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minute for mission
Every year since 1865, there has been one day that most black people have held as a celebratory occurrence. On June 19, 1865, the last of the black Americans who were in the condition of chattel servitude were freed. Texas, the last state to hold out on the edict of the Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln more than two years prior, had finally been forced into compliance. And so, it is this date in June that many black Americans consider to be Independence Day and thus a cause for annual jubilation that we have entitled Juneteenth.
For this Father’s Day Mission Yearbook entry, I decided to rely heavily on one of the National Council of Presbyterian Men’s Bible Study Guides prepared by Presbyterian men for Presbyterian men. There are 24 of these study guides; 23 are based on books of the Bible and one on “Some Biblical Bases of a Brief Statement of Faith.” The guide used for this Minute for Mission, based on 1 Samuel, is titled “Fathers, Brothers, Friends, and Others: A Study of Male Relationships,” authored by H. Michael Brewer and edited by Curtis A. Miller. The other references also come from the study guide.
As Christians around the world celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit, may you sense anew the Spirit’s presence in your life on this Pentecost Sunday. The same Spirit whose coming gave birth to the church and empowered the lives of the earliest believers continues to transform Christ’s disciples today.
The 223rd General Assembly (2018) approved the initiative to “Declare an Imperative for the Reformation of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) in being a Transformative Church in This Intercultural Era.” The 223rd General Assembly also declared the period from 2020 to 2030 as the “Decade of Intercultural Transformation” by focusing on transformative priorities and initiatives across the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
Ben Ferencz was only 27 when he stood before the judges at the Nuremberg Military Tribunal as the chief prosecutor in the Einsatzgruppen trial. The defendants were 24 high-ranking SS officers responsible for the deaths of over 1 million innocent people. Ben had never tried a case before. He was barely 5 feet tall and was dwarfed by the podium, which came up to his chest. And yet photos from the trial show a composed young man. When the trial ended, the defendants were found guilty on all counts.
Soon after Congress passed the 13th Amendment in 1865, officially ending slavery in the United States, the chaplain of Congress asked the Rev. Henry Highland Garnet to preach before the House of Representatives on Capitol Hill.
In many ways, Garnet was a logical choice for the Sunday worship service. The 50-year-old pastor of Washington, D.C.’s Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church had escaped slavery as a child and grown up to become a leading abolitionist and orator. And yet Garnet was also an ardent and dedicated political activist who did not hold back when speaking out against injustice — no matter the audience.
Pal Craftaid, a ministry of compassion and justice to and with Palestinians, was founded in 1993 as the result of a Presbyterian Peacemaking Program trip to Israel/Palestine by the Rev. Elizabeth (Liz) Knott shortly after her retirement as executive of the Synod of Alaska Northwest. At that time, it appeared that a solution to the issues of Israel/Palestine were close and that she would import Palestinian olive wood sculptures and needlework from artisans on the ground and sell them at churches until peace happened. For the first 15 years, Liz and her close friend Connie schlepped boxes and suitcases everywhere, selling and interpreting the issues in the region. All profits from the sales were returned to partner organizations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
May Friendship Day, a Church Women United initiative, is most often celebrated on the first Friday of the month of May around a theme of shared concern for Christian women and their communities. The predecessor to May Friendship Day, May Fellowship Day, began in 1933 after two Christian women’s groups planned gatherings based on similar concerns: child health and children of migrant families. These groups united and over the years eventually became what we now know as Church Women United. The May celebration has been continually observed since 1933; in 1999, Church Women United changed the name from May Fellowship Day to May Friendship Day.
They are advocates. They are interpreters. They are bridge builders. They are peacemakers.
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) mission workers are men and women who have discerned a call from God to serve four or more years alongside our global partners. They dedicate years of their lives to help us understand issues of ministry across boundaries, interpreting language and culture, and sharing God’s love.
Emphasizing wills makes the instrument of legacy-building the focus instead of a much better and larger question: How do we want to contribute to the world beyond our lifetimes?
