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Mission Yearbook
STORM LAKE, Iowa – Synod School, a ministry of the Synod of Lakes and Prairies, recently drew a record 686 participants to the Buena Vista University campus.
Synod School takes place every summer, as the only remaining synod school of its type within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). The theme this year was “Let Justice Flow.”
Like many high school graduates, Mindy Vande Brake was searching for purpose in her life. The St. Cloud, Minnesota, native went to college close to home, but couldn’t settle on a major that she found exciting. She decided to get some work experience and found herself in the restaurant industry.
In the seventh installment of Theological Conversations for 2017, the Theology, Formation and Evangelism ministry of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) presents Seeking a Correctable Conscience by John L. Thompson of Fuller Theological Seminary.
Seeking a Correctable Conscience — with the subheading Here I stand … but d’you mind checking my exegesis?” — looks closely at the words “Here I stand,” attributed to Martin Luther during the Reformation. Thompson’s paper is designed to create conversations about “freedom of conscience,” a topic that Christians have discussed for centuries — ever since Martin Luther spoke of his conscience being “captive to the Word of God.”
Recent immigrants who serve as clergywomen found helpful guidance and encouraging contacts at the New Immigrant Clergywomen’s Leadership Institute last month in Daytona Beach, Florida. Female clergy from around the country gathered to collaborate and develop leadership skills to better serve their congregations and the church. Developed by PC(USA) Racial Ethnic & Women’s Ministries (RE&WM), Leadership Institutes are designed to help racial-ethnic, immigrant and women leaders strengthen skills and relationships, learn new ideas, be encouraged to expand personal comfort zones and receive inspiration, guidance and support from national church leaders and executives.
In 1996, the year after I graduated from seminary, presbyteries in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) ordained 408 new ministers of Word and Sacrament. Many of them continue to serve and lead in the PC(USA) two decades later in critical ways. In 2016, the PC(USA) ordained about half (47 percent) of the number we did in 1996, with only 214 ordained. While we have fewer congregations in 2016 than 1996, it is only 17 percent less, not 47 percent! The need for qualified ministers of Word and Sacrament will increase as Baby Boomer generation pastors continue to retire over the next decade or so. The median age of a Presbyterian minister in 2017 is over 60 years old. The PC(USA) pastorate mirrors the demographics of about 20 mainline denominations in the U.S.
The Presbyterian Committee on the Self-Development of People has a long list of volunteers who champion the ministry’s mission. For the Rev. Johnny Monroe, it’s been a lifelong commitment.
“I guess I’m what you would call a cradle Presbyterian. I was born into Presbyterianism,” he said. “Back in the late 1800s after slavery, missionaries from the northern church established schools and churches in Sumter County, South Carolina, including the Goodwill Presbyterian Church and Goodwill Parochial School, where I grew up.”
In the mid-1980s, Trinity Presbyterian Church in Tacoma, Washington, was on life support, and Olympia Presbytery had begun nudging the session to consider pulling the plug.
Drugs, crime and gangs had infested the church’s neighborhood. A handful of loyal members attended worship and struggled to maintain the church building.
As I speak with church leaders, I notice that there is frustration and anxiety around the rapid change in our culture. Since some people are no longer showing up in our churches, I hear the need expressed for evangelism training. Even though I believe training is important, I don’t believe evangelism training will solve the problems the church faces in the winds of change.
When it comes to Christian education, Maria Harris stands out as one of the most influential teachers and writers of the past 30 years. In her 1989 book Fashion Me a People: Curriculum in the Church, Harris helped shape a theology of educational ministry in the church that understands “The Word continually becoming flesh, in us.” If the Word is perpetually at work in us, then by our ordinary, everyday, walking-around lives, all of us are de facto Christian educators. Curriculum may include printed materials and classroom instruction, but an incarnational “curriculum” resides in our life together where we embrace every member as a teacher to every other member — regardless of our age or ability.
We celebrate the World Day of Prayer for Latin American Women on the second Friday in September. One of the motivations to celebrate this day has been the various forms of violence against women, which are increasingly deepened through their different typified manifestations, and even when some have not yet been typified, they are still provoking psychological, emotional and physical damage without dismissing their death of our women.
