07039
January 18, 2007

George, Kathy Todd receive top PHEWA award

by Jerry Van Marter

The Rev. George and Kathy Todd honored by PHEWA. Photo by Joseph Williams.

NEW ORLEANS — The Rev. George and Kathy Todd, Presbyterian pioneers in urban ministry at home and abroad, were named winners of the Presbyterian Health, Education and Welfare Association (PHEWA) John Park Lee Award at a luncheon in their honor Jan. 13 during the association’s 2007 social justice biennial conference here.

     “George and Kathy’s partnership was shaped by the events of the latter 20th century,” said the Rev. Trey Hammond of Albuquerque, NM, who nominated them for the award, “and by their ministry together they helped shape those events.”

     Following his graduation from Yale Divinity School in 1951, George Todd became an integral part of the Group Ministry of East Harlem Protestant Parish (EHPP) in New York. Considered by many one of the most creative urban ministry programs of the 20th century, EHPP started storefront churches, revitalized existing congregations and helped organize the community to take a major role in determining its own future.

     Kathy Todd, the daughter of Japan missionaries, met George while doing her Union Theological Seminary field work with EHPP. She joined the Group Ministry when they married in 1953.

     In 1959, the Todds traveled to Asia, where they put their urban ministry skills to work helping Presbyterian congregations there adapt from rural agricultural to urban industrial societies.

     In 1963, George was appointed director of urban and industrial ministries in the former United Presbyterian Church in the USA’s Board of National Missions. Throughout the tumultuous 1960s, he developed a cadre of urban ministry specialists who helped create the emerging congregation-based community organizing movement with seminal organizer Saul Alinsky.

     To this day, the PC(USA) continues to be the largest Protestant supporter of congregation-based community organizing.

     In 1972, the Todds joined the staff of the World Council of Churches in Geneva — George as director of the WCC’s office for urban and industrial mission, helping churches around the world work for justice and social change in their cities; and Kathy as head of the Frontier Internship in Mission, a program recruiting young people from all over the world for two-year assignments to work in critical mission situations outside their own countries.

     The Todds returned to the U.S. in 1986, Kathy to work for the next 14 years in a variety of social justice capacities for the National Council of Churches, and George to serve as executive presbyter for New York City Presbytery.

     Both continue to press for global justice.

     “In our time we have not only the responsibility to end hunger, but the structures, resources and technology to end poverty and the suffering it causes,” Kathy Todd said in her acceptance speech. “My hope is that only will we bring bread to the poor, but that through the (United Nations) Millenium Development Goals we will eliminate extreme poverty.”

     George Todd is still committed to congregation-based community organizing. “Building power in communities where people have been disenfranchised is a role that is being undertaken no more importantly in our country today than by the churches,” he told luncheon attendees. “Those that take responsibility and leadership in making that happen will be instrumental in returning power to the people and redeeming democracy in America today.”