Mission Yearbook: Calm in Crisis’ is subject of webinar

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The Rev. Megan Katerjian, CEO of Door of Hope, talks about losing her home in the Eaton Fire as PDA's Kathy Riley listens. (Photo by Rich Copley)

A consortium of disaster care organizations, including Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, recently offered a weekly online series on emotional and spiritual care following a disaster. The first installment, “Calm in Crisis,” was led by Kristyne Duffy and Sean Coffman of Lutheran Disaster Response. 

“Calm in Crisis” served as an introduction to providing mental, emotional and spiritual care during and after a crisis. Disaster Emotional and Spiritual Care “focuses on presence and active listening and honors diverse faith traditions,” said Duffy, program manager for Lutheran Disaster Response.

Duffy touched on how different parts of the brain react to trauma.

The limbic system holds our emotions, memories and motivations, and is responsible for detecting danger. “It’s fast, automatic and emotional,” Duffy said. “It’s powerful and necessary for our survival, but it’s not strategic.”

The prefrontal cortex is responsible for cognitive function, thinking and problem-solving, and it regulates our emotions. “It asks questions about the long-term consequences of my decision and how it will affect others,” Duffy said. “It moves much slower, offering wisdom over impulse.”

During and after a disaster, it’s key for helpers to know what part of a person’s brain is in the driver’s seat, Duffy said. During and immediately after, “we are in the limbic system, with emotional highs and lows.” The fight, flight or freeze options are “the limbic system in action.”

During the recovery, we’re operating in the prefrontal cortex. “As we’re working with people, knowing what system they are in helps us decide what tools we should use in our actions with them,” Duffy said.

Then Duffy turned to a primer on PFA, Psychological First Aid, an evidence-informed modular approach to help children, adolescents, adults and families in the immediate aftermath of disaster.

Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/embed/qOzuMIaxfek

Psychological First Aid has five principles, Duffy noted:

• Safety, where the goal is to enhance immediate and ongoing safety concerns and provide physical and emotional support. It’s promoted by encouraging people to do things that are active, practical and familiar and perhaps getting connected to others who’ve had similar experiences.
• Calm, where the goal is to calm and orient emotionally. It’s promoted by being available if the person needs you and “being friendly and compassionate, even when people are difficult,” Duffy said.
• Connectedness, where the goal is to establish brief or ongoing contacts with sources of support. It’s promoted by helping people contact their friends and loved ones and linking people with relevant services.
• Self-efficacy, where the goal is to help people have a sense of control. It’s promoted by offering practical solutions that steer people toward helping themselves, engaging people in meeting their own needs and helping survivors identify coping strategies they’ve used in the past.
• Hope, where the goal is to instill a sense of hope in survivors. It’s promoted by finding out the types and locations of both governmental and non-governmental services and helping survivors to focus on what they can control and to manage expectations.

After a period of preparation, putting those principles into action follows three alliterative steps:

• Look for what’s happened and who needs help, and determine safety and security risks and trauma reactions.
• Listen by using active listening, using calming words and actions.
• Link people to information, connect with loved ones and access services.

Coffman, Lutheran Disaster Response’s director for training and networks, went over MESS basic training, an acronym for Mental, Emotional and Spiritual Support. The idea is to “stand with and walk beside an individual struggling with stress to increase awareness, encourage acceptance, and empower action in a way that promotes health and healing.”

MESS has six steps: show up, lean in, listen out, provide care, kindle hope and refer, and follow up.

Under the MESS umbrella, helpers show up with the five Cs:

• Caring by accepting who the person is by being non-judgmental and kind
• Considerate by being mindful of time, safety and privacy
• Confidential by being a trusted and safe person
• Competent by being compassionate and capable, balancing power and control
• Curious by being genuinely interested and wondering with the person.

“They will not accept your help until you first hear their hurt,” Coffman said. “What they are going through matters.”

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

Let us join in prayer for:

Vivian Blade, Program Manager, Unification Management Office, Presbyterian Life & Witness
Margaret Boone, Project Manager, Special Offerings, Administrative Services Group (A Corporation)

Let us pray:

Gracious God, we praise you and also wonder about the great need we see around us. Forgive us for our failure to love our neighbors as ourselves. Strengthen us to work for a world where all are fed. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Minute for Mission: Reformation Sunday

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Barmen Declaration - PHS Graphic (provided)

In 1934, representatives of Germany’s Protestant churches gathered in Wuppertal, Barmen, and wrote a letter to the German people on the unity of the church and its freedom in Jesus Christ. We remember this modest text because of its situation — it accused the official church of Nazi Germany, the Reichskirche, of error.

The Theological Declaration Concerning the Present Situation of the German Church, without naming the Nazis, holds that the Fuhrerprinzip is incompatible with Christianity (Book of Confessions, 8.12). It avers that the Church does not orient itself based on “prevailing ideologies and political convictions” (8.18). At its most forceful, it says: “We reject the false doctrine, as though the State, over and beyond its special commission, should and could become the single and totalitarian order of human life, thus fulfilling the Church's vocation as well” (8.23). 

Few German Protestants opposed the Nazis — only about 10% of German ministers were members of the Confessing Church. And the drafters made clear that Barmen was a theological document, not a political one. Wilhelm Niemöller, whose brother Martin was amongst the Barmen drafters, wrote in 1956: “The confessing Church has never, neither during Hitler’s reign nor afterwards, made a point of being understood as a ‘resistance movement,’ or as an ‘opposition,’ or as a ‘front.’ It wanted to witness the one Word in our world and time.”

In preparing a new Book of Confessions for the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. in 1965 and 1966, the General Assembly’s Committee of Fifteen selected the Barmen declaration to represent modern Christendom. One member of the committee preached in his own congregation that in Barmen’s vision of life, “the church may not willingly become the victim of state power.” 

The banner representing Barmen was designed by the duo Avery and Marsh, better known for their musical theater and hymns. It shows the swastika struck through and the cross rising. 

McKenna Britton, Communications, Presbyterian Historical Society

Let us join in prayer for:

Teresa Bidart, Mission Specialist, Self-Development of People, Presbyterian Life & Witness
Ricky Blade, Customer Service Representative, Constituent Ministry, Presbyterian Life & Witness

Let us pray:

Creator God, guide us as we seek to remain faithful to the way of Jesus Christ. Give us wisdom to recognize when faith is shaped by forces that diminish the dignity and freedom of others. Open our hearts to truth, deepen our compassion, and give us courage to follow Christ’s call with humility and love. Amen.

Minute for Mission: United Nations Day

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Mr. Dag Hammarskjold (Provided by Presbyterian Ministry at the U.N.)

Dag Hammarskjöld, the second Secretary-General of the United Nations, famously said the U.N. “was not created in order to bring us to heaven, but in order to save us from hell.” 

United Nations began as a great experiment, a new hope, to save future generations from war and to maintain peace and security, to build a better world and to respect human rights. But Hammarskjöld understood that it would take great effort to overcome human frailty. 

“The pursuit of peace and progress cannot end in a few years in either victory or defeat. The pursuit of peace and progress, with its trials and its errors, its successes and its setbacks, can never be relaxed and never abandoned.”

Hammarskjöld lived out his commitment to God through service to the world, who saw his diplomatic mission as a calling. He was a fiercely private man who did not use his public platform to promote his views on religion. It was only after his death that his views were known in his private journal, “Markings.” 

Hammarskjöld pioneered quiet diplomacy and preventive diplomacy through his understanding of human nature to overcome biases, egos and public posturing of the world leaders. In this way, he was able to diffuse major crises of his day, such as the 1956 Suez Canal Crisis. 

When he was asked to step down by the Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev, during the Congo Crisis, he refused, stating that the U.N.’s mandate was to protect smaller, more vulnerable countries from the predatory self-interest of the superpowers.  

Tragically, Hammarskjöld died in a plane crash on Sept. 18, 1961, on his way to negotiate a ceasefire in what is now Zambia. He was a man of faith who saw his diplomatic mission as a deeply moral and spiritual calling. 

“Our work for peace must begin within the private world of each one of us. To build for man a world without fear, we must be without fear. To build a world of justice, we must be just. And how can we fight for liberty if we are not free in our own minds? How can we ask others to sacrifice if we are not ready to do so?” 

The United Nations will elect its 10th secretary-general this year. May she or he have the courage of conviction and vision to serve the world as our second SG (as we fondly call them). 

Sue Rheem, Representative to the U.N.; Manager, Presbyterian Ministry at the U.N.; Presbyterian Life & Witness

Let us join in prayer for:

Barbara Betts, Manager, Presbyterian Distribution Services, Administrative Services Group
Beverly Bewley, Customer Service Representative, Operations, Presbyterian Publishing Corporation

Let us pray:

Dear God, we pray that you may grant the new secretary-general a new vision and to lead the United Nations with wisdom and courage, and may we work for your justice and peace in the world. Amen. 

Mission Yearbook: GELs describe partnership model

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Staff representing global programs across Presbyterian Life & Witness meet with a partner in Villa El Sol, Peru. (Photo courtesy of Jed Koball)

Global Ecumenical Liaisons (GELs) the Rev. Jed Koball and Cindy Corell recently met virtually with members of Baltimore’s Brown Memorial Park Avenue Presbyterian Church, offering what Koball called the most important message of their presentation: “If you hear nothing else today from us, may you hear the words, ‘thank you.’”

Koball and Corell — two of the GELs serving in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s new office of Global Ecumenical Partnerships (GEP) — outlined a reimagined model of global engagement created in the wake of the closure of the PC(USA)’s World Mission in March 2025. That painful closure, Koball explained, came after “significant staff reductions” were announced in November 2024. “The money was no longer there to sustain this model of mission," he said, noting that the denomination acted when it did “in order to be able to provide those severance packages for mission co-workers.”  

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Indigenous women from the Andes Mountains in Peru. (Photo courtesy of Milagros Samillan, Lima, Peru)

“We needed to begin imagining a new model of how we’re going to engage the world and be in partnership,” Koball said. While acknowledging the pain caused by that transition and the gratitude for all who served under the previous model, Koball played a short video introducing Global Ecumenical Partnerships before Koball and Corell shared examples of the work of global ecumenical liaisons (GELs) and how this work is rooted in partnerships.

Corell, a U.S.-facing GEL, described the new office — part of the denomination’s Presbyterian Life & Witness — as staffed by 20 liaisons: 10 international-facing and 10 U.S.-facing. “All that we do continues to be rooted in partnerships,” she said, adding that Presbyterians pursue mission “with congregations, presbyteries, synods, ecumenical networks, NGOs and community-based movements.” Of the U.S.-facing GELs, several work closely with the 16 synods of the PC(USA) to connect mid councils, congregations and mission networks to the partnerships and resources of Global Ecumenical Partnerships, while others support churches and leaders within African, Middle Eastern, Latino/a/é, Native American/Indigenous, African American, Korean and Asian churches within the PC(USA). Four international-based Young Adult Volunteers, including Koball's wife, Jenny Valles, are closely aligned with the work of global partnerships. 

Early in the meeting, Brown Memorial church members shared their commitments to El Salvador, Cameroon, Cuba, the Lakota people, and local ministries that aligned closely with the priorities of the GEP program. “It’s incredibly encouraging and inspiring,” Koball told the congregation. “Very helpful for us, too, as we consider how we might grow our relationship with you.” 

Among several examples of global partnership, Koball highlighted work in the Andes Mountains of Peru, where PC(USA) offices collaborated to support Indigenous communities affected by climate change. He described a shared visit to the Andes with presbytery leaders and a General Assembly Co-Moderator and staff from Presbyterian Disaster Assistance,, the Presbyterian Hunger Program and the office of Ecumenical and Interreligious Relations. 

The group traveled to “learn from indigenous peoples, particularly how climate change is impacting them and how they are responding,” Koball said. The work reflects the denomination’s goal of centering “historically marginalized voices to generate solidarity,” but it also demonstrated the collaborative way that what is now PL&W is coming together in global partnerships. 

Corell lifted up work along the U.S.–Mexico border with immigrants. Joseph Russ, a U.S.-facing GEL, is one of several staff members who tell the stories of migration and advocate on immigration issues. Corell also described the work of former Intercultural Congregational Associates who now work as GELs in the U.S. She pointed to the ministry of the Rev. Irvin Porter, who serves Indigenous Presbyterian churches. “He serves in these communities … to bring the support that the Presbyterian Church can offer, but also to be there in connection and in solidarity,” she said. 

Koball lifted up collaboration with the Rev. Jermaine Ross-Allam and the Center for the Repair of Historic Harms. Among other initiatives, the PC(USA) is helping build a Pan-African network by connecting Afro-Peruvian, Afro-Brazilian, Afro-Caribbean and African American leaders demanding reparative justice. In Peru, the Center supported a conference for Afro-descendant women from across Latin America. “Our office and the Center for the Repair for Historic Harms helped make that happen,” he said. 

Beth Waltemath, Communications Strategist, Presbyterian Life & Witness (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Jon Baxter, Chief Engineer, Building Services, Administrative Services Group, A Corporation
Serrita Bell, Directory of Communications and Marketing, Presbyterian Foundation           

Let us pray:

Good and gracious God, thank you for the gift of life. Grant us the freedom to embrace the new thing that you are doing in our midst and employ our influence for the good of those that have none. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: Professor says the church can’t be silent now

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Dr. William Yoo speaks during the Matthew 25 Summit in January 2024 at New Life Presbyterian Church in South Fulton, Ga. (Photo by Rich Copley)

In our modern time, the church cannot be silent. But what should it say?

That was the question for Dr. William Yoo, Associate Professor of American Religious and Cultural History at Columbia Theological Seminary, who recently spoke at Montreat Conference Center. View Yoo’s chock-full presentation and the question-and-answer session that followed here.

The title of Yoo’s talk is based on something the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said at Montreat amidst the civil rights movement, on Aug. 21, 1965: “When a crisis emerges … the Church has a specific and great responsibility. It has a real responsibility in the midst of this crisis because the problems involved are essentially moral issues. The Church being the moral guardian of the community cannot overlook its moral responsibility at this hour.”

As a moral guardian, the church “is called to be an interpreter of politics rather than an agent of politics,” Yoo said.

Many people believe they are deeply engaged in politics, Eitan Hersh wrote in The Atlantic six years ago. But mostly, “they consume political information as a way of satisfying their own emotional and intellectual needs. 

These people are political hobbyists. What they are doing is no closer to engaging in politics than watching SportsCenter is to playing football,” Hersh wrote.

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The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaks in Anderson Auditorium at Montreat Conference Center on Aug. 21, 1965. (Photo courtesy of Montreat Conference Center)

When Yoo talks to churches, he asks them to fulfill the moral guardian role that King mentioned. “I would like churches to talk about maybe not partisan things, but political issues,” he said. “I would like for us to talk about how to do commonsense immigration enforcement. I think we need to talk about being a lawful nation, so people don’t have to live in the shadows, so people are protected and have access and pathways to dignity and flourishing, and I think that belongs in the congregation.”

Faith communities “need to get into the harder work of thinking about politics in the form of morality and what it means to be a guardian” as well as “what it means to be an interpreter of messy politics for the gospel, for the sake of the common good and moral flourishing,” he said. But how do we do that “in these extremes of political polarization?”

In researching Christian nationalism, Yoo ran across Gerald L.K. Smith, a minister and would-be politician who had the idea at the outset of the Great Depression that elderly Americans ought to have a social safety net.

He later formed his own political party, which he initially called the America First Party. He moved from there to call it the Christian Nationalist Crusade, Yoo noted. Smith later told the House Un-American Activities Committee, “I am just an old-fashioned, Bible-believing, Christ-loving American.”

What Yoo takes away from the Theological Declaration of Barmen is “it is right for the church as moral guardian to think deeply about economic struggles and the decline of the American Dream. But authoritarianism and Christian Nationalist parties are not the right prescription for this diagnosis.”

During his speech at Montreat, King, speaking at the time of the Watts Rebellion, noted that “at the bottom of many of the conflicts taking place today in many of our cities is the lack of economic opportunity.”

“Now the church, again the moral guardian of the community, must see this,” King said. “The church must speak to the power structure of the nation.”

It is the lack of opportunity and the decline of the American Dream that we’re witnessing today, Yoo said. Gene Ludwig, the 27th comptroller of the currency and a business and civic leader, called the American Dream “the desire that most parents hold: that with hard work and gumption, their children will be able to do a little better than the generation that came before them. The presumption of upward mobility has long distinguished American life.”

For Yoo, the dream is less about upward mobility “and more about freedom of opportunity to choose a vocation that maybe won’t lead to extravagant wealth, but to a decent wage and flourishing.”

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

Let us join in prayer for:

Dwayne Batcho, Production Clerk, Presbyterian Distribution Service, Administrative Services Group
Doug Batezel, Senior Vice President & CIO, Information Technology, The Board of Pensions

Let us pray:

O God, we ask your blessing on those whom you have called. Strengthen them in this important service even as they strengthen the church through their work. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: Office of Innovation holds online gathering to share ideas

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First Presbyterian Church in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, is a willing partner in ministry innovation. (Photos by Rich Copley)

“Innovation Network,” a new online gathering designed for innovators offered by the Office of Innovation, launched its initial installment  with the Rev. Trey Hegar, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, sharing that congregation’s innovative approach to ministry.

The Rev. DeEtte Decker of the Office of Innovation hosted the gathering. She said it's designed to “help mid council and congregational leaders think differently about the challenges you’re facing and develop the skills and capacity to lead faithful innovation.”

Hegar, who was called to First Presbyterian Church 11 years ago, called Mount Pleasant, a community in southeastern Iowa, “Norman Rockwell-ish.”

“It is family centered, and the church has a place of primacy for about half the country residents,” he said. “We attend each other’s chili cookoffs and rummage sales and fall festivals.”

It’s also typical “of a lot of middle America towns, where the young people graduate and then move away,” Hegar said.

“I have learned to ask, ‘What are the greatest needs in the community and how can churches partner to meet those needs?’” he said. “Can the church become a job creator? How can we help create jobs that have meaning and are flexible and empowering?”

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The Rev. Trey Hegar is pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Mount Pleasant, Iowa.

Hegar said he began developing skills for innovation while serving a church in South Carolina, which after a study opened a farmer’s market co-op in an old stable. Folks in the community would market their wares, food was available and a band played on Saturday mornings.

Organizers planted community gardens and gave away what grew there. “It was God’s abundance, like in the Garden of Eden,” Hegar said. “People would ask, ‘How is that benefiting the church?’ and I would say, ‘That’s not the point. We are making a proclamation about the kingdom of God, that their work has value and worth.’”

They’d talk about “the economy of grace vs. the economy of scarcity,” he recalled. “But you’ve got to monetize it. You can’t have a failure of nerve to say, ‘The church gets 10%.”

If a church’s attendance is in decline, it won’t have “the volunteer power and the financial power” to grow the food pantry and offer other services, such as childcare, Hegar noted.

“But we think those are necessary and good” ministries to offer the community, he said. “When we dream up a ministry, I tell people we have to incentivize it.”

One example is IowaWINS, a ministry established at the church with the help of community partners to aid Syrian immigrants. IowaWINS grew in 2018 to serve 32 factory workers working in Mount Pleasant who’d been detained following a raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

As Iowa WINS grew, Hegar and others pushed for the church’s administrative costs to be covered by part of the $1.8 million raised for the local immigrant ministry.

“We have to stand our ground so we will have the resources to do the next big thing,” he said. “You have to have contracts and you need them included in your bylaws … so you can keep doing ministry. It’s an investment in the next helping ministry.”

First Presbyterian also played a leading role in founding the All God’s Creatures animal shelter and its partnership with incarcerated individuals at the Mount Pleasant Correctional Facility.

“We called the warden, and she was so happy we’d even thought of them,” Hegar said. “We started small, but the biggest thing was, we started. That sets a successful ministry apart.”

The volunteer base is now around 100 people, “and most of them are not members of this church,” Hegar said. “The lesson is the dogs don’t care if you’re a Democrat or Republican, white or Black, young or old, rich or poor. They only care how you treat them. It’s taken on a life of its own because of the spirit behind it.”

For those practicing adaptive challenge ministry, Hegar recommends MaryAnn McKibben Dana’s book “God, Improv and the Art of Living,” “even just the first chapter,” he said. As with improvisation, the answer in ministering in adaptive ways is “yes, and,” he said.

“What kind of imagination do we need to bring to this?” Hegar asked. Challenges “aren’t roadblocks — they are avenues to more partnerships.”

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

Let us join in prayer for:

Jenny Barr, Reference and Outreach Archivist, Presbyterian Historical Society, Presbyterian Life & Witness
Andrew Kang Bartlett, Associate, Presbyterian Hunger Program, Presbyterian Life & Witness

Let us pray:

Gracious and loving God, help us to rally ourselves and others to serve as you served. Amen.

Mission Yearbook: Legacy planning is focus of workshop

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The Rev. Erin Skinner and the Rev. Ellie Johns-Kelley were among the presenters at the Luminosity Conference. (Photos by Gregg Brekke)

Pastors attending the 2026 Luminosity Conference in Orlando, Florida, were invited to reflect deeply on faith, family and the lasting impact of their ministries during a workshop titled “Legacy is not Just for Laity.”

While churches often emphasize the importance of creating a will and consider leaving a gift to a church or ministry as part of their estate, pastors don’t always consider their own legacy. The session invited pastors to think through what they want to pass on to those who know them. 

The workshop was presented as a break-out session at Luminosity, a conference organized and sponsored by the Presbyterian Foundation and held during the spring conference. The Rev. Ellie Johns-Kelley and the Rev. Erin Skinner, both Ministry Relations Officers for the Foundation, presented the workshop. Designed specifically for pastors in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the workshop encouraged participants to think about legacy not simply in financial terms, but as the stories, relationships and faith traditions that shape generations.

Johns-Kelley opened the workshop by sharing the history and mission of the Presbyterian Foundation, reminding participants of the denomination’s longstanding commitment to stewardship and generosity.

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The Rev. Erin Skinner, a Ministry Relations Officer for the Presbyterian Foundation, leads a workshop about legacy planning for pastors.

She noted that the Foundation traces its roots to 1799, when it was created as the original trustees of the denomination to receive gifts and bequests from Presbyterians. Today, she said, the organization stewards billions of dollars in assets on behalf of congregations and ministries.

Throughout the session, Johns-Kelley and Skinner emphasized that legacy is not only about financial planning but also about the stories people share and the values they pass down.

As part of the workshop, Johns-Kelley led participants through a reflective exercise, encouraging pastors to write continuously in response to questions about their faith, family influences and hopes for the future.

“What’s your hope for this conference?” she asked participants. “What brought you to this workshop? I want you to think about your parents and your grandparents. Were they active in church? How did that shape you?”

The exercise, she explained, was originally shared by the late musician David M. Bailey, whose life and work continue to inspire conversations about vocation and faith. His legacy lives on through the music he created and the ways in which he prompted youth to think through their own lives and their callings. 

Johns-Kelley also reflected on her own experience of thinking about legacy after the death of her father, a longtime Presbyterian minister. She recalls that it was difficult to get her own father to discuss what gifts he wanted to leave to ministries and churches that he loved. Making those decisions ahead of time is a wonderful gift to your family. 

“Thinking about what we love, what it would be a good expression of our faith, what might be a helpful gift to our family members, all of those are so helpful for those who love you,” she said.

Skinner expanded the conversation, encouraging pastors to consider how storytelling can shape both family relationships and congregational life.

“The power of story is the power of relationships,” Skinner said, quoting writer and Luminosity conference plenary speaker Mark Yaconelli. “In other words, giving testament to our experience generates meaning when it connects us to people, the Earth, the sacred, our pasts, our owner gifts and wounds.”

She also introduced practical tools for legacy planning, including ethical wills, story journals, estate planning guides and charitable giving strategies.

“These tools don't mean very much when they don't have your story,” Skinner said. “We need your story to color in the lines.”

Skinner concluded by reminding pastors that legacy is already unfolding through their ministries.

“You all are making an impact on those that you serve,” she said. “You are leaving legacy, whether you’re doing that intentionally or not.”

As Luminosity’s inaugural gathering brought together pastors and church leaders from across the denomination, the workshop offered both practical tools and spiritual encouragement, inviting participants to reflect not only on the legacy they hope to leave, but also on the one they have already begun to shape.

Robyn Davis Sekula, Presbyterian Foundation (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Cheryl Barnes, Manager, US Global Ecumenical Liaisons, Presbyterian Life & Witness
David Barnhart, Associate, Story Ministry, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, Interim United Agency

Let us pray:

Eternal God, in the midst of a world that simply won’t stop, or even slow, its relentless changing, grant us a deep and abiding sense of your sovereign power and steadfast presence in our lives. May we walk the way that is set before us in faithfulness to our calling in Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

Minute for Mission: Children’s Sabbath; Educate a Child, Transform the World

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A and D bible share (Photo provided by Alonzo Johnson)

At last year's Presbyterian Youth Triennium, one of my young participants — who was part of the Presbyterian Youth Triennium’s planning team — read Scripture in worship in front of a large audience of enthusiastic young people. Having known this incredible individual for over 20 years, I felt immense pride as I witnessed this. He had been one of the remarkable young people in the urban church I served many years ago. Since my departure from that church, I hadn’t seen him in what seemed to be years, and in that time, he had finished high school and was finishing college, so as one can imagine, I was excited to see him blossom into the amazing leader he is today. When he read Scripture at the lectern during Youth Triennium, my heart was both full and proud. After the service, he approached me and said, “Rev, I have something to show you.” He handed me a Bible and told me to open it. When I did, it contained my writing and words of encouragement to him from over 15 years ago on the first page. This was the Bible that our church had given him at his confirmation. As I held back tears reading my old words to him, he said, “I carry it with me.” This moved me deeply and made me reflect on the important work the church does to care for, nurture and shape its young people. 

Our young people thrive when churches provide consistent care and support, including encouragement in their education. When I think of this remarkable young person now serving the church, I am reminded that our congregations can offer every young person hope, nurture and sustenance. In these ways, we carry them with us.

The Educate a Child, Transform the World covenant describes this supportive work of the church as the practice of Christian Disciplines. These disciplines prepare, propel, ground and sustain children for life, leadership and justice. Through confirmation and other spiritual practices — including worship, prayer and Bible study — the church communicates God’s grace and strengthens both the community and its young people in faithful witness. Practicing Christian Disciplines also means celebrating, honoring and supporting those who educate our children. Our baptismal vows unite us with the universal Church, a covenant community called to pursue justice for every child.

The following links offer ways to support young people and explore issues related to public education:

Educate a Child website: https://pcusa.org/about-pcusa/agencies-entities/interim-unified-agency/ministry-areas/self-development-people/educate-child-transform-world

PC(USA) Poverty Page: https://pcusa.org/how-we-serve/justice-peace/poverty

Rev. Dr. Alonzo T. Johnson, Convener of the Education Roundtable

Let us join in prayer for:

Zenia Baker, Administrative I, Operations, Presbyterian Foundation
Adriana Ballard, AVP, Director of Investment Management, Investments, Presbyterian Foundation

Let us pray:

Because we affirm that all children are a gift of God, created by God and
created good; all children are a gift to the whole of the human community;
all children have a real faith, and gifts for ministry; all children have the
right to be children; and all children are not just tomorrow, they are today.
Therefore, we covenant to act, with God’s grace, to help all children to learn,
to succeed and to fulfill their God-given potential. Amen.

This prayer was adapted from “A Protestant Worship Service,” in Wonderfully Made: Preparing Children to Learn and Succeed. National Observance of Children’s Sabbaths, Copyright 1999, Children’s Defense Fund, and A Vision for Children and the Church. It can be found in our PC(USA) Policy on education: pcusa.org/resource/loving-our-neighbors-equity-and-quality-public-education-k-12