Today in the Mission Yearbook - A little church with a big heart for mission

Bethel Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia addresses all three Matthew 25 focuses

February 9, 2022

 

With 45 dedicated members, Bethel Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia is addressing all three Matthew 25 focus areas. (Photo courtesy of Presbyterian Historical Society)

Bethel Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia is an African American congregation of about 45 members that’s doing the work of a congregation 10 times its size. Bethel is described as a little church with a big heart for mission. The congregation accepted the Matthew 25 invitation in 2019, but it was already doing the work the gospel requires.

Grace Marable, who leads the Matthew 25 effort at Bethel, says initially the congregation’s focus was just going to be the poverty, “but it sort of all worked together,” she said. “We’re doing the Bible Study. It’s helping us with the vitality of the church members.” She says conversations and interactions with other people and congregations led Bethel to start addressing systemic racism. “So, I think we’re doing a little bit of all three.”

Matthew 25 has three focuses:

Building congregational vitality by challenging people and congregations to deepen their faith and get actively and joyfully engaged with their community and the world.

Dismantling structural racism by advocating and acting to break down the systems, practices and thinking that underlie discrimination, bias, prejudice and oppression of people of color.

Eradicating systemic poverty by working to change laws, policies, plans and structures in our society that perpetuate economic exploitation of people who are poor.

Marable says that the Bible Study is helping members of their congregation to see and better understand what the Bible says about the times we’re in. “You can tell younger people what’s going on now is all in the Bible,” she said. “This has happened before … so, as we go through and we study the Scriptures and apply them with different things going on now, it helps to deepen our understanding, open up our minds.”

Every week members of Bethel provide meals for the community around the church in the North Philly neighborhood. According to Marable, the area has a high poverty rate, a large number of people with addictions, a high unemployment rate and many individuals with mental health problems. Bethel members and friends feed about 300 individuals every month.

“We have a weekly feeding program,” said Marable. “Every Thursday, we do food bags for the community and every other Saturday we do a community meal where we feed anyone who wants a meal. We prepare a nutritional meal because some of the people can’t get the food on Thursday since they don’t have access to a house to take it to. They don’t have anywhere to cook the food because some of them are homeless. On Saturday, they get a chance to come and get a nutritional meal, a full-course meal.”

Members also make sure seniors who are homebound are taken care of as well. “We deliver meals to seniors who can’t get out and we deliver a monthly food box to them as well,” said Marable, who’s led the program for a decade. “We were working on the hunger program before we became a Matthew 25 church.”

The devastation of the pandemic did not stop Bethel from feeding those in need. When asked how they managed to provide meals with the restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic, Marable said, “Everything we did inside the church we brought it outside. The food bags and the meals, we gave out clothing to the community, we even put out racks of clothes on the pavement that people could come and go through. We did the coat drive outside. People had everything outside.

“So, it was no excuse. Because the building was closed there was no reason we couldn’t continue to do mission.”

Another aspect of meeting the community’s need was Bethel’s prayer box. The congregation would put the prayer box outside on a table every week. When individuals came for their food, volunteers would ask if they had a prayer request.

“People put their names on it mostly, but they put whatever was in their heart,” Marable said. “When we go to prayer service on Thursday night, someone goes through that box, and we lift up their prayers. This is saying to them, ‘The door is locked, but God is still listening. He’s sending us here to help you.’ So that’s been awesome.”

Gail Strange, Director of Church and Mid Council Communications, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Rick Jones, Director, Communications, Office of the General Assembly
Sharon Kandel, Mission co-worker serving in South Sudan, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray

Triune God, help us, rejoicing in your providential love, to exercise the same generosity with others that you share with us. Empower us to let go of the few loaves and fishes that we possess so that other hungry people can be fed, too. Then open our eyes to the miracles that follow. In Christ. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - A Matthew 25-inspired Stations of the Cross

New worshiping community leader says Holy Week had a whole new meaning after a year of ‘being in the tomb’

September 20, 2021

The Rev. Jeanie Shaw participates in Eventides “Giving Caravan” by sharing food and items to keep warm with a person experiencing homelessness in Sacramento, California. (Photo: Nancy Disher)

For the Rev. Jeanie Shaw, leader of Eventide Community, a new worshiping community in Sacramento, California, Holy Week had a whole new meaning this year. As an active member of the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance National Response Team, people in her community are used to being sent into neighborhoods across the nation and around the world to work on PDA-connected projects.

Because of the pandemic, Eventide members haven’t been able to be present and face to face with those impacted by disaster. They haven’t met in person over a year, and Shaw’s volunteer work with PDA has been limited to providing emotional and spiritual care via Zoom to presbyteries dealing with disaster events.

“We’ve experienced being in the tomb, but we can see the beginning of the tomb being opened,” Shaw said, “where we can begin to hug our families, and worship together person to person.”

This truth came to Shaw when a small group of volunteers helped reinvent Eventide’s “Giving Room,” which pre-pandemic was filled with sleeping bags, tents, jackets, gloves, socks and hats for their homeless siblings to take what they needed during Sacramento’s wet winter weather.

In early January, Eventide turned the room into a “Giving Caravan.” Along with items to survive the weather, the caravan was also loaded with pies, bread, cans of food, juice boxes, energy bars, and peanut butter and jelly. One person helping Eventide contacted many of their homeless friends to come to a parking lot. Shaw wrote about the experience here, describing it as “one of the most sacred meals” she’d ever seen.

As a worshiping community that has accepted the PC(USA)’s Matthew 25 invitation, which invites congregations to work at building congregational vitality, dismantling structural racism and eradicating systemic poverty, Eventide takes the mandate seriously. Shaw said they meet once a week “on holy Zoom” for Bible study related to the Matthew 25 invitation. Recently she and another Eventide leader, Nancy Disher, produced this “Stations of the Cross” for Good Friday, which she said was inspired by Matthew 25.

At each station is an image where members of Eventide have been on PDA mission trips over the years. The 11th station, where “Jesus promises his kingdom to the good thief,” has the one picture of the one place they weren’t able to go to — the people’s memorial to George Floyd — taken by one of Shaw’s friends.

For Shaw, putting together the stations of the cross in this way reminded her of what she has learned during the pandemic. For centuries, she said, churches worked to get people to come to them, to their sanctuaries. But she believes the pandemic, which closed church buildings, has changed the direction from having people come to the church to church and worshiping community members going out into the world.

“We’ve made it very clear we are not going back to worship in a physical space,” Shaw said. “We are going forward, knowing it will not be the same. In Mark 16 a young man in radiant white tells the woman at the tomb to tell the disciples that Jesus has gone ahead of them to Galilee. Jesus is ahead of us too, leading us to a whole new understanding of God’s love, post-pandemic.”

Shaw is also a three-quarter time pastor for Truckee Lutheran Presbyterian Church on the California border near Nevada. Under her leadership the church created “Operation Gratitude and Support,” which focused on thanking a different group of essential workers every month, especially for their service during the pandemic. You can read about that here.

Paul Seebeck, Mission Communications Strategist, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Jacklyn Walker, Mission Specialist, Asia & Pacific Office, Presbyterian Mission Agency
Judy Walton, Director, Credit Operations, Presbyterian Investment & Loan Program

Let us pray

Holy God, keep the eyes of your faithful always looking for those in need, and make our hands willing to serve, so that others may glimpse your kingdom until it comes in fullness. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Miami church engages the community while the worshiping is remote

Congregation takes advantage of quarantine time to lean into Matthew 25

July 14, 2021

A Black Lives Matter sign created by high school members of Riviera Presbyterian Church has been the site of a Free Art Friday event. (Photo by Robertson Adams)

When Riviera Presbyterian Church in Miami made the commitment to become a Matthew 25 church, it wasn’t a difficult decision.

“We thought nothing of it,” said Barbara Overton, co-chair for the Mission Committee. “Riviera has been a long-standing progressive voice in South Florida. We were comfortable being known as a ‘social justice’ church.”

Launched in April 2019, Matthew 25 is a bold vision and invitation to actively engage congregations in the world around them by embracing one or more of the three focuses: building congregational vitality, dismantling structural racism and eradicating systemic poverty.

Even with its history of social justice, Riviera Presbyterian was still surprised at the negative public reaction to large Black Lives Matter and God Loves All rainbow signs designed by their high school youth that were posted prominently outside the church.

“We received hate mail and threats stating that our signage was ‘un-Christian,’” said Overton. “We recognized being a Matthew 25 congregation is not about being conventional or safe. For some, systemic racism is not an accepted reality.”

For others, their public stance has made Riviera a friendly and welcoming space. The controversial Black Lives Matter sign has been the site of Free Art Friday — a social media-driven, local pop-up art scavenger hunt-like event promoting art, and in this case, highlighting social justice issues.

“When you can’t be in the building, how do you use the building to communicate?” asked Overton. “We are hopeful that standing with our siblings in Christ will bring more joyful creativity to and out of the community, whether we are worshiping inside, outside or at home.”

Like most other congregations, Riviera’s well-planned programming had to be set aside when COVID-19 came on the scene in early 2020. The Mission Committee came up with an alternative that allowed members to meet virtually and educate themselves on various topics related to the Matthew 25 journey.

Some of those gatherings were centered on a movie or short film that they watched on their own time and came together virtually to reflect, discuss and action plan a response. Action items included an offering of letters related to hunger issues, renewed focus on fertilizer use at home and at the church, and participation in the Season of Creation. Some of the topics were gun safety, racial justice, climate change, immigration, hunger and violence against women. They also focused on educating members and the community about the importance of voting and how to vote by mail.

“One of my goals for the program was not to sit and rehash that there is a problem. We all know there is a problem,” said Overton. “What can we as people of faith do about it individually or as a community?”

Convicted by the Matthew 25 passage, both the 222nd and 223rd General Assemblies (2016 and 2018) exhorted the PC(USA) to act boldly and compassionately to serve people who are hungry, oppressed, imprisoned or poor.

To see the map and list of all 800-plus congregations, groups and mid councils that have accepted the Matthew 25 invitation, click here. You can learn more about the work of each congregation through their stories and videos.

Melody K. Smith, Associate for Organizational Communications, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff

Elizabeth Olker, Presbyterian Mission Agency
Laura Olliges, Presbyterian Investment & Loan Program

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.