Today in the Mission Yearbook - Experience the highlights of the PC(USA)’s Matthew 25 Summit

A recap video is now available to share

April 19, 2024

The first and historic Matthew 25 Summit was held Jan. 16–18 at New Life Presbyterian Church in South Fulton, Georgia. This event was the first in-person gathering for people committed to and interested in learning more about the Matthew 25 movement.

More than 350 participants from across the country, representing 15 of the 16 synods of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), traveled to the Atlanta area the week of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday.

The three-day conference featured plenary talks from the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis and Dr. William Yoo, along with the Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb, a Palestinian Lutheran pastor. Music was performed by Dr. Tony McNeill and The Many, and additional preaching was provided by New Life’s team leader, the Rev. Hodari Williams, and the Rev. Dr. Diane Givens Moffett, president and executive director of the Presbyterian Mission Agency.

Consider what next steps your organization may take in the Matthew 25 movement. Sign up your church, presbytery, synod or group to join the movement. Share the story of how your church, presbytery, synod or PC(USA) group is living into Matthew 25.

Melody K. Smith, Associate Director for Digital and Marketing Communications, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Today’s Focus: PC(USA)’s Matthew 25 Summit

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
David Gambrell, Associate, Worship, Presbyterian Mission Agency 
Greta Garbo, Accounting Clerk III, Administrative Services Group, A Corp 

Let us pray

Gracious God, we thank you for the gifts of energy, excitement and spirit of exploration. May we find ways to encourage those gifts in others to live joyfully and healthfully. We pray in the name of the Child of Bethlehem. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Attendees of the PC(USA)’s Matthew 25 Summit report the gathering’s positive impact

One participant: ‘This summit has strengthened my faith in other people, the Presbyterian Church and our gracious, loving God!’

March 9, 2024

The 350 or so people attending last week’s Matthew 25 Summit filled 

the sanctuary of New Life Presbyterian Church in South Fulton, Georgia.

(Photo by Rich Copley)

Participants from across the country, representing 15 of the 16 synods of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), traveled to the Atlanta area the week of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday for the first Matthew 25 Summit. The Presbytery of Greater Atlanta, Presbytery of Baltimore and Denver Presbytery drew the greatest number of participants, but 93 of the 166 presbyteries of the PC(USA) — 56% — were represented at the Summit. The event was fully booked with a waiting list of 30 by the time it commenced on the campus of New Life Presbyterian Church in South Fulton and online.

The Rev. Dr. Diane Moffett, president and executive director of the Presbyterian Mission Agency, “always knew that this conference was gonna be a big hit,” said the Rev. Michelle Hwang, who co-chairs the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board. “It was great to see how many people registered and how many were on the waiting list. Next time, we’ll get a bigger venue, but it was also wonderful for us to come together in a local congregation, and I was blown away in the hospitality of this church and the faithful discipleship of these people who welcomed us.”

Jennifer Morgan (Photo by Beth Waltemath)

“So much that was said went straight to my heart, and I am left inspired and dedicated to the work of Matthew 25 for months to come,” said Jennifer Morgan, ruling elder at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Madison, Wisconsin. “This summit has strengthened my faith in other people, the Presbyterian Church as a whole, and our gracious, loving God!” said Morgan, who attended the Matthew 25 Summit with two other church members and a member of the staff at Covenant.

Morgan currently serves on session and works with the Adult Education Committee. She runs an antiracism group for the church modeled on the 12-Step program. “I became seriously interested in racial justice issues a number of years ago,” said Morgan. “I didn’t want Covenant to just ‘check the box’ by becoming a Matthew 25 church, but really do something in our community.”

A ruling elder and volunteer for the host church’s hospitality team, Cynthia Roberts, said the gathering was “a moving experience of bringing Matthew 25 to life” and appreciated meeting people from all over the United States who were committed to addressing the struggles of the marginalized. “All the believers here believe we need to see everyone, to know their struggle and what they are going through — not just praying but being in community and serving others.”

Roxie Holder (Photo by Beth Waltemath)

Roxie Holder, a ruling elder at New Horizons Presbyterian Church in Norfolk, Virginia,  felt energized by the content and community of the Summit and wants to bring along even more churches. “More importantly, I want to bring along our presbytery, because it really is biblical,” said Holder, who just rotated off the Committee on Ministry in  the Presbytery of Eastern Virginia and who also serves on the Advisory Committee on the Constitution for the Office of the General Assembly.

The three-day conference featured plenary talks from Presbyterian leaders, the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis and Dr. William Yoo, with music from Dr. Tony McNeill and The Many and additional preaching from New Life’s team leader, the Rev. Hodari Williams and from Moffett. Videos of keynote speakers and preachers are here.

Yoo’s talk, which invited the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to repent and repair the historic harms of its complicity in the United States’ treatment of Indigenous people and African Americans, was a highlight for Hwang. She explained how the PMA Board had studied Yoo’s  2022 book, “What Kind of Christianity: A History of Slavery and Anti-Black Racism in the Presbyterian Church.” “His scholarship and message show how important it is for us as people of color to tell each other’s stories, to give it validation and to lift each other up. Matthew 25 helps us to be equipped to do that,” said Hwang, “to see how we are interlocked and interconnected and how we can join together to overcome oppressive systems.”

Beth Waltemath, Communications Strategist, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Today’s Focus: Matthew 25 Summit received a positive impact report from attendees

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Anita Clemons, Senior Vice President, Managing Director of Investments, Presbyterian Foundation   
Antonia Coleman, Administrative Project Manager, Visioning, Rebuilding & Innovation Office, Presbyterian Mission Agency 

Let us pray

Loving Jesus, lead us to the goodness of ourselves and others that is deeper than any gifts or challenges we embody. Open us to discover our full humanity though mutual dependency and belonging. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - The Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis entreats Presbyterians to organize to end poverty

‘Poor has become a four-letter word,’ opening speaker at Matthew 25 Summit tells capacity crowd

February 29, 2024

The Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis delivers the opening plenary

during the Matthew 25 Summit. (Photo by Rich Copley)

A powerful sermon by the Rev. Hodari Williams, team leader of New Life Presbyterian Church in South Fulton, Georgia, deftly set the stage for the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, who brought conference-goers to their feet with her opening plenary on the first day of the historic Matthew 25 Summit.

Theoharis, executive director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York and co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival with the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and teaches at Union Theological Seminary.

After Williams poignantly compelled worshipers to see and to value those who are invisible in society, Theoharis rendered the invisible — the poor — manifestly visible through her use of video, her skillful exegesis of Matthew 25 and her bold call to organize to fight and end poverty.

Opening her address by invoking the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “in one of his hometowns just a day after his birthday,” Theoharis cited King’s final work, “Where Do We Go from Here?”

“’The prescription for the cure rests with the accurate diagnosis of the disease,’” she said, quoting King. “‘A people who began a national life inspired by a vision of a society of brotherhood can redeem itself. But redemption can come only through a humble acknowledgment of guilt and an honest knowledge of self.’ We owe it to [King] and to ourselves to take these words seriously.”

After painting a bleak but realistic portrait of the 45 million people currently experiencing hunger and food insecurity in America Theoharis asserted that policymakers in Washington and so many states continue to legislate as if inequality weren’t an emergency.

“When it comes to accurately diagnosing what ails America, let alone prescribing a cure,” she said, “our nation falls short … ‘Poor’ has become a four-letter word.”

Then, turning to the Bible, which she called “the only [media source] that has something good to say about the poor,” and addressing her particular audience of Matthew 25 Presbyterians, she said, “As a people, too often we believe we can claim to be Christian just by going to church on Sunday rather than committing ourselves to the issues to which Jesus committed himself.”

The Rev. Denise Anderson, director of Compassion, Peace & 

Justice in the Presbyterian Mission Agency, introduces the 

Matthew 25 Summit’s first plenary speaker, the Rev. Dr. Liz 

Theoharis. (Photo by Rich Copley)

As Theoharis began to unpack the Scripture that served as the inspiration for the Summit, she corrected a common misperception.

“The first thing we get wrong about Matthew 25 is that it’s a message for individuals,” she said. “Matthew 25 tells us that Jesus is speaking to the nation, perhaps to those with the political and economic power to meet the needs of the people. … The message of Matthew 25 is when a nation acts, the whole society flourishes.”

Theoharis practices what she preaches. As co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, she and Barber have helped to build a movement that seeks to revive the message of the original campaign, which declared that racism, militarism and poverty are interconnected evils and must be fought together — and that the poor and dispossessed must lead that fight.

“When we build a movement of those considered expendable, we can end poverty,” she said. “If we refuse to organize our society, our nation, around the needs of the poor, poverty and want will never be banished and we will have abandoned Jesus.”

As she continued to ground her thesis in both Scripture and the actions of the early Church, Theoharis said that organizing a movement today very much looks like the agency of those early Christians and their acts of civil disobedience.

“Both back then and today, we have to figure out how to meet each other’s needs and keep on fighting,” she said. “If we are to follow God’s economy, there is no poverty, there is no hunger, there is no homelessness. The absence of poverty isn’t just an absence of poverty, but the presence of justice.”

Theoharis also invited attendees to visit the website of the Poor People’s Campaign to learn more about and take part in nationwide rallies on March 2 and a June 15 event in Washington, D.C.

Emily Enders Odom, Associate Director of Mission Communications, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Today’s Focus: Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, opening speaker at the Matthew 25 Summit

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Katie Carter, Manager I, Faith Based Investing, EDO, Presbyterian Mission Agency 
Laura Caruthers, Client Specialist II, Presbyterian Foundation 

Let us pray

Gracious God, we give thanks that you draw us and all Creation toward your perfect will. You work through us to give newness of life to neighbors down the street and neighbors around the globe. We pray for ministries that bring your message of reconciling love to our broken world. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - The PC(USA)’s first-ever Matthew 25 Summit opens with powerful and prophetic preaching

The Rev. Hodari Williams, team leader of the host New Life Presbyterian Church, urges everyone to tug off cloaks of invisibility

February 28, 2024

The Rev. Hodari Williams got the Matthew 25 Summit started 

with stellar preaching. (Photo by Rich Copley)

Growing up in the 1980s, the Rev. Hodari Williams was a fan of Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger comic books — especially Cloak, whose superpower was becoming invisible when he wore his robe.

One year the young Williams, who grew up to lead New Life Presbyterian Church in South Fulton, Georgia, the host church for the Matthew 25 Summit, received a maroon bathrobe for Christmas. “Who gives a kid a robe for Christmas?” he asked. Still, Williams believed his robe made him invisible, just like his superhero.

In first grade, “I learned I was inherently equipped with an invisible cloak, thrust upon me by society in America,” Williams said during opening worship of the first-ever in-person Matthew 25 gathering. Or, as Ralph Ellison says in “Invisible Man”: “I am an invisible man … simply because people refuse to see me.”

In Matthew’s Judgment of the Nations found in Matthew 25:31–46, both sheep and goats “fall short of recognizing divinity of those concealed by societal norms,” according to Williams. But Jesus, “a North African Palestinian Jew, skillfully confronts the disciples’ blindness. He connects the whole human experience by positioning himself among the invisible. It serves as an indictment, urging disciples to strip away the forced cloaks of invisibility imposed by society.”

New Life Presbyterian Church’s electronic sign welcomed the 350 or 

so people attending the Matthew 25 Summit. (Photo by Rich Copley)

“If you don’t see [the effects of invisibility], I compel you to look deeper,” Williams said. “If I don’t see you, I am not compelled to value you.”

“We must ask ourselves: Who is benefiting from the invisibility?” Williams said. Or, as Dr. John Henrik Clarke puts it: “If we would lose our eyesight, we’d increase our insight.”

If we do that, “we become aware of those around us,” Williams said, inviting the packed sanctuary to offer the South African greeting, “Sawubona,” or “I see you.”

That means “I see the whole you — your experiences, your passions, your pain, your strengths and weaknesses, and your future,” Williams said. “You are valuable to me.”

“I see your cloak, and I dare you to take your cloak off so you may be seen in who you are, your wholeness,” Williams said. In South Africa, the response is “Yebo Sawubona,” or “I see you, too.”

“May we see each other more clearly,” Williams said to loud and sustained applause.

Dr. Tony McNeill rehearses singers before the start of the Matthew 25 

Summit at New Life Presbyterian Church in South Fulton, Georgia. 

(Photo by Rich Copley)

Before worship, attendees were welcomed by an array of happy Presbyterians. The Rev. Dr. Diane Givens Moffett, president and executive director of the Presbyterian Mission Agency, held up three “C” words as Matthew 25 Summit goals: gaining clarity about what Matthew 25 is all about, thinking about the context of Matthew 25 as it’s lived out, and hoping that “we will all make connections.”

The Rev. Shavon Starling-Louis, Co-Moderator of the 225th General Assembly (2022), offered greetings from herself and fellow Co-Moderator the Rev. Ruth Faith Santana-Grace “on behalf of the faithful and mindful” commissioners and advisory delegates from the PC(USA)’s most recent Assembly.

“I’m so excited about what God is doing in and through this movement,” Starling-Louis said. “I thank those who have laid the groundwork, and I thank you for embodying what God is doing right here and now.”

A number of singers joined musician Dr. Tony McNeill to provide the 350 or so people gathered at the host church and the many worshiping online with stellar music throughout the service. The Rev. Shanea Leonard, director of Racial Equity & Women’s Intercultural Ministries, and Dr. Corey Schlosser-Hall, deputy executive for Vision, Innovation and Rebuilding in the PMA, helped to build excitement for the sold-out event by serving as emcees. “We are ready to ride and ready to fly,” Schlosser-Hall said following Williams’ benediction, which included these words offering thanks to the Almighty, “the One who sees us, knows us, counts the very hairs on our head, the One who knew us before we were formed in our mother’s womb.”

“Let us go from this place in insight, intentionally seeing others and looking beyond the cloaks of invisibility placed upon them. May we see the light of divinity in each other.”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Today’s Focus: PC(USA)’s first-ever Matthew 25 Summit

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Heath Carter, Senior Editor, Presbyterian Historical Society, Office of the General Assembly 
Jackie Carter, Project Manager, Media & Publishing, Communications Ministry, Presbyterian Mission Agency 

Let us pray

God of all, we praise you for the ways you use our simple gifts for the good of the kingdom. Thank you for providing bridges between all people with your love. Give us strength and vision to live every day as children who love and serve you. Amen.