, where “popsicle sticks, glue and glitter are full of the glory of God.”

The tour also included a middle school classroom, where students waiting outside the door are “skeptical and maybe a tad nervous,” she said. “The doorkeeper beckons them to a greater knowledge of God and the meaningful relationships inside.”

King showed worshipers the room at St. Philip where nervous brides and grooms wait to say, “I do.”

“They take a deep breath to calm their nerves,” King said, before “crossing the threshold to make their vows to God and their partner. Here the doorkeeper leads the people into covenantal life.”

Another room is for grief-stricken families about to say goodbye to a loved one during the funeral service. The doorkeeper “leads them into a room of loving people to commend the departed saint into God’s eternal care and to proclaim that death is not the end,” she said. “Here the doorkeeper guides people to the tomb and far beyond.”

Then King swung her camera to the church’s front doors.

“These doors face the world,” she said. “The doorkeeper posted here knows the power of their presence in this place. Why a doorkeeper stands here can reveal or obscure the kin-dom of God. Will the doorkeeper be a host or a bouncer?”

From where King was standing — as a “white doorkeeper in a predominantly white congregation in a predominantly white denomination” — unless “we teach that God has a particular and wondrous love for Black lives, we can say, ‘Welcome, welcome,’ but there is no welcome.”

“We can’t keep acting like pain and injustice are someone else’s door to keep,” King said. “No person or circumstance is coming to make all things new. Only God will make all things new, and God has chosen her church as the instrument of her renewal.”

“God refuses to withhold good things from the world, and you are the good thing God can’t hold back from the world,” she said to the online crowd of Christian educators. “Your smile is the good thing God wills for the lonely child of God. Your innovation in teaching is the good thing that God intends for those whose health prevents them from gathering.”

But keep in mind, she said, that “You could not serve the church as you do without a blessed doorkeeper whose love for Christ opened this life to you. Think on that doorkeeper, the one who got you where you are now, who nurtured your gifts, the one who did that for you. Think on that doorkeeper, the good one that the Lord would not withhold from you.”

And gather and hold onto all the experiences online conference-goers have taken in throughout the three-day event, she suggested — the workshops, the resources, the camaraderie, the “powerful plenaries, passionate preaching and precious liturgies. Call on them to cross the next threshold God needs you to cross. Trust in God who is making a new threshold, new ministries, a new world and is indeed making you a new doorkeeper, renewed in Jesus Christ.”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff

Lee Sangik, Translator, Global Language Resources, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)
Jeanie Schmuckie, Legal Assistant, Presbyterian Foundation

Let us pray

God of hope and strength, thank you for your presence of love and compassion in our lives. We rejoice that, especially when we face the storms of life, you are there to calm us. Thank you for being our Lord and for speaking words we yearn to hear: “Peace! Be still!” In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.