Today in the Mission Yearbook - Using hymns and songs as a co-proclaimer during worship

 Synod of the Covenant webinar draws from the hymnody and writings of some of our best-loved musical contributors

November 23, 2024

The Rev. Dr. Catherine E. Williams

How do hymns do theology? How much interpretive work is possible within the limits of poetic expression? How does any of this make for more compelling and memorable sermons?

The Rev. Dr. Catherine E. Williams, associate professor of Preaching and Worship and the director of Chapel Worship at Lancaster Theological Seminary, handled all those questions and more during a fascinating and engaging talk recently as part of the “Equipping Preachers” series offered most months by the Synod of the Covenant. Williams’ 87-minute talk, “Lyrical Theology and Hymns as Midrashim,” can be found here.

With help from the PC(USA)’s 2013 hymnal, “Glory to God,” and the writings and hymnody of scholars and writers including Thomas Troeger, Brian Wren, Ruth Duck and Carolyn Winfrey Gillette, Williams argued this premise during the preaching webinar: The music we sing during Christian worship proclaims and teaches as convincingly as the sermons we preach.

A pianist and singer, Williams began formal music study at age 8 in her native Trinidad and Tobago. She said she entered Princeton Theological Seminary’s PhD program in homiletics “with a view to broaden the understanding of proclamation to include congregational singing.”

“So many of the songs we sing as children and even as adults are the source of what Christians in the pew understand and believe about God,” she said. “That’s where we get it.” Songs and hymns “do theology in a different way.”

When she’s called on to craft a sermon, Williams has a Bible in one hand and a hymnal in the other — a hymnal with a robust Scripture index, topical and tune index, and a lectionary index like the one found in “Glory to God.” She said Troeger, who died two years ago after a long and prolific career, found “a feasible analogy with Midrash” in the way “hymns do their theological work, interpreting Scriptures in ways that give meaning to the lived experiences” of hymn composers.

She defined Midrash as “a unique way of interpreting Scripture,” a word that means inquire or investigate. “A basic function is to interpret a scriptural text so it’s relevant and meaningful to the contemporary situation of its readers,” Williams said.

Rabbis have been “doing this for centuries,” interpreting “based on the news of the current groups of believers,” she said. The Bible itself contains Midrash, such as the places where New Testament writings interpret Old Testament passages. “To this day,” Williams said, “we might accurately say that a great deal of preaching is Midrash.”

Troeger taught that preachers “use their theologically informed imaginations to provide interpretations of a biblical text to help it make sense to the congregation’s life and empower people to live their faith,” Williams explained, which “allows for multiple readings of Scripture in light of contemporary life. The question becomes, how much interpretive work is possible within the limits of poetic expression?”

As an example, Williams selected Duck’s “Womb of Life and Source of Being.” Williams asked: What kind of theological work is happening here? One webinar participant said it’s “inclusiveness and the wholeness of God.” Another said, “She is teaching different elements of how we can understand the Trinity.”

In this hymn, Williams noted that Duck advocates for finding multiple names for God. “She is working with metaphors for God that come from Scripture.”

Turning to the term “lyrical theology,” Williams said it’s formulating “beliefs about God through the songs we sing in church.” We use that approach “because songs, hymns and spiritual songs do theology in such succinct and accessible ways that they make great partners in preaching.”

“You could say that they co-proclaim with the sermon,” she said, noting it was Methodist scholar and singer S.T. Kimbrough Jr., who first used the term “lyrical theology.”

“It can be argued much of what we understand and believe about God today has been distilled through the theology of the songs we sing,” Williams said. It’s what the psalms produced for worshipers in synagogues in the ancient world, and what spirituals did centuries later for people who were enslaved. “These songs express a range of conditions and responses to life, all against the backdrop of a God who was always there.”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Daily Readings

• Morning Psalms 122; 149
• First Reading Malachi 3:13-4:6
• Second Reading James 5:13-20
• Gospel Reading Luke 18:9-14
• Evening Psalms 100; 63

Today’s Focus: A Synod of the Covenant webinar draws from the hymnody and writings of some of our best-loved musical contributors

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Rhea Adams, Service Desk, Administrative Services Group (A Corp) (Term) 
Ruth Adams, Director, Assistance Program, Church Engagement, Board of Pensions 

Let us pray

O God, you taught us to pray and have instructed us to pray, listening to you so that we may follow you closer. Today, draw this world together and draw us to you in prayer as we continually seek you and your presence. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Like Samson did with the donkey’s jawbone, we can put down tools that are no longer needed

The Rev. Brady Radford discusses transitional ministry on ‘Leading Theologically’

November 22, 2024

The Rev. Brady Radford is a guest on “Leading 

Theologically.”

Pastors receiving training from the PC(USA)’s Transitional Ministry Education Consortium learn one thing from the get-go: All ministry is transitional ministry.

“Those people who join us for transitional ministry training are not only navigating churches who are between pastoral leaders, but also called pastoral leaders who might consider having a week to think about the varied implications for navigating congregations through seasons of transition,” the Rev. Brady Radford, a pastor, counselor, coach and consultant from Atlanta, said during a recent edition of “Leading Theologically.”

“We’re really inviting participants and faculty leaders to a deep and fulfilling conversation about serving the church in times of transition,” Radford told the host of “Leading Theologically,” the Rev. Bill Davis, senior director for Theological Education Funds Development at the Presbyterian Foundation. “We help leaders hold non-anxious space in the midst of transitional seasons.”

“In as much as all ministry is transitional ministry, it’s important for us to know we are beyond the days of ‘set it and forget it,’” Radford said. “Carbon copy or cookie cutter plans and programs are not as likely to be effective today. … Our congregations and our members have access to so much information that it’s far bigger than having a singular vision or a singular program to invite people to plug into. It really becomes somewhat of a balancing act that requires quite a bit of tending, and the language of ‘tending’ looks at how we are paying attention to the contours of what’s changing.”

Among the changes are around people dynamics and resources, including church properties. “Buildings are going to become a huge conversation for most of our ministries in major cities over the next five to 10 years, and maybe sooner than that,” Radford said.

Before coming to the Presbyterian Foundation, Davis was an intentional transitional pastor of two Denver-area congregations that were merging. “Part of what I want to name is there are definite intentional times where we as pastors can invite congregations to think intently about the things that they need to let go of in order to move forward faithfully, whether that’s through a merger or through redefining ministry,” Davis said. “I know our denomination has plenty of great programs that invite us to consider how to do that faithfully.”

Radford said many churches are “answering the question of who we are and how do we faithfully live into the call to be new and to be different in this day and age.” At the heart of that faithfulness is the tradition to be “the church Reformed, always reforming.”

“We say that, but how do we live it into existence?” Radford asked. “Even if it means praising God and thanking God for what has been in this location and time, as we follow God faithfully into the next iteration of ministry that comes forth — whether it be through merger or the ending of a congregation and the seeding of a new worshiping community or congregation — I think there are many ways to be faithful during ministries of transition.”

Davis concluded the conversation by asking Radford about the best thing he’s heard recently. Radford cited a clip of the late Myles Munroe, a Bahamian minister and preacher. During this brief clip, Munroe discusses the jawbone of the donkey Samson used to kill a thousand Philistines. “At some point,” Radford said, quoting Munroe, “Samson put the tool down. He discarded the thing that had worked so well,” an act that gives us “fresh insight into what can become a hindrance for some of us in ministry. We love to set it and forget it. We love to find good tools, and if it’s worked, we assume it will always work.”

“After the season is up, it may be time for us to set some of those tools aside. It’s a level of maturity and dexterity,” Radford said. “There are ways of ministry that have worked well for us, but there might also be some forms of ministry — some resources for ministry — that it’s time to say, ‘Thank you, Lord, for this gift, this tool,’ and to put it down as we open our hands and allow what’s meant to come next to emerge.”

 Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Daily Readings

• Morning Psalms 88; 148
• First Reading Malachi 3:1-12
• Second Reading James 5:7-12
• Gospel Reading Luke 18:1-8
• Evening Psalms 6; 20

Today’s Focus: Rev. Brady Radford discusses transitional ministry on ‘Leading Theologically’

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Angielee Acevedo, Lead Housekeeper, Stony Point Center, Presbyterian Mission Agency 
Mark Adams and Miriam Maldonado, Mission co-workers serving on the Mexico/US Border, World Mission, Presbyterian Mission Agency 

Let us pray

Lord, we give you thanks for ideas shared, ministries birthed, and communities developed by which we may participate in your kingdom’s work and experience bearing fruit and growling in our knowledge of you. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Author, speaker and activist Brian McLaren speaks up for the Earth

During a talk at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, McLaren outlines what the world needs most from Christians today

November 21, 2024

The Rev. Dr. Brian McLaren, the author of more than 20 books, 

is part of New York Avenue Presbyterian Church’s McClendon 

Scholar Program. (Photo by Wendy Davis/Wild Artist 

Photography)

Speaking for the third time this year as part of New York Avenue Presbyterian Church’s McClendon Scholar in Residence Program, the Rev. Dr. Brian McLaren shared his thinking on what the world needs most from Christians today.

“My goal is I will give you nothing to feel guilty about,” the author, speaker and activist told people in the sanctuary of the historic PC(USA) church in Washington, D.C., and an online crowd of several hundred people. “The second goal is I will add no pressure to your life. Do I get an amen on that?”

“My goal is to create a safe space to think freely, which is harder than it looks,” he said. A mentor of McLaren’s once said that learning is not the consequence of teaching — it’s the consequence of thinking. “I hope in this space your thinking will get some spark, some carbonation, some caffeine, and come alive — and from that some creativity could arise,” he said. “That would be a wonderful thing.”

McLaren used “world” in the title of his talk in two senses. The first is the Earth, the care of which “is the most urgent issue of our time,” he said. The second sense is human civilization, and McLaren said he’s become “obsessed” with a quote by Father Thomas Berry, which McLaren offered in three simplified statements:

• The glory of the human is the desolation of the Earth.
• The desolation of the Earth is becoming the destiny of the human
• In light of the first two statements, human activities must be judged by the extent to which they foster our ability to get back to right relationship with our home.

Who will help us? “Christians in America are aware all of our religious institutions are on the decline, but we’re still the richest, most powerful religion in the world,” McLaren said. “So many of my dear friends say it’s a sinking ship. They’re giving up. I understand, but my rabbi friends say, ‘Don’t you dare give up. We need you there. Others will use religion to do harm.’ My friends of color say that giving up ‘is an act of privilege for you. You feel protected in other settings. Our religion helped us survive some of the worst atrocities. You’re not setting a good example when you give up so easily.’”

Taking a cue from Pope Francis’ “Laudato Si,” McLaren wondered aloud what the Earth would ask us to do, landing on several ideas.

• Prepare people for this life in the coming critical decades. “If we don’t make significant progress on climate issues” in the next few years, “every problem will be worse in the foreseeable future,” McLaren said. We must “elicit a vision of enhancing the Earth” and its relationship with those who live on it. “Theologically, that means we shift our focus from the afterlife to this life, and that’s hard for Christians,” many of whom have spent most of their history on the former. “I think the Earth would say, ‘Can you Christians get refocused on getting people to live wisely and well in this decade and the coming decades?’” he said. If “denominational headquarters” don’t give people permission to treat the climate crisis as an emergency, congregations must lead the way. The Earth might ask Christians “to break out of our silos and become part of multi-level movements.” We can’t solve deep-rooted problems as a single congregation or even as a denomination. With widespread problems, “we don’t have great ways of finding people doing the work elsewhere.”
• Also, the Earth would ask older Christians to “embrace a preferential option for the young,” McLaren said, putting a different spin on the expression “God’s preferential option for the poor.” The shift will require investing power and money in young people, he noted.

“If you wanted to be born at a time to have an easy life, that was a few decades ago,” McLaren said. “A meaningful life? You’re alive at just the right time. For the Earth and the human civilization upon it, I hope I have faithfully spoken for what they might say to us.”

Read Presbyterian News Service reports on McLaren’s previous talks here and here.

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Daily Readings

• Morning Psalms 143; 147:12-20
• First Reading Malachi 2:1-16
• Second Reading James 4:13-5:6
• Gospel Reading Luke 17:20-37
• Evening Psalms 81; 116

Today’s Focus: Activist Brian McLaren speaks at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Susan Abraham, Associate, Board Meeting Support & GA Coordination, Executive Director’s Office, Presbyterian Mission Agency  
Ahmad Abri, Lead Web Developer, Communications Ministry, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) 

Let us pray

Heavenly Father, thank you for providing the inspiration to move forward in faith. We embrace the opportunities and blessings that surround us. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - ‘Let Justice Roll Down’

Presbyterians for Earth Care is offering a monthly webinar on the Presbyterian Women/Horizons Bible study for 2024–25

November 13, 2024

Photo by Patrick Schneider via Unsplash

Presbyterians for Earth Care recently rolled out the first of nine monthly online sessions exploring “Let Justice Roll Down: God’s Call to Care for Neighbors and All Creation,” the 2024–25 Presbyterian Women/Horizons Bible Study. The leaders for the study, written by the Rev. Dr. Patricia K. Tull, Professor Emerita of Old Testament at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, are the Rev. M. Courtenay Willcox and the Rev. Lucy Youngblood.

Willcox is transitional pastor at Tree of Life Church in Springfield, Pennsylvania. Youngblood is parish associate at Shandon Presbyterian Church in Columbia, South Carolina. Youngblood is a nurse technician in the trauma unit of a Columbia hospital. PEC’s Mindy Hidenfelter put on the webinar.

Webinar participants began by watching a talk that Tull recorded on Lesson One, “Environmental Justice,” which explores these verses from the prophet Ezekiel: 33:21, 34:8; 17 and 18–19. Here’s Tull’s translation of verses 18–19: “Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture? Must your feet also trample what remains of your pasture? When you drink of clear water, must you pollute the rest with your feet? And must my sheep eat what you have trampled with your feet, and drink what you have polluted with your feet?”

“Though written long before modern pollution evolved, it’s a straightforward image of what pollution looks like,” Tull said. “Ezekiel understood quite well that resource greed of some meant degradation and disease for others.”

In “Let Justice Roll Down,” Tull quotes this Environmental Protection Agency definition: “Environmental Justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. Fair treatment means no group of people should bear a disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences resulting from industrial, governmental and commercial operations or policies.”

As Tull points out, it’s only in the past four decades that we even had a name for environmental justice. Dr. Robert Bullard conducted a landmark study, “Dumping in Dixie,” documenting the placement of landfills near Black neighborhoods throughout Houston. In 2007, Bullard contributed to “Toxic Wastes and Race at 20, 1987–2007,” a United Church of Christ report.

Commissioners to the PC(USA)’s 226th General Assembly had a lot to say about environmental justice, approving an overture on becoming free from plastic pollution and a paper on lithium mining. The Assembly’s Environmental and Climate Justice Committee also heard an update on environmental justice and the costs of green transitions.

“By telling stories of those who are working for justice,” Tull said, “we can become more aware of what our role can be.”

Webinar participants were divided into small groups to discuss questions, including:

• What similarities do you see between Ezekiel’s metaphor of the sheep and environmental inequities today? What differences do you see?
• Read the EPA statement out loud. What does this articulation of environmental justice include? What surprises, if any, do you discover?
• Why do you think fair treatment is paired with meaningful involvement in the EPA statement? What might be some roadblocks to meaningful involvement?
• What examples have you seen of various pollutants mentioned in this lesson, or others?
• It is easier to point out environmental harms than to correct them. Can you recall efforts you have made or seen that address such problems in your community? What has resulted?

“Friends,” Willcox said as the 75-minute session came to a close, “this time together made my heart very happy. Thank you.”

Presbyterians for Earth Care will offer the remainder of the “Let Justice Roll Down” Bible study on the fourth Sunday of each month. Upcoming dates are Nov. 24, Dec. 22, Jan. 26, Feb. 23, March 23, April 27 and May 25. Learn more here.

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Daily Readings

• Morning Psalms 15; 147:1-11
• First Reading Joel 2:12-19
• Second Reading Revelation 19:11-21
• Gospel Reading Luke 15:1-10
• Evening Psalms 48; 4

Today’s Focus: Presbyterians for Earth Care is offering a monthly webinar on the Presbyterian Women/Horizons Bible study for 2024–25

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Jung Ju Winner, Marketing Assistant, Presbyterian Women 
Janna Wofford, Operations Manager, Association of Presbyterian Colleges & Universities (APCU) 

Let us pray

Great Spirit God, thank you for your Spirit that flows from generation to generation and is always at work in us. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - A queer eye for worship

More Light Presbyterians offer a roll-up-your-sleeves workshop at Springdale Presbyterian Church in Louisville

November 12, 2024

Facilitators for More Light Presbyterians workshop were, 

from left to right, the Rev. Adrian White, the Rev. Claudia 

Aguilar Rubalcava and the Rev. Abbi Heimach-Snipes. 

(Photo by Mike Ferguson)

First, the people attending More Light Presbyterians’ recent workshop on constructing inclusive worship, “A Queer Eye for Worship,” talked about what meaningfully designed inclusive worship can look like.

Then they got to work writing and experiencing a moving afternoon worship service — with only themselves in attendance — at Springdale Presbyterian Church in Louisville.

Three pastors with More Light Presbyterians led the workshop, which about 15 people attended: the Rev. Abbi Heimach-Snipes, pastor of Covenant Community Church in Louisville; the Rev. Adrian White, associate pastor for youth and young adults at Highland Presbyterian Church in Louisville; and the Rev. Claudia Aguilar Rubalcava, More Light Presbyterians’ director of engagement, who lives near Denver.

“Throughout the Bible, we read stories of God transforming life through worship,” Aguilar Rubalcava said. “The words we use can carve a space where few are welcome or where most are welcome. Queering worship is centering queer people while proclaiming what God has known from the beginning: Queered worship when done well creates justice for all people.”

After asking participants to identify names for the Almighty, White noted our language for God “will never be complete because our language cannot capture the totality of God. But it can put us a little closer to knowing who God is, and the expansiveness of who we might be.” As people who generally script their worship, “We have a chance to think about the language we use. It’s easy to fall into familiar language, but when we write it ahead of time and develop it in groups, it allows us to think one degree bigger.”

At Covenant Community Church, “We work to create a space where people can show up how they are,” said Heimach-Snipes. “My sense of the history [at the church] was to include more people in leadership who were traditionally excluded, and we try to do worship as collaboratively as we can.”

“We don’t have a particular way of doing worship, but we want to be intentional while being collaborative and following the Spirit’s guidance, seeking ways to have a flat hierarchy and be playful and informal during worship,” she said. “Sometimes that’s written liturgy. Sometimes it’s someone sharing a story. Sometimes people prepare what they’re going to say, and other times they’re willing to be on the spot. The idea is to be playful and not get stuck in the same boxes and binaries in the way we often worship as a Presbyterian church. The best way to understand ways to queer worship is to just do it, and that’s what we’re going to do today.”

“I invite us to trust as we plan a worship service, that we are open to experimenting and getting to know our community and to really have fun,” Heimach-Snipes said.

The worship service included new lyrics to familiar hymns, including “Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine!”: “Blessed assurance that I am loved/Freed from the need to prove I’m enough/Fully embodied, image of God/Welcomed like children, here and beyond.”

As they took a journey to reconciliation, worshipers were asked to notice their body. “Where in your body do you experience shame or anxiety? What does that feel like? What are you not feeling? What human truth are you not letting in? What does it feel like to not be able to meet the needs of people and Creation near and far, which feel so beyond our ability to heal?”

Worshipers were then invited to respond the way the disciples did, with a number of questions: “Are we going to be OK? What’s really required of me? Am I doing enough? Is it too late for the planet?”

They sang updated lyrics to another hymn, “For Everyone Born”: “For sighted and blind, a place at the table/For hearing and deaf, all brain types and speech/Accessible space, rethinking our language/All eager to learn from those who would teach.”

As part of their offering, worshipers turned to their neighbor and said what they felt called to offer because they’d had this worship experience together.

For additional resources, go here, here, here and here.

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Daily Readings

• Morning Psalms 123; 146
• First Reading Joel 2:3-11
• Second Reading Revelation 19:1-10
• Gospel Reading Luke 14:25-35
• Evening Psalms 30; 86

Today’s Focus: More Light Presbyterians host a workshop at Springdale Presbyterian Church in Louisville

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Miatta Wilson, Associate, Christian Formation, Presbyterian Mission Agency 

Ashley Winn, Associate for Portfolio Administration, Presbyterian Investment & Loan Program

Let us pray

Creator God, the church you created has spread throughout the globe. We give thanks for what we can learn from one another’s experience and for those who work to share such insights among the members of your family. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - The ordination of one who was once ‘crushed, traumatized, and very, very alone’

The Presbytery of Ohio Valley ordains Jerusha Van Camp to a validated ministry serving small churches in southern Indiana

November 3, 2024

The Rev. Jerusha Van Camp sits in a pew of the church that 

gave her hope, First Presbyterian Church in Evansville, Indiana. 

On Saturday, the Presbytery of Ohio Valley ordained Van Camp 

to a validated ministry serving small churches in southern Indiana. 

(Photo by Rachel Mathew Photography)

Near the end of her joyous and Spirit-filled ordination service, the now-Rev. Jerusha Van Camp stood in front of the many friends and family gathered at First Presbyterian Church in Evansville, Indiana, recently and told them, “Your presence surrounds me with love.”

“About 14 years ago, I walked into this church building for the first time. I was crushed, traumatized and very, very alone. I was giving church one last chance. If I couldn’t find welcome and sanctuary, I was fully prepared to walk away from God and never come back,” Van Camp said. “I found welcome here, a place where I was loved for all my humanity, not just some parts of it,” said Van Camp, a gay woman whose wife, Kathryn, and their children Judah, Jesse and Micaiah were seated at the front of the sanctuary.

“This church was Jesus to me,” regardless of her sexual orientation, she told those celebrating her ordination. “I was gathered in, and I was loved to wholeness. I have learned that God is good, and the gospel of Jesus Christ really is for all people, without exception. To be standing here today is something of a miracle, for which I am grateful.”

Van Camp was ordained by the Presbytery of Ohio Valley. Watch the 100-minute service here.

A recent graduate of the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, Van Camp is now one of three pastors validated by the Presbytery of Ohio Valley for pulpit supply, sacraments and church governance.

For Van Camp’s ordination, the Rev. Susan McGhee, executive presbyter of the Presbytery of Ohio Valley, preached a sermon called “The One Thing that is in All Things,” based on Luke 10:38–42, Luke’s account of Jesus visiting sisters Mary and  Martha.

The Rev. Tony Larson, Co-Moderator of the 226th General 

Assembly and the Rev. Jerusha Van Camp preside at the 

Communion Table during Van Camp’s ordination. (Photo by 

Rachel Mathew Photography)

“Martha prepares for the multitudes and Mary takes a seat, and yet it’s Martha Jesus chastises,” McGhee said. “I can imagine it might have been painful for Martha to hear those words. She was doing what she was brought up to do.”

As McGhee pointed out, Jesus “doesn’t chastise Martha for working, but for being distracted by her many tasks. Jesus lifts up Mary’s example to show her the one thing that is in all things, the one thing in which all of our roles find meaning.”

“The one thing Mary has is what she gives to Jesus: her loving and willing attention,” McGhee said.

While participating in a youth ministry and spirituality project some years ago, McGhee learned about distinctions among “one thing,” “everything” and “some things.”

“One thing is paying attention, being present in the moment,” McGhee said. “Jerusha will have to do that as she travels from church to church.”

“Everything” is part of the job description of people who serve God, “walking, doing dishes, playing with children, writing, singing and looking up at the stars,” McGhee said. “The Mary in us could just as easily got up and cooked” but “Jesus doesn’t want to put an end to Martha’s homemade noodles or famous apple pie. Jesus wants to relieve her of her distractions, her anxieties. … Paying attention is the one thing we can do in all the things we do.”

Finally, the “some things,” or “some particular ways the church attends to the presence of God,” through worship, communion, the study of Scriptures and the giving of gifts. Today is one of those ‘some things,’” McGhee said, “as the Presbytery of Ohio Valley gathers to ordain Jerusha, who offers herself in new ways to the One who holds nothing back, to the church of Jesus Christ, through her energy, intelligence, imagination and love.”

“Pay attention” when it came time for Van Camp to answer the Constitutional Questions, McGhee suggested. “Pay attention and cheer her on, so that Jerusha will never forget the one thing that is in all things — her loving attention. For every moment, God is at work, and there’s nothing that God cannot redeem. She knows that, and she gives herself to that today. Pay attention to the call of God in your life,” McGhee told those gathered, “and to every waking moment.”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Today’s Focus: Presbytery of Ohio Valley ordains Jerusha Van Camp

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff

Donald A. Walker, III, Executive Vice President & Chief Investment Officer, Board of Pensions 
Jacklyn Walker, Mission Specialist I, World Mission’s Director’s Office, Presbyterian Mission Agency 

Let us pray

Loving Christ, you have loved and welcomed many people to be your disciples, and you have called us to welcome one another and even strangers. On this day, help us to welcome those you love in your everlasting love. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Delivering ‘a grammar of faith that can help us become the church God has always intended us to be’

The Rev. Dr. José Irizarry delivers a prophetic sermon during chapel service for the PC(USA)’s national staff

October 29, 2024

The Rev. Dr. José Irizarry speaks at University Presbyterian Church 

in Austin, Texas, during his inauguration as Austin Presbyterian 

Theological Seminary’s 10th president. (Photo courtesy of Austin 

Presbyterian Theological Seminary)

During the online worship service four days ahead of Theological Education/Seminaries Sunday, national staff of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) were privileged to hear a sermon from the Rev. Dr. José Irizarry, the president of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. The Rev. Bill Davis, Senior Director of Theological Education Funds Development for the Presbyterian Foundation, helped lead worship, reading from James 3:1–12, one of the lectionary passages for Sept. 15.

That reading “was selected a long time ago,” Irizarry noted. “But even lectionary skeptics must accept that now and then the biblical texts collide with issues of the time in surprisingly relevant ways. Let’s call it the movement of the Spirit.”

Irizarry spoke just a few hours after the presidential debate and just as the nation was observing the 23rd anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, a day “our paradigms shifted radically,” he said. “We discovered that for all the talk about this country’s power and goodness, we were indeed vulnerable.”

“There’s no doubt that Christian churches continue to speak and be listened to within our culture,” Irizarry said. “But in doing so, it cannot fully claim that the language it uses echoes God’s eternal word in Christ.”

The church “that is listened to in our society sometimes promises material or spiritual prosperity by presenting itself like any other commodity in the market where an exchange of goods happens. I give, and make sure I receive in return. If I don’t receive, I complain,” he said. “When the church that is listened to departs significantly from the word as exemplified by the ministry and proclamation of Jesus Christ, the whole witness of the church is in peril — even the church that tries to follow God’s word in Christ faithfully.”

As a preacher, “I am not telling you we need to create a new church,” Irizarry said. “I am telling you we need to decide if we want to start a creative moment at church — for that decision, I think, will determine our future and the ways our congregations and worshiping communities will foster … spiritual growth and faithful engagement with the world.”

We ought to start this creative work “like it started at the beginning of time, at Creation, with words, with proper words,” he said. “As people learning a second or third language pay attention to native speakers, there are many people out there who are seeking the best speakers of ‘God talk,’ those who can speak to Christian ways that reflect the desire to be closer to Jesus’ message of love, acceptance, reconciliation and healing. People are looking for those speakers, but sometimes they don’t find them in the church.”

Some people dismiss the Book of James “for presenting a message of grace that’s very different from the vision that Paul suggests,” he said. “Here James emphasizes the importance of our actions and deeds — not because they are superior to faith, but because our actions are embodiments of our words of faith.”

We’re all ministers of our words, according to Irizarry. “These words require the same tending that our bodies and souls need to feel connected to God.” The church needs a new lexicon, he said, one that “refuses to give prominence to the language that people find unappealing and disturbing in today’s Christianity,” such as the “heaven and hell narrative of reward and punishment” which “may not be the words that the gospel of Christ is telling us to embody.”

It’s time “to reconstruct our ecclesial identity, where words of unconditional love, radical hospitality and inclusion … become the essence and substance of our message,” Irizarry said. “When these words take prominence in our proclamation of the gospel, the rest becomes unnecessary chatter.”

By repeating the words “again and again in the context of our worship, our proclamation, our ministries, our mission and our relationships, we are recovering a grammar of faith that can help us become the church God has always intended us to be,” he said.

“What should always prevail in our speech is the word of God. Under that word is the church’s proclamation, and those words of proclamation are yours,” he said. “Amen.”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Today’s Focus: Rev. Dr. José Irizarry delivers a sermon during chapel service for the PC(USA)’s national staff

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Dan and Elizabeth Turk, Mission co-workers serving in Madagascar, Presbyterian Mission Agency 
Mienda Uriarte, Mission Director, World Mission, Presbyterian Mission Agency 

Let us pray

Gracious Father, make us better servants. Help us realize the joy in giving, helping and nurturing others. Place upon our hearts a sense of urgency when we serve and help others. We give thanks for your guidance with every new venture we take in furthering your kingdom. Amen.