Co-mods contemplate goats, church basements, TikTok pasta

Giving Tuesday event includes a quiz show based on NPR’s ‘Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!’

by Rich Copley | Presbyterian News Service

Kate Trigger Duffert, top left, hosted the Giving Tuesday game show featuring past and present moderators and co-moderators. Shown clockwise are the Rev. Dr. Neal Presa, the Rev. Denise Anderson, Ruling Elder Vilmarie Cintrón-Olivieri and the Rev. Gregory Bentley. (Screenshot)

LEXINGTON, Kentucky — Orientation for moderators and co-moderators of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) probably never included learning how to sniff out the one true story from a trio of weird church stories.

That was the challenge facing a former moderator, two former co-moderators, and one current co-moderator late Tuesday afternoon as they joined host Kate Trigger Duffert for a game show as part of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s eight-hour Giving Tuesday Broadcast.

The Rev. Dr. Neal Presa (GA220), the Rev. Denise Anderson (GA222), Ruling Elder Vilmarie Cintrón-Olivieri (GA223) and current co-moderator the Rev. Gregory Bentley (GA224) were the contestants on “Hold On! Hold On! Stop Talking,” a competition based on the popular public radio quiz show “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!”

Ruling Elder Elona Street-Stewart, who currently serves with Bentley as co-moderator, was scheduled to join in the fun but had technical difficulties, which was a shame seeing as the four contestants could have used some help. Like on the radio show, Trigger Duffert, doing her best Peter Sagal impression, offered the celebrity guests three stories, but only one of them was true. The mods squad needed to pick the right one.

No. 1: Rev. Miller arrives the first Sunday of her new call to find a goat named Ruth outside her office. The goat had been gifted to the church by a former member struggling to place her and some other goats before the member moved to Arizona. It was accepted because one of the session members loved the idea of live animals in the Christmas pageant. “So the idea was that they would save money on renting a goat for the holidays, honor a former member, and maybe get lawn care out of the deal,” Trigger-Duffert said. Rev. Miller grew fond of the goat.

No. 2: Steve, the building manager at First Presbyterian Church, likes to take the youth group to the basement of the church every Halloween. The kids initially think it’s cool, particularly because the entrance is behind a painting of Jesus in the narthex, but quickly want to leave when they find a baby doll in a coffin down there. Why? Well, the downtown church desperately needed a parking lot, and the solution was to pave over the old cemetery adjacent to the church and put the headstones and other assorted cemetery stuff on the dirt floor in the basement. The students think its “next level weird,” but the basement visit is the highlight of Steve’s year.

No. 3: The Presbyterian women in Postville, Iowa, decided to arrange an after-Easter Service brunch at their church this year using a Google form online because they could not plan in person. But no one looked at the form, expecting everyone would just bring what they usually brought. Instead, they got a basket of rolls, a tray of deviled eggs, and 15 casserole dishes of TikTok pasta, made from a popular recipe on the social media site that people had been following during the pandemic.

“There ain’t no way you’re taking a whole bunch of kids down to the basement with no windows or nothing,” Anderson said, and Bentley concurred, “I eliminated that one right away.”

The mods also questioned whether Presbyterian churches were gathering for in-person brunches by Easter this year. Presa did note the appeal of church potlucks, and Cintrón-Olivieri acknowledged the popularity of TikTok pasta.

But the mods concluded the correct answer was No 1, Anderson saying, “I just don’t think a goat is the weirdest thing that people have ever tried to give a church.”

And they were wrong.

The correct answer was No. 2, Trigger Duffert revealed, adding that she was one of the youths taken to the basement.

“There is indeed a church where there are headstones and a baby doll in a coffin in the basement, and you do get to it through a secret passage behind a Jesus painting,” Trigger-Duffert said, and Cintrón-Olivieri replied, “That’s true Halloween.”

Click here to give to the PC(USA) Giving Tuesday campaign

The competition started with another “Wait Wait” staple: limericks, where the audience and contestants learned facts like there are 2,344 First Presbyterian Churches in the United States, and the first of the Firsts was First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, New York, founded in 1662.

The game show ended with the mods making appeals for Giving Tuesday and answering a question about what they see as the future of the church.

Cintrón-Olivieri praised the youth of the church, saying, “they are not the future of the church, they are the church.” Anderson said that while the pandemic has undoubtedly been awful, “some of the graces that we’ve been shown in the middle of this pandemic” are “what’s really important, and I think it really leads into those lessons we have a bright future.”

Bentley pointed out that the church has gone through dramatic reforms on 500-year cycles, and it seems like it is time for another one. Presa praised the Presbyterian church’s resilience, saying, “One of the things that you won’t find in the basement of a church in a coffin is the church.”