Today in the Mission Yearbook - Who needs a heart?

We need one to join a God who’s brokenhearted and yet still loves us, the Rev. Cindy Kohlmann tells the 2024 Presbyterian Women Churchwide Gathering

October 10, 2024

The Rev. Cindy Kohlmann, co-moderator of the 

223rd General Assembly and the connectional 

presbyter and stated clerk of New Castle Presbytery. 

(Contributed photo)

Answering the question “Who needs a heart?” was the Rev. Cindy Kohlmann’s task during the opening plenary of the 2024 Presbyterian Women Churchwide Gathering, which was recently held in St. Louis.

Kohlmann, co-moderator of the 223rd General Assembly (2018) and the connectional presbyter and stated clerk of New Castle Presbytery, came on to Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got To Do With It.”

Kohlmann centered her talk, which she acknowledged would be more like a sermon, on Isaiah 54:7–8, a reminder that God briefly abandoned God’s people when God’s heart was sufficiently broken by their actions. What would happen, Kohlmann asked, if God decided to let go of God’s heart? She traced episodes of God’s heart breaking back to the story of sin entering the world in the Garden of Eden. “To me,” Kohlmann said, “it feels like an absolute miracle that God continues to choose to love us. … The God whose indelible image is interwoven with our very selves reaches out to us, again and again.”

“Make no mistake. God’s love is fierce. It is powerful. It is certainly not ‘a secondhand emotion,’” Kohlmann said with a nod toward Turner’s hit song. “God’s love isn’t fickle or temporary. This is a love that imagined the endless possibility of Creation, then breathed them with God’s own breath into being. How fearfully and wonderfully we are made in God’s love!”

Another truth about God’s love is that it’s “focused on the tangible, everyday aspects of life,” according to Kohlmann.

“All that God desires with fierce longing and passionate dedication is entrusted to us to bring to fruition, here on Earth as it is in heaven,” she said. “We are meant to be the expression of God’s powerful, fierce, life-changing love in this world. So, we need to acknowledge that a good portion of what breaks God’s heart is the very fact that we claim this amazing love for ourselves, and then deny it to others.”

Photo by Aziz Acharki via Unsplash

“We know the stories. We know the words of the prophets and the psalms. We know God’s love is tangible, and our expression of God’s love is meant to go beyond thoughts and prayers,” she said. “We know that we are meant to have hearts, hearts that can indeed be broken, hearts that go beyond charity to long-term solutions. But my God, it’s hard. … It’s hard to hold tight to compassion when confronted every day with cynicism and apathy, and that’s in our churches as well as in our communities.”

Choosing to have a heart “is life-changing and habit-forming, and, my friends, it is world-altering,” Kohlmann said. “It is who and how and what we are called to be — fiercely, passionately, whole-heartedly advocates for the love of God.”

“When we open our hearts to this world, our hearts will be broken, and we will join God in that brokenness,” she said. “We need hearts that can be broken so they can overflow even more. In the power through whom all things are made possible, tonight we open our hearts to all the holy triune God can and will and intends to do through us. We open our hearts. Hallelujah! Amen.”

A number of speakers welcomed attendees to the gathering, which is normally held in person every three years, but saw a pandemic-caused interruption in 2021.

“I wish you could see what I see,” said the Rev. Dr. Diane Givens Moffett, president and executive director of the Presbyterian Mission Agency, gazing into the faces of those gathered. “It is good to see everyone in person.”

Moffett thanked Dr. Susan Jackson Dowd, the executive director of Presbyterian Women, as well as PW’s officers and members for the opportunity to bring them greetings.

While “churches are learning to thrive in a post-pandemic world,” times of crisis “can leave us weary,” Moffett said. She recalled raising three daughters who were carted to their after-school and weekend activities by their father and by extended family members. “I experienced days when nothing seemed to be working but my nerves,” Moffett said. “I did what I did because of love, and I believe there are a few women here for which that is true.”

“For mission and ministry projects, for your support and embodiment of the Matthew 25 focus, for your per capita donations … for your willingness to keep pressing and leaning into new ways, for the audacity to believe that God is doing a new thing, for being disciples who are love with skin on it — for Presbyterian Women past, present, and future, I say thanks be to God for your witness and your ministry. Blessings on this, your 2024 Gathering.”

Read a report on the second plenary here.

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Today’s Focus: Rev. Cindy Kohlmann speaks to the 2024 Presbyterian Women Churchwide Gathering

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Marsha Stearley, Desktop Support Analyst, Information Technology, Administrative Services Group (A Corp) 
Elaine Stepp, Operations Reconciliation Specialist, Presbyterian Foundation 

Let us pray

Great God of Hope, may the river flow through us this day in sharing help and gladness to God’s city as the morning dawns. Touch our hearts with love for all, especially by encouraging the weak and giving tenderness to the strong. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Raising the roof — and the rest of the house as well — is one way New Castle Presbytery is responding to the Matthew 25 call

Violent storms on Maryland’s Eastern Shore put an emphasis on long-term solutions

August 12, 2024

A partnership that includes New Castle Presbytery is working to 

address the causes of climate change. (Photo courtesy of Eastern 

Shore Long Term Recovery Committee)

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has affirmed since 2016 a commitment to mission and ministry as guided by Matthew 25. That commitment, to building vital congregations, dismantling structural racism, and eradicating systemic poverty, is meant to move us into deeper understandings of who we are called to be as followers of Jesus Christ and how we are called to love our neighbors.

Churches have long been part of the social backbone of our communities, providing safety nets through food pantries and clothing closets, offering spaces for recovery programs to meet, and generally seeking to live into Jesus’ command to love our neighbors as ourselves. Such tangible offerings of love and support are sadly necessary, as the crisis of housing insecurity continues to skyrocket, food prices get higher each year, and the fabric of a stable and healthy society is more and more frayed.

The Matthew 25 vision invites us to move beyond the temporary fixes — the stop-gap solutions — into diagnosing the root causes of hunger, homelessness, poverty, and disenfranchisement, and then seek to address those causes. That doesn’t mean we close up our food pantries and shut down our assistance funds, but it does mean we work for a day when such things are needed only in times of crisis or disaster.

The Eastern Shore Long Term Recovery Committee is an outstanding example of this movement toward addressing root causes. As climate change continues to result in more violent storms, rising ocean levels, and higher tides, homes along the Eastern Shore of Maryland experience more and more flooding.

One response to such flooding would be to raise funds and volunteers, muck out the homes, repair and replace, and call it a day. Until next week when it happens again. And again. And again.

The Rev. Cindy Kohlmann is Connectional 

Presbyter and Stated Clerk of New Castle 

Presbytery. She served as Co-Moderator 

of the 223rd General Assembly (2018). 

(Contributed photo)

A Matthew 25 response, and the response that is happening in our midst, is to look at all the factors, understand what is unchangeable or at least out of local control, and find a way to solve the long-term problem. It is clear that solving climate change and rising seas is necessary but wouldn’t create a solution here and now. Relocation isn’t a real possibility for families without financial means to move and whose livelihoods keep them anchored on the Eastern Shore. So, what could a life-giving, long-term solution be?

In this case, that solution is to raise the houses so that the regular flooding can no longer bring destruction. It’s not an easy or inexpensive solution, but it preserves dignity, community, and homesteads that go back generations. And when all the factors are weighed, it’s actually the most reasonable solution.

It costs approximately $50,000 along with many volunteer hours to raise a single house. The Eastern Shore Long Term Recovery Committee has set a goal of raising 100 homes primarily in Somerset and Dorchester Counties. You can read more about this effort on the Maryland Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster website.

Where do we come in as New Castle Presbytery? These are our immediate neighbors, within the bounds of the area where we do mission and ministry. Along with others, the Rev. Amy Lawrence, pastor of the Manokin Presbyterian Church in Princess Anne, Maryland, has gotten involved in the efforts, creating a direct connection to all of us. And this effort is clearly in line with our Matthew 25 commitment.

To that end, the Trustees of New Castle Presbytery took two actions. First, they donated $50,000 from a mission response reserve to provide the funds to raise one house. Then, they created a $50,000 matching challenge for our presbytery to meet. Raising another $50,000 across the presbytery and matching that for a total of $100,000 means we will be directly impacting the lives of three families.

Even better, an anonymous donor has offered a $400,000 matching challenge through the Recovery Committee. That means that our anticipated $100,000 will be matched to create $200,000. That’s amazing!

Our goal is to raise our matching $50,000 by our Sept. 21 presbytery meeting so we can celebrate what we’ve accomplished together. Let’s raise some houses!

The Rev. Cindy Kohlmann is Connectional Presbyter and Stated Clerk of New Castle Presbytery and was Co-Moderator of the 223rd General Assembly (2018).

Today’s Focus: New Castle Presbytery is responding to the Matthew 25 call

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Lorie Neff LaRue, Vice President, Education, Board of Pensions
Valéry Nodem, Associate, International Hunger Concerns, Presbyterian Hunger Program, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray

Gracious God, we thank you for the opportunity to share your love in real and tangible ways with our brothers and sisters. Amen.