Mission Yearbook: A message of courage and faith is accompanied by 102-year-old organist

Mary Conklin, who's 102, rehearses at the organ (photo by Sarah Feltman Hegar)

Pinch-hitting for Synod School preacher the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, the Rev. Stephanie Anthony, who’s recently been installed as the lead pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Allentown, Pennsylvania, brought God’s Word during a rollicking worship service that featured organ music by 102-year-old Mary Conklin.

Anthony used Isaiah 41:9–10 and 2 Kings 5:1–4 as preaching texts.

On a day when Synod Schoolers were looking at how to boost their courage, the Rev. Cathy Kolwey used the children’s time to ask the youngest attendees what they’re afraid of. Responses included spiders, getting lost, small spaces, roller coasters, rats and being late.

Kolwey, director of chaplaincy at Auburn Homes and Services in Minnesota, admitted her fear of math. “But I know with God’s help I can overcome my fear of math,” she told the children, displaying two equations to prove her point. The first was Fear-Fear=Courage and had a line striking it out. The second was Fear+God=Courage. She then prayed, telling God, “When we add you to the equation, that’s where courage comes from.”

Beginning with the 2 Kings text, Anthony noted the girl is not named, “just as we haven’t known the names of countless girls like her for millennia.” She’s a captive from Israel, which had just suffered a defeat on the battlefield. “She is a nobody in a story about power players, and still she speaks up for someone in need of healing.”

“Society tries to tell us what power looks like. It doesn’t look like a young girl who’s been taken to the ends of the Earth,” Anthony said. “Power looks like riches and wealth, people with enough connections to bend the rules to cover their indiscretions.”

This kind of corrupt power “sees itself as the only reliable source of truth,” she said. “It’s born of greed and selfishness and an undeserved sense of self-importance.”

Asked to heal the army commander Naaman, the king of Israel “assumes the other king is trying to make a fool of him. His privilege is showing,” Anthony said, “as is his ignorance and arrogance, when he doesn’t seem to know Elisha in his own land.”

Image

Rev. Cathy Kolwey.jpg

That kind of power “is alluring and intoxicating, but it’s not from where true healing flows in God’s kin-dom,” she said. That kind of healing “looks more like the witness of a nameless girl. It looks like listening to the needs of the person right in front of you. It looks like the courage of a girl who draws on wisdom, power and strength of the community to bring healing to one who suffers.”

The girl “gathers her courage and speaks of what she knows is true,” she said. “Even when the healing has no positive impact on her life, she uses the only thing she had in that moment: her voice.”

“What would it look like, church, if we took on this kind of courage? If we were willing to put everything on the line to do the right thing?” Anthony asked. “What would it look like if we were to do the scary thing and speak to what we know is true about how God loves and desires health and dignity for everyone? How the Spirit calls us to transform the systems that do harm to the least of these?”

As a result of the current political strife, “many of us these days are feeling like we’re lost in the farthest corners of the Earth,” Anthony said. But Isaiah’s words help us find hope: “you whom I took from the ends of the Earth and called from its farthest corners, saying to you, ‘You are my servant; I have chosen you and not cast you off.’”

“If God calls us servants of the divine, God most certainly has something for us to do,” she said. “With courage, we speak to what we know is possible: healing and wholeness for all, and justice in Jesus’ name. Amen.”

After an offering to help fund scholarships for first-time attendees, Conklin took to the organ bench to play “How Firm a Foundation.” The congregation enjoyed singing along and gave her a long standing ovation when it was over.

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

Let us join in prayer for:

Lara Kirwan, Administrative Project Manager, President’s Office, Administrative Services Group
Maha Kolko, Project Manager, Community Outreach, Human Resources, Administrative Services Group

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.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Synod Schooler who’s 101 is thrilled to be back where she belongs

Mary Conklin of Winnebago, Minnesota, contributes to worship back home by playing the organ

September 29, 2024

Mary Conklin of Winnebago, Minnesota, is attending Synod School along with her granddaughter, Elizabeth, and greatgrandchildren Orion and Rosemary. (Photo by Kim Coulter)

Even though she’s 101 years old, Mary Conklin of Winnebago, Minnesota has not attended every edition of Synod School, which debuted in 1954. But she has been a part of most of the past 50 or so versions of the beloved gathering, put on each year by the Synod of Lakes & Prairies and attended by about 540 people this year, ranging in age from 5 months to 101 years.

“I taught [at Synod School] almost every year until 2009,” Conklin said. The children “kept me on my toes.”

A retired educator, Conklin still works as the organist at First Presbyterian Church in Winnebago, the church her late husband, the Rev. Robert Conklin, served from 1974 through 1984.

Asked to identify what she likes best about Synod School, Conklin hardly knew where to start. When she called to request a buggy — the Synod School name for a golf cart — to take her from, say, class to lunch, it was there in minutes.

“There are people I don’t see often who are special people” who attend Synod School, like Conklin does, year after year. This year, she’s accompanied by her granddaughter, Elizabeth, and Conklin’s great-grandchildren, Orion and Rosemary. It was Elizabeth who got her grandmother to return to Synod School after Conklin missed a few years during the pandemic.

Elizabeth and her children live in Blue Earth, about a dozen miles from Winnebago. Conklin lives alone, “but Elizabeth takes care of me. She comes by once a week and does what I can’t manage. I don’t do ladders anymore, so she takes care of the windows.”

“We brought Elizabeth to Synod School when she was little,” Conklin said. “That did something for her that makes her want to come back.”

Jill Emery, a commissioned ruling elder, recently began serving First Presbyterian Church after it had been without a pastor for about five years. “We are a small church. Many pastors don’t want to go to a small town far away from a big city, which we are,” Conklin said. “But we have maintained ourselves very well, which I think is remarkable.” The gift of a farm allowed for the renovation of the sanctuary “to update it to get us to the 21st century,” Conklin said with a smile.

“When I go home, I share the whole experience. I always tell people they need to come to Synod School,” she said. Each year the church offers scholarships to help members and friends attend.

Asked to dig into her memory bank for meaningful events of Synod Schools past, Conklin recalled adding her voice to the alto section in the choir. “You learned so much new music because the director would bring it” to try it out, she said. “It was fantastic to sing with that group.”

Conklin marvels at the care Synod Schoolers show one another, herself included. “I am so well cared for, and I don’t think that’s unique to me,” she said. “I think they help everyone. They’re a fantastic support. You see little groups of people having conversations and making new friends — some of them you’ll never see again.”

“There are no strangers here,” she said. “Once you’re here, you’re part of the group.”

Conklin attended the University of Dubuque and completed her studies at what was then Dickinson State College in North Dakota. Then her husband heard God’s call to attend the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary and serve in the ministry.

She started her teaching career at a country school in North Dakota, where she had 18 pupils in seven grades. Later, she taught high school English and grade school music. She was the education specialist for the Presbytery of Minnesota Valleys during the 1980s.

She and her husband retired to Arkansas, but retirement didn’t take for Conklin, who went to work at the University of the Ozarks, teaching Christian education halftime for a couple of years. She also was a Christian education director at a church in Fort Smith before moving back to Minnesota to be closer to her beloved family.

“All that education paid off,” she said, again with a smile.

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Today’s Focus: Mary Conklin plays organ at Synod School at age of 101

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
T. Clark Simmons, Senior Church Consultant, Atlanta GA, Board of Pensions
Alex Simon, Multimedia Specialist, Communications Ministry, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) 

Let us pray

Lord Jesus, you are the vine, we are your branches, feed us, nourish us prune us that we might grow stronger, bearing fruit for you. Let the fruits we bear bring glory to you. Amen.