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Mission Yearbook
From June 11–14, the 2024 National Gathering of UKirk Collegiate Ministries celebrated that there is a good God for all and how the message of love and the goodness of Creation has been spread throughout history
“It’s very easy to lose hope in a world so dominated by oppression and darkness. And yet, the work of the Holy Spirit is alive and thriving at the 2024 Montreat Youth Conference!” said the Rev. Danny Dieth, pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Columbus, Georgia, and an adult leader for the Flint River Presbytery youth group that attended the annual Montreat Youth Conferences in Montreat, North Carolina.
Channeling Marian Wright Edelman, the founder of the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF), the Rev. Dr. Starsky Wilson resonates with her reasoning: “My theory of change,” she’d say, “is the Parable of the Sower.”
A recent Wednesday Chapel Service for the national staff of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) focused on the recorded personal stories of five refugees living and working in the United States.
Huai Pal, a Burmese refugee who came to the United States 13 years ago, recalled the challenge of her mother’s hospitalization one month following the family’s arrival. “We were lost and hopeless,” Pal recalled. After completing her studies at the University of Louisville, she landed a job as a caseworker at Kentucky Refugee Ministries, “where I can leverage my experience and language skills to help other refugees.”
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has affirmed since 2016 a commitment to mission and ministry as guided by Matthew 25. That commitment, to building vital congregations, dismantling structural racism, and eradicating systemic poverty, is meant to move us into deeper understandings of who we are called to be as followers of Jesus Christ and how we are called to love our neighbors.
“Finally!” was all my United Methodist friend had to text me when I asked how their General Conference was going. While I echo their relief, I know the recovery period for my LGBTQIA+ siblings is far from being final. Presbyterians stand as proof that the vote is sometimes the easiest part of change. As the leader of a ministry with over 90% LGBTQIA+-identifying members, I know a vote is one step of a long journey — one that began with fervent prayers for change. Not to change the Book of Order, but to change oneself. For every LGBTQIA+ person raised in the Christian faith, their journey of self-discovery includes years, often decades, of praying to God to change who they are.
Preachers ascending the pulpit in a polarized church can turn to the letter of 1 John for, say, inspiration — or even a preaching series.
“It’s not an easy time for the preacher, trying to navigate our own biases,” said the Rev. Dr. Janette Ok, “much less those of our congregation members.”
A Louisville pastor recently summed up the nation’s gun violence crisis with a three-word refrain: “Enough is enough.”
The Rev. Dr. Angela Johnson, pastor of Louisville’s Grace Hope Presbyterian Church, delivered a brief but powerful sermon during a morning chapel service for employees of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
One thing that the 20th-wealthiest county in the United States — a south-central Texas community — and a Boston neighborhood, Roxbury, which is riddled with violence and underemployment and is also the home of the R&B music group New Edition, have in common: Both are touched by the epidemic of mental illness.
This powerful understanding of God’s propensity toward helping and healing the least of these comes from the story of the beguine Mechthild of Magdeburg. A movement of laywomen that arose in the 13th century, the beguines were contemplatives, mystics and healers. Mechthild posited that, “God is never closer than in the longing emptiness of the night.” From that emptiness, she received and shared “prophetic critiques of the religious leaders of her day for their lack of holiness and their hostility toward passionate spirituality.”
