SAINT PETER, Minnesota — When I think of multicultural churches, I do not necessarily think of my own — I picture congregations that reflect many different races and ethnicities. Like most Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) churches, Union Presbyterian Church of Saint Peter is a predominantly white congregation. What does multicultural ministry mean for my rural Midwestern church community?
Three churches in the Presbytery of Philadelphia were at a crossroads — each considering their future for different reasons.
Some might see a crisis, but the Rev. Ruth Faith Santana-Grace, the presbytery’s executive presbyter, and the presbytery’s stated clerk, the Rev. Kevin Porter, saw an opportunity to help all three find new life.
No one knows exactly how many children in the tri-county area around Detroit (Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties) are lacking a bed of their own, but it is likely that the number is in the thousands, according to the nonprofit Building Beds 4 Kids.
As one of the newest regional liaisons hired to serve East Central Africa, I have been traveling a lot, and sometimes it feels as though I am living in and out of airports more than in my home in Lusaka, Zambia. You know what, though? I can’t complain! As I travel within the countries that I serve — Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda and Zambia — I have the opportunity to see God’s amazing work through the hands, voices, eyes and feet of our international Presbyterian partners. Partners who are trying to repair the brokenness among God’s children. Partners who, in their own ways, are attempting to serve and provide for “the least of these” — through means like building and maintaining community schools and theological institutions; building health facilities and clinics; and ministering in hospitals, clinics and prisons.
Shannon Schmidt is currently teaching the ethics curriculum she designed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The course is split between MIT students and incarcerated students who are working toward their bachelor’s degrees and is taught in a prison-based setting. In addition to this work, Schmidt serves as a facilitator for a support group for formerly incarcerated men in Boston.
“They said their teacher has not come,” said Peter, the education facilitator for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) partner Across, translated from Anyuak to English.
“Where are your friends?” came the next question to the 10 boys sitting in the muddy field.
Like many pastors, the Rev. Mary Seeger Weese of Midway Presbyterian Church in Midway, Kentucky, had a vision of starting a youth ministry. And, like many pastors, she realized she couldn’t do it alone.
First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta wanted to reshape its ministries. Standing in the heart of the city since 1848, becoming the first Presbyterian church to lay roots in Atlanta, the congregation has had a long history of community involvement, from serving breakfasts to the homeless every Sunday to providing safe housing to women, to name a few. Still, it was time to think differently, go further and create ministries that would empower people, ministries that would “walk alongside the community,” says the Rev. Rebekah LeMon, executive pastor.
The woman from Iraq was dressed completely in black.
It was the first time she had been to Refugee Family Literacy at Memorial Drive Ministries in Stone Mountain, Georgia in two weeks. When Jennifer Green, director of the program, asked what had happened, she learned the woman’s brother had been killed by a car bomb in Iraq.
When the Rev. Stacy Cavanaugh was talking with the session of Union Presbyterian Church in Monroe, Wisconsin, about becoming their pastor, she asked ruling elders, “What’s the one thing I can change?”
The only answer they could come up with was, “Just don’t tell us we can’t do mission.”
