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 - Breaking the chains of poverty

Mission makes a difference in Southeast Asia

March 10, 2022

The sound of Filipino schoolchildren’s voices breaks through the overwhelming feeling of despair. (Photo by Cobbie Palm)

Roland is now in high school and is among a group of student panelists presenting on the topic “Social Economic Reforms for Sustainability,” organized by the National Christian Youth Fellowship. The invitation to be a panelist is merited by outstanding academic achievement and each of the panelists performed exceptionally on this day.

But it was Roland who caught my attention. Roland passionately and sincerely spoke about rice and hunger during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic, Roland argued, “has been threatening and taking lives, but just as severe a threat and as violent a killer is the Rice Tariffication Law, which took effect March 5, 2019.” At that point, he went on to connect the dots. “Hunger in the Philippines today has reached an unprecedented high of 30.7% of all households in the country. The reason is not only the loss of employment caused by the pandemic, but also the high cost of rice. Farmers in the Philippines can no longer afford to compete with foreign rice imports.”

Roland concluded, “Then came the pandemic, and our main sources of rice — Thailand and Vietnam — suffered tighter supplies and less exports, and with less imports came higher prices. Our dependency led to increased poverty for everyone because our 10 pesos worth of rice is now costing 20 pesos at the present market price.”

After all the panelists had spoken, I sent a generic congratulations to everyone in the chat. In a short while, I received a personal message from Roland saying, “Mr. Palm, you came to our school and taught us a song, thank you. I hope you remember me.” I sent back a message, “I am sorry, you have grown up; I do not recognize you now.” He replied, “I was a tutor at the Sunbeam Day Care Center, where I once was a student.”

The Sunbeam Day Care Center was a visit I made with the Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) program during their orientation to the realities of the Philippines. I remember it was a difficult day for all of us. As we entered this district of Manila neighboring the port, observing this community through the windows of our vehicle, we were guided from the road, where we had parked our vehicle, into a narrow alley of abject poverty. The light of day grew into dark gloom as we walked over slabs of wood, elevating our steps from muddy wastewater below. To each side of us were walls of repurposed wood, then a doorway or a window that revealed a room to the left, then to the right. Each room was a whole home.

Soon there was the sound of children’s voices counting in unison. The narrow dark alleyway led us to a larger room that was set with children’s chairs and tables as a small mess hall. Voices were coming from another room. It was a classroom of children ages 5 to 8 — all learning together. This was the Sunbeam Day Care Center, a program of our PC(USA) mission partner the United Church of Christ in the Philippines, led by Tondo Evangelical Church. This congregation, believing that a mission endeavor can have significant impact, refused to lose hope.

Walking away from our short visit, I am ashamed to confess that the friends at the Tondo Evangelical Church had more hope and faith than I did. It was difficult for me to see a way out for children living amid overwhelming poverty, hunger and adverse conditions.

In unexpected times, God seems to be saying through these moments, “I am not done with you yet!” A personal message from Roland caught me by surprise. What I could not see then, God wanted me to see now. God connected the dots between a mission endeavor reaching into overwhelming poverty — nurturing a child with a new song — and witnessing that student using a well-deserved scholarship to access the tools to discern the structures in our society that perpetuate poverty.

God’s amazing work reminds me that mission works. Mission into poverty can lift hands, strengthen voices and warm bodies, reenergizing people who then can see clearly where policies and laws must be changed — Matthew 25 people willing to work together to make it happen.

Carlton J. “Cobbie” Palm, Mission Co-Worker and Director of Spiritual Formation at Silliman University Divinity School
Dessa Palm, YAV Site Coordinator in the Philippines, Artistic Director for Youth Advocates Through Theater Arts

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Kathy Lueckert, President, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)
Victor Min, Translator, Global Language Resources, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)

Let us pray

Dear God, your blessings are always evident and give us the good pleasure of enjoying your presence. Continue to abide with us as we love and serve those in need. In Christ’s service. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - God’s commitment to the poor is our commitment, too

Moving mountains of poverty

October 9, 2020

In his book “Breaking the Code,” Bible scholar Bruce Metzger says that different types of Scriptures engage us in different ways. Revelation primarily engages our imagination. Paul’s letters like Romans develop our intellect. Old Testament law connects with our will. The Book of Psalms largely meshes with our emotions.

We can see many emotions in and behind Psalm 68. There’s an underlying frustration right from the start: Let God rise up, let God’s enemies be scattered (verse 1). Why hasn’t God saved us? By the third verse, the tone has brightened with a call to let the righteous be jubilant with joy. This moves quickly to awe in verse 4 (God rides upon the clouds) to gratitude in verse 10 (in your goodness, O God, you provided for the needy) to wonder in verse 35 (Awesome is God from your sanctuary, the God of Israel).

Amid all of this joy, the psalmist calls God to act on behalf of the poor and downtrodden. Our author calls God the “father of orphans and protector of widows” who “gives the desolate a home to live in.”

The Scriptures are filled with stories of God’s care for those Jesus called the least of these. God calls Israel from all the peoples of the earth not because they are the most impressive of all the tribes, but because they are the least of all people. Israel’s law reflects God’s care for the lowly. Prophets repeatedly highlight God’s concern for the poor. Mary’s Magnificat looks forward to God’s work to lift up the impoverished and weak.

I’m sure that if Jesus showed up in person in our churches, one of his first sermons would be about these priorities of our God. (I’m sure our attendance would go up, too, with the Son of God in the pulpit!)

The God who makes a way where there seems to be no way can live up to this commitment to the poorest among us in so many ways. Our God who created the universe with a word can surely snap two fingers together and turn our world upside- down, ending structural and individual poverty. Yet, God seems to be betting on us as the best means to demonstrate care for the least of these, attacking the societal structures while also caring for the poor nearest our front doors.

Almost two decades ago, I was part of a team that went to Honduras to assist local experts with construction in areas destroyed by a hurricane. One of my least favorite tasks was to help move concrete blocks. A chain of more than 20 of us would pass the blocks across a dirt road, through a weedy path, up and down a ravine, and on to the staging area next to the home being built. We were humbled as we watched a young woman who would be moving into the home carrying two blocks at once — in flip-flops. Meanwhile, our sweat wore us down while passing the 50-pound blocks from person to person for what seemed like hours. We tried to remember that the soreness we would feel was a sign of discipleship and not just a measure of how out of shape we were.

On the third day of block-chucking, a college student on the team said, “Hey, isn’t there a Scripture that says God will move a mountain if we pray hard enough? Why don’t we start praying that God will move that mountain of concrete over to the house?” He was right. God did say that. But the next person to pipe up had an even better insight: “Guess what? God is using you to move that mountain!”

God uses us not only to go on mission trips to help move heavy concrete blocks. God uses us to move the mountains of poverty in our communities. Be it in Honduras or elsewhere, God still gives the desolate a home to live in. As God uses us to do this work, I pray our emotions will move with the psalmist’s, from frustration into joy, awe, gratitude and wonder.

 Chip Hardwick, Transitional Synod Executive, Synod of the Covenant

Let us join in prayer for: 

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Jason Raff, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)
Ed Ramsey, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)

Let us pray:

O God of love greater than we can imagine, teach us how to love your children as you have loved us, especially those who suffer unnecessarily. Give us boldness to argue and plead for your reign, especially in your house. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.