08326
April 25, 2008

Following the leaders

GAC’s Vocation Mission Committee hears about PC(USA)’s leader development efforts

by Jerry L. Van Marter
Presbyterian News Service

LOUISVILLE — Learning how to exercise leadership in a denomination that has long been dominated by adult white men can be a daunting task, especially for college-age and racial ethnic young women.

Representatives of two offices of the General Assembly Council that work to meet that challenge outlined the efforts that have been created to diversify leadership in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in presentations to the council’s Vocation Mission Committee today (April 24).

“I wish I could say it’s been easier than it has been,” said Bridgette Green, who since 2005 has provided staff leadership to Racial Ethnic Young Women Together (REYWT), which offers leadership development, networking and social advocacy resources to 18-35 year-olds.

REYWT also supports racial ethnic women seminarians and encourages young racial ethnic women to participate in governance in the PC(USA) and to employment opportunities in church-related entities.

Green works closely with Noelle Gulden, who is staff to the National Network of Presbyterian College Women (NNPCW), a ministry with college women ages 18-25. The two groups share a common approach to leadership development.

Their underlying values, Gulden said, are Presyterian/Reformed theology; feminist and liberationist perspectives on racism, sexism and classism; shared power that is not hierarchical; an emphasis on personal and corporate discernment (“It’s easy to focus on planning and programming,” Gulden said, “but harder to focus on discerning what God wants us to do and to allow space and time for that”); respect for different kinds of leadership; and the creation and nurture of Christian community.

“We are intent on creating and maintaining an ethos of respecting differences while valuing persons,” Gulden said, “of creating a place to affirm and challenge, rooted in love and relationships, and to be a worshiping community.”

The tools the groups use are also mutual, Green said. They include community-building exercises; discussion by mutual invitation as a way to ensure that all voices are heard; consensus decision-making; a variety of discernment tools, foremost among them prayer; an emphasis on building relationships; and the creating and sharing of resources.

“What these groups do requires lots of education,” Green said, “because it’s hard to be engaged in a community like the church if you don’t understand it.”