Wednesday worship celebrates the truth-tellers
by Beth Waltemath | Presbyterian News Service
The Rev. Gini Norris-Lane
As summer comes to an end and schools resume, young adults transition again between communities of formation — the homes and churches that raised them and the universities and vocational programs that promise to continue their growth.
At the beginning of each August, communities and families are encouraged to mark this sending forward with prayers or special worship. Updated resources for use in congregational worship or adapted for home worship are available through the PC(USA)’s Office of Christian Formation. A special chapel service on Wednesday for the PC(USA) denominational offices featured some of these resources and their writers.
In anticipation of College and Young Adult Sunday on Aug. 4, ministers and leaders from UKirk Collegiate Ministries led the chapel service. The Rev. Virginia “Gini” Norris-Lane, executive director of UKirk Collegiate Ministries, preached on 2 Samuel 11:26–12:13a. The story introduces a number of multifaceted individuals — David, Bathsheba, Uriah and Nathan — in a complex human drama. David calls for justice against a powerful person who took advantage of the vulnerable and demands to know whom to bring to justice. Nathan replies, “You are the man.”
Norris-Lane described the complex and imperfect journeys of college students (like most adults) as they navigate who they are and who they wish to be in the world as they fully claim their identity and their power in adulthood. She also emphasized the need for truth-tellers in friendships, families, churches, institutions and denominations.
“On our college campuses across the country, in our 49 Presbyterian-related universities, in state schools and community colleges, we have students on our campuses that are David, that are Bathsheba, that are Uriah, that are Nathan,” said Norris-Lane. She described how students mess up and find themselves at a crossroads but course-correct because of an encounter with a truth-teller.
Norris-Lane explained how the job of a UKirk minister is to be a Nathan. “It’s not just saying with grace and truth in their voices and love in their hearts for the student, you missed the mark, or you dramatically shot the mark off the planet. Their job is to say something deeper and more true to every student that walks in the door.” Norris-Lane also explained how UKirk ministries help to shape a sense that a student’s identity “is not the worst thing they have ever done nor the best thing.”
“Their true identity is the fact that they belong in life and death to God, and each are invited into a Christian community to help form the world that God dreams of,” said Norris-Lane, who described spiritual life on a college campus as “the business of character formation and reformation, over and over and over again.”
“The truth-tellers on behalf of the Presbyterian Church that serve on college campuses are needed in this generation,” said Norris-Lane. “Their presence matters not only now but for the future of the church in the world.”
The Rev. Rachel Penmore
In response to the proclamation of the Word, UKirk ministers the Rev. Rachel Penmore, the Rev. Allison Wehrung and John Golden led a litany of “UKirk Beatitudes,” written in the middle of the pandemic to express the wide range of experiences of students on campus and God’s blessings on them in the midst of their blossoming identities and their complex realities. Penmore serves as minister for UKirk UTK at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Golden leads UKirk ETSU for East Tennessee State University and Wehrung is the minister for UKirk Ole Miss at the University of Mississippi. The Rev. Chris Bailey, campus minister at MarshallUKirk at Marshall University in West Virginia, also participated in the chapel service.
Along with the prayers used for the chapel, other liturgy, including a commissioning ritual, is available in the orders of service developed by leaders in UKirk in partnership with the Office of Christian Formation. Congregations are encouraged to find ways to connect with UKirk ministries in their area.
Worship closed with a charge to speak of the One who sees people through their transitional times when their identities and vocations are emerging and to remember that “everyone is beloved as they are and as they are becoming.”
College and Young Adult Sunday Worship Resources
Belonging and Becoming (Jeremiah 1:4–10) | Spanish
God Is with Us in Every Season (1 Kings 19:4–8) | Spanish
Listening to Jesus’ Instructions (Matthew 14:22–23) | Spanish
Liturgies of Celebration and Commissioning
UKirk is in partnership with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) through the Office of Christian Formation.
You may freely reuse and distribute this article in its entirety for non-commercial purposes in any medium. Please include author attribution, photography credits, and a link to the original article. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDeratives 4.0 International License.