The closest the Rev. Bethany Peerbolte has come to heartache associated with Mother’s Day was a couple years ago, when her parents moved from Michigan to North Carolina. “I’m like, ‘If that was hard for me, I can’t imagine what the people in my church are going through when they’ve lost a mother or haven’t had a mother figure who’s really been kind and loving to them, like a mother should be.’”
Two years ago, the current and former Stated Clerks of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) journeyed to Utqiagvik (Barrow, Alaska) — the nation’s northernmost city — to apologize to Native Americans, Alaska natives and native Hawaiians for damage inflicted by the church in previous decades.
Compassion fatigue — that malady that many pastors, first responders and others in helping professions suffer that can leave them feeling isolated, tired, trapped or worse — can be overcome, and there’s help for those who, as the Rev. Dr. Dana Sutton put it, “are healing the world and need to heal themselves.”
The questions come in the darkness, usually around 3 a.m. ‘What will my children’s lives be like without me?’ wonders Farm Church co-founder Ben Johnston-Krase. Four months ago he was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer.
Several years ago, I had an opportunity to visit Westminster by-the-Sea Presbyterian Church in Daytona Beach Shores, Florida, for a Sunday worship service. I had always enjoyed my visits to this church, knowing that I would hear outstanding music and an excellent sermon by their senior pastor, the Rev. Dr. Jeffrey Sumner. But I also heard another important message that day. Dr. Sumner spoke of the need for parishioners to attend to their physical health as well as their spiritual well-being. And on this particular Sunday, there would be an opportunity to do this by taking advantage of a free screening for skin cancer that a local dermatologist would be providing immediately after the worship service.
One Oklahoma church has adopted a unique format in its effort to confront personal and societal racism. Trinity Presbyterian Church in Oklahoma City began a 10-week “Racism and Racists Anonymous” discussion group in February.
Rachel Kahindo’s calm demeanor concealed the distress in which she had left behind her family. Just 24 hours earlier, some 50 children, women and men had been hacked to death a mile up the road from where she lives in Beni, a rural town in the volatile East of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It was the deadliest attack since the militia had stepped up its activity two years before. Despite the traumatic events, Rachel had traveled to the provincial capital of Goma to be trained as a facilitator for trauma-healing in children. The nine-day event, which included a camp for 50 youngsters age 8 to 18, was organized by the Protestant Council of Churches in Congo (ECC) in collaboration with the DRC Bible Alliance. Rachel, the coordinator of women’s ministries of the Baptist church in the Beni district, met up with 28 ECC women leaders and schoolteachers from five provincial synods, who together represented 12 ECC member denominations.
