The Rev. CeCe Armstrong plans to continue the fun discipline even as she holds office for the next two years
by Mike Ferguson | Presbyterian News Service
The Rev. CeCe Armstrong is co-moderator of the 226th General Assembly (2024). (Photo by Rich Copley)
LOUISVILLE — For nearly seven years, the Rev. CeCe Armstrong has offered up a weekly online event she’ll not be letting go of, even after her election as co-moderator of the 226th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
Each Friday at noon Eastern Time or thereabouts, Armstrong drops whatever she’s doing to host “Faithful Fridays,” where she takes to Facebook Live to talk about whatever God has laid on her heart. Join “Faithful Fridays” here.
Armstrong remembers the unintended moment she began “Faithful Fridays” on Oct. 13, 2017. Preparing for the sermon she would be preaching that week, Armstrong mistakenly hit the “Live” button on her Facebook page. She began to see some of her friends joining her.
“I said, ‘Wait! Y’all can see me?’” Armstrong said. “They said, ‘Yes. We can see you and hear you. What are you doing?’ I said, ‘This is the Scripture I’m working on, and here’s what I think it means for us today.’”
Her friends responded with “amen,” “that makes sense,” “glad you shared,” and, helpfully, “you should do this more often.”
“Faithful Fridays” may have been born inadvertently, but it continues to bless and knit together friends in Armstrong’s network, a network that’s growing following her July 1 election to serve alongside the Rev. Tony Larson as co-moderator.
“I came back the next week and said, ‘Y’all still here?’” Armstrong recalled. “I wasn’t preparing a sermon that week [Armstrong serves as associate pastor of St. James Presbyterian Church in Charleston, South Carolina], so I opened up my Bible and said, ‘This is something I hope you can use.’”
“I’ve been faithful every Friday,” Armstrong said. “The only Fridays I have missed or augmented were because of illness. One time I was on a ship and couldn’t do it. I got on and said, ‘This is Faithful Friday,’ even though it was Saturday.”
Some of the most memorable editions have been related to current events, Armstrong said. One Friday, she found herself commenting on the death of someone people considered notorious. “People were cheering their death, and I said, ‘Death isn’t something to cheer,’” she said. “That death affected somebody in ways your cheering discourages.”
“I think I hit some nerves,” she said. “People said, ‘I hadn’t thought of that. You always find a way to give us a different perspective.’”
One goal Armstrong has with “Faithful Fridays” is to “encourage someone to do something they normally wouldn’t do, or expand their gifts to improve society,” she said. “I don’t know if I’ll ever see the fruits of my labor, but the labor is a must. The mandate on my life is to preach the word and not hurt people. This opportunity for 5-15 minutes on a Friday allows me to fulfill that mandate in my heart. I’m preaching the word and not hurting people, helping them pursue what God has in store for them.”
She hopes “Faithful Fridays” encourages people to tell their stories, “No matter the outlet. What is the mandate on your life, and how are you executing it? That ought to be a question we answer daily. Through prayer and discernment, we do the work, as the Rev. Dr. Katie Cannon said, that our soul must have.”
The funniest edition of “Faithful Fridays” occurred without many people realizing what was happening. Armstrong was making her weekly “Faithful Fridays” appearance while attending a Synod of South Atlantic meeting together with Jan Lewis, a ruling elder at Belle-Terrace Presbyterian Church in Augusta, Georgia. Armstrong was speaking into her smartphone, which she’d lodged in the crook of a tree.
Lewis, who’d known Armstrong since her childhood, “looked over and said, ‘CeCe has lost her mind. She’s talking to a tree.’”
Lewis never told Armstrong what she’d seen until introducing her to preach later at Belle-Terrace. This “very refined, really put-together person” was introducing one of the denomination’s great preachers as someone who’d apparently lost her mind.
Presbyterians are invited to tune in on Fridays around noon Eastern Time to judge for themselves.
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