Today in the Mission Yearbook - First Presbyterian Church in Gainesville, Florida, shares a concert and the Good News

Songs are sung and stories are told of a Matthew 25 church reaching others

January 27, 2023

First Presbyterian Church’s “Love in Action” special service shared stories of the Holy Spirit at work in Gainesville, Florida. (Photo courtesy of First Presbyterian Church)

Sunday morning worship was long over with, yet the sanctuary at First Presbyterian Church in Gainesville, Florida, was filled with activity. Musicians setting their music stands at the right height. Singers warming up their vocal cords. Ushers greeting those who came for what would be an inspiring afternoon of a community showing their “Love in Action.”

For some time now, the congregation of First Presbyterian has been living out Matthew 25 — challenging themselves to see Jesus in the needs of the community and then boldly acting on them. But Matthew 25 isn’t relegated to just mission committees. Matthew 25 is for all.

Inspired by the generous hearts eager to lend their time and talent, First Presbyterian’s music director, Mitch Rorick, wanted to do his part.

That’s when the idea to craft a special service, which would share the inspiring stories of the Holy Spirit working within the community and bring alive the songs of faith that echoed the Matthew 25 vision, came to him.

Those in the congregation were excited.

“Mitch wanted to combine missions and music into a concert,” member M. Violet “Vi” Asmuth recalled.

Rorick reached out to the church’s missions committee, where a small group began tossing around ideas. It became apparent that in addition to the songs of faith that melodiously capture Matthew 25, including “Lord, Make Me an Instrument” and “Here I Am, Lord” — an ecumenical favorite that is sung with gusto no matter what the denomination of the church is — having those engaging in the work share their testimonies would be a vital part of the program. Weaving together music and mission soon led to the perfect name for the concert: “Love in Action.”

A Matthew 25 concert put on by First Presbyterian Church in Gainesville, Florida, “Love in Action,” also featured interviews of those in the community serving others. (Photo courtesy of First Presbyterian Church)

With so many stories to share, Asmuth was tasked with drafting a script “so as to keep the time from getting out of control.”

“I talked to each interviewee to get the main points of what each wanted to say and then wrote the final script,” she said.

Asmuth’s task in gathering the stories proved to be a spiritual moment as she heard a common thread of God’s redeeming love connecting them all together. Among the stories was one from the director of a local organization, Gainesville Community Ministry, who shared with those attending the concert that at age 16 he ran away from an abusive foster care home and spent the next two years homeless. With the help of others and local churches, he found the strength and the resources needed to not only make a life for himself, but a life that would help others.

In addition to music and powerful stories, an offering was also part of the “Love in Action” concert. “The offering, though, was not your typical call for money,” said Asmuth. This “offering,” she says, was the blank cards that were included in the bulletins, allowing those attending “to write an inspired action that they planned to do.”

“We wanted to inspire others to go now and ‘do likewise’ in reaching out to neighbor and stranger alike,” she said. Of course, the organizers of “Love in Action” knew there would be those who wanted to give monetary gifts as well.

“There were places in the sanctuary to deposit money,” said Asmuth, adding that funds collected were divided among the agencies that spoke during the “Love in Action” concert.

Donna Frischknecht Jackson, Editor, Presbyterians Today

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Irv Porter, Associate, Native American Intercultural Congregational Support, Presbyterian Mission Agency
Doug Portz, Senior Church Consultant, Pittsburgh, Board of Pensions

Let us pray

Lord God, grant us the humility and wisdom to follow the leadership that you have appointed. Grant us the willingness to perform the tasks that you have commanded for us to do. Let us be constantly reminded of your sovereignty and protect us from those who put stumbling blocks in our way. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Broad Street Presbyterian Church’s 50-plus-year-old food pantry puts justice on the menu in Columbus, Ohio

Outreach project of Matthew 25 church provides community with staples, fresh produce and awareness of issues

January 20, 2023

Video URL: https://youtu.be/UlqYuI5JxwE

Kathy Kelly-Long is director of the Broad Street Food Pantry in Columbus, Ohio. (Photo courtesy of Broad Street Food Pantry)

 Broad Street Food Pantry in Columbus, Ohio, got its start in 1971 when women from Broad Street Presbyterian Church (BSPC) noticed that more and more people were requesting food from the pastoral staff and wanted to help.

Fast-forward more than a half century and the pantry is still going strong, distributing food to thousands of people while also being sensitive to food justice issues.

From offering fresh, local produce to raising awareness about voting, the food pantry strives to be a beacon in the community without being paternalistic. Its focus, as noted on its web page, is “supporting neighbors by putting healthy meals on their table with respect and dignity for all.”

Instead of assuming that food-insecure people will eat anything that’s offered to them, a form is provided so that people have a say in which items they take home.

“We’ve tried to move away from the charity model to more of a justice model, so that we provide choice,” Director Kathy Kelly-Long said. Providing healthy and “culturally appropriate choices” also is important “versus just having whatever people donate.”

The pantry, which is an outreach mission of BSPC, also operates under the premise that “eliminating hunger will only come with policy change, thriving wages, and racial and economic justice. That’s why we advocate for a strong safety net and racial equity,” Kelly-Long wrote in the blog post “7 Lessons I Have Learned at the Broad Street Food Pantry.”

The pantry switched to a drive-through method of grocery distribution during the pandemic and has continued to use it because of its popularity, director Kathy Kelly-Long said. (Photo courtesy of Broad Street Food Pantry)

Earlier this year, Kelly-Long participated in an online chat featuring right-to-food advocates, during the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health.

“There are people being very intentional about raising up the fact that food should be a basic human right, that it shouldn’t be dependent on what your income is or isn’t, and it shouldn’t be controlled by the government when they tell you how much SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) money you have to spend,” she said. The right-to-food community has been “helpful to know about and to hear more from.”

When speaking with donors and other community members, Kelly-Long tries to help people “do the math” to see how easy it is for even working people to get in a pinch for money.

For example, if you make $8 an hour and “pay $800 a month in rent and utilities, what do you have left? And then you add in the cost of child care because you can’t take your kids to work with you,” she said. “Minimum wage just isn’t enough to get by on, let alone thrive on,” she said.

Ava Johnson of Southeast Gardens and Farm is one of the local growers that the pantry purchases fresh produce from. (Photo courtesy of Broad Street Food Pantry)

In a recent Presbyterian Hunger Program webinar, the featured speaker, the Rev. Alison Dunn-Almaguer of the Washington Interfaith Network (WIN) lifted up various ways that churches and other community groups can address such problems. Providing direct services, such as food, clothing or backpacks, is a way for churches to meet immediate needs. “All of those things are incredibly important,” she said.

Other ways include activism or mobilizing to fight for change, doing advocacy that’s focused on a particular issue, and Congregation-Based Community Organizing, which is often focused on multiple issues and tends to take place over a period of time.

At Broad Street Food Pantry “whenever I get emails from Bread for the World (or) anybody about ‘Call your senator,’ or do this or that, I share them with our volunteers,” said Kelly-Long, who also reaches out to members of BSPC, a Matthew 25 church.

It’s not as easy to reach shoppers because they don’t always have email or reliable cell phone service. But sometimes “we have postcards available that they can either sign off on a pre-printed message or write their own,” she said.

Some of the issues the pantry has raised awareness about include immigration and aspects of the Farm Bill, scheduled for reauthorization this year.

The Presbyterian Hunger Program is one of the Compassion, Peace and Justice ministries of the Presbyterian Mission Agency. Its work is made possible through gifts to One Great Hour of Sharing. Eradicating systemic poverty is one of the goals of Matthew 25. Read more here.

Darla Carter, Communications Strategist, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Sung-Joo Park, Korean-Speaking Representative, Presbyterian Investment & Loan Program
Sunkyoo Park, Associate, Adult Curriculum, Korean Language, Presbyterian Publishing Corporation

Let us pray

God of Creation of all people, you provide abundantly for our every need. We pray for people who are hungry and homeless. Help us in the name of Jesus to share the resources you entrusted to us with our neighbors near and far.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - ‘Nobody is beyond resurrection’

Clean and sober for 10 years, clergy couple at Matthew 25 church helps people escape poverty and addiction

October 5, 2022

Video URL: https://vimeo.com/716496783

The mugshots of Kevin and Danielle Riley following their arrests. (Contributed photos)

Before Kevin Riley got clean and sober, he found himself at the former site of Trinity Presbyterian Church, which is now home to a nondenominational church in Sedro Wooley, Washington, a town about an hour north of Seattle.

“The deacons cared for me in ways no church had before,” he said.

Church leaders put a cot underneath the windows where he slept at night — and even ran power outside those windows so he could have heat to his heating pad.

But according to Danielle Riley, their life together was coming apart.

“It really was a hopeless feeling,” she said. “I don’t think we ever got suicidal, but I wouldn’t have minded if my life ended.”

One day Kevin told Danielle he’d said a prayer asking God to somehow remove her from their situation. That day she got arrested and spent three months in jail, pregnant with their first child.

Concrete is a town of 915 people in the Skagit Valley. (Photo by Mike Fitzer/Film 180)

Danielle said that’s where her transformation began.

“I was praying to God to change everything because I didn’t know how to do it,” she said.

It took Kevin a good month after Danielle was incarcerated to decide that he needed to get clean. During this time, he found himself behind a little church in Burlington, a short drive from Sedro Wooley. On the hill was a cross known as the Burlington Hill cross. For Kevin, that cross symbolized refuge. Growing up he got that message from his grandmother, who was a devout Catholic.

Being there at night, as he tried to sleep, a train would come by.

“The way my drug-addicted brain worked, that was the sound of God’s trumpet coming to scare away all the evil I had done,” he said.

While in jail, Danielle went to a Bible study for women and led by pastors from a 1001 new worshiping community, Tierra Nueva, which is a ministry of the Northwest Coast Presbytery. When Danielle got out of jail, she and Kevin made Tierra Nueva their home church community.

At the time, Mount Baker Presbyterian Church in Concrete, about a half-hour east of Burlington, was without a pastor. Knowing that Kevin was interested in receiving training as a pastor, Tierra Nueva founder Bob Ekblad asked the congregation, which was down to less than a dozen people, if Kevin could preach one Sunday.

For Anne Bussiere, who helped Mount Baker become a Matthew 25 church, Kevin’s heart and the message he brought in left the congregation feeling that he was “really moving with the Spirit.” So, leaders at the church kept inviting him back to preach.

When he became a commissioned lay pastor at Mount Baker Presbyterian Church, the first thing Kevin Riley did was have the congregation clean the church from the inside out as a way of increasing the church’s footprint in the community.

“Having pastors that have been out of seminary, they’ve never experienced homelessness and drug addiction,” she said. “So, a lot of the Scriptures we’ve heard over and over all of a sudden had a new light to them, because they were told from a different viewpoint.”

Once Kevin received commissioned lay pastor training, he was ordained and installed to serve the church.

“I asked them all what is the plan for your church,” Kevin said. “One of the ladies looked at me and said, ‘Well that’s why we hired you.’”

That’s when Kevin cast a vision for the congregation, to clean the church from the inside out and then increase its footprint in the community.

The addiction and poverty that he encounters now as a pastor in Concrete is a lot like what he experienced, both living in addiction and how he grew up. He says it’s strange to be stepping back into something he escaped, now trying to help others escape as well.

“Every one of us is broken and we all need Jesus. Some of us just manifest our brokenness in different ways. Just because somebody’s homeless and addicted doesn’t mean they’re more broken than you are,” he said.

Danielle Riley, who is a part-time pastor for children and family ministries at Mount Baker Presbyterian Church, says they believe that addiction is a disease of loneliness, and that people just need community to heal from what is a symptom of trauma.

“Nobody is beyond resurrection,” she said. “It can happen to us. It can be anybody.”

 Paul Seebeck, Communications Strategist, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Denise Gray, Accountant, General Ledger Office, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)
Bridgett Green, Vice President/Executive of Publishing & Editorial Director, Presbyterian Publishing Corporation

Let us pray

Our Father in heaven, may we find courage and comfort in the daily reminder that you are a God who assures his children: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers they shall not overwhelm you” (Isaiah 43:1—2). In Christ’s name. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Church discovers key to vitality

People are seeking to serve

August 26, 2022

Franklin Presbyterian Church’s Clothes Closet is one of the many ways the church is answering its call to be a Matthew 25 congregation. Courtesy of Franklin Presbyterian

One of the things that attracted the Rev. Daniel Van Beek to Franklin Presbyterian Church was its commitment to Matthew 25. “Their pastor had left, and the interim hadn’t even come, yet they still moved forward with Matthew 25,” said Van Beek, who joined the Franklin, Kentucky, congregation in 2020.

While engaging in all three Matthew 25 focuses — building congregational vitality, dismantling structural racism and eradicating systemic poverty — it is the church’s work in the latter that has garnered attention.

Franklin, named one of the 50 best small Southern cities, is not without its challenges. Many families, says Van Beek, struggle with Jesus’ Matthew 25 saying, “I was naked and you clothed me.” Aware of this, Franklin Presbyterian began a clothes closet in its basement. Clothing donations came pouring in, and soon, Van Beek says, there was no room to move.

Today, the Matthew 25 Clothes Closet provides clothing for its neighbors. As for its name, the Matthew 25 committee made it a point not to call it the Franklin Presbyterian Clothes Closet.

“We are not here to promote the church’s name, but to make known what we stand for,” said Van Beek. Now that the clothing ministry is up and running, the Matthew 25 team can explore what’s next.

That exploration is at the heart of Franklin Presbyterian’s mission. So much so that when a gift was left to the church, it was decided to invest the money in a new staff position. “We didn’t want that money for hospice care,” said Van Beek.

In 2021, the Rev. Bailey Pickens joined the congregation as its new community connections director. Pickens sees her role as “connecting the dots” within the community. Many of these dots get connected by nurturing conversations.

One of the places such conversations are held is within the church. In 2014, an addition was built onto the sanctuary. It is viewed as a space for the community. “We’re using the resources we have to listen,” said Pickens.

Van Beek adds that Matthew 25 “has opened conversations” he never imagined would take place.

Through its anti-racism and poverty work, Franklin Presbyterian has also discovered what a vital congregation is.

“It is where everyone is doing the ministry,” said Pickens. It is also where people want to be part of the mission.

This past winter, the congregation welcomed 10 new members — many of whom joined because of the work being done in the community, Van Beek says.

Donna Frischknecht Jackson, Editor, Presbyterians Today

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff

Patricia Curtis, Production Clerk, Hubbard Press, Administrative Services Group (A Corp) 
Dana Dages, Web Developer/Designer, Communications Ministry, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray

Gracious God, you give strength to the weary and power to the faint. Lift up those who have given so much. May they know the peace of Christ, the peace that surpasses all human understanding. In your gracious name we pray. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Church embraces a history of service

Early Matthew 25 church welcomes everyone to the ‘table’

February 27, 2022

Kevin Kouba, music director and coordinator for The Welcome Table ministry, shows off his industrial-size strainer, which is needed to cook for over 225 people each week. (Contributed photo)

The Welcome Table is the feeding ministry at Briargate Presbyterian Church on the southwest side of Louisville. Since April 2019, this small but mighty church of approximately 50 members is following the Matthew 25:31–46 call to actively engage in the world around us.

For The Welcome Table, it is about hospitality.

Briargate signed on to the Matthew 25 vision in May 2019 as the third church to join the journey. Today, more than 1,000 churches, mid councils and groups have signed on to become a Matthew 25 church recognizing Christ’s urgent call to be a church of action.

Kevin Kouba, music director for Briargate for more than 20 years, took on the mantle of leading this ministry because he felt right at home in a kitchen. With a background in restaurant management, it was a good fit — and a good call.

“As the congregation began to shrink, the music part of my ministry has become less of a necessity and demand on my time,” said Kouba. “So, we took on this hospitality ministry as a team.”

Women in the church had various fundraisers to help with a $100,000 project to make the church kitchen a commercial kitchen equipped to feed upward of 225 people per week. Other local Presbyterian churches also donated from their own capital campaigns.

Most volunteers are familiar with home kitchens and are good cooks as well, but they don’t have to be. The Welcome Table volunteers are not all from the church, but the local community as well.

“This is more than just poverty work,” said Kouba. “We didn’t intend just to feed. We had plans for other resources, but then COVID-19 happened.”

With The Welcome Table as the only Dare to Care kitchen in the area, the pandemic increased the number of people needing to be fed. They knew they couldn’t stop, but they had to find a way to continue and keep everyone safe.

They started with making relationships with local restaurants, like Kentucky Fried Chicken, where they now pick up their leftovers to reheat and distribute. They are using disposable containers, rethinking the process of serving outside, addressing physical access issues and improving traffic flow around the pickup site.

“Because John [Odom, presbyter for Community Life at Mid-Kentucky Presbytery] and I have both volunteered at The Welcome Table, we see the difference it is making in the community, continuing with its hunger ministry/feeding program despite the challenges of COVID-19,” said the Rev. Emily Enders Odom, mission interpretation project manager for Mission Engagement & Support. “When you consider the size of the Briargate congregation, it’s remarkable that these faithful volunteers have kept this ministry going.”

This isn’t Briargate’s first ministry in community service or food. It’s had a community garden for over 10 years. “It provides more than just food,” said Kouba. “For gardeners, they consume some of what they grow and sell the rest. It provides a path for self-sustainability.”

When considering how and when to bring people back inside, they have new challenges to overcome. Because they have grown the numbers of how many they serve during the pandemic, they are unsure as to how to do it safely and practically inside. However, they are determined to figure it out.

In the meantime, they continue to help in other ways, like assisting people through the process of financial and housing assistance applications and ministering to their spiritual and support needs as well.

“We couldn’t do it without support of our volunteers,” said Kouba. “Service has always been part of our church’s history.”

Melody K. Smith, Manager of Organizational Communications, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Kristen Leucht, Church Consultant, Los Angeles, Board of Pensions
Brad Levy, Production Clerk, Presbyterian Distribution Center, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)

Let us pray

Compassionate Christ, Lord of all people, races, colors and creeds, give us compassion to see the other, courage to cross over the barriers that separate us from one another and commitment to live lives worthy of your calling. Amen.