Global Ecumenical Liaisons discuss their work and their future together

LOUISVILLE — U.S.-based and international Global Ecumenical Liaisons were at the Presbyterian Center in Louisville, Kentucky, last week to talk about what lies ahead in their work with their partners, mid councils, new worshiping communities, diaspora communities, ethnic caucuses and mission networks.

Five GELs spent their lunch hour talking to Presbyterian News Service about what they’ve been learning and how they’ll work within the PC(USA)’s new model for global engagement:

• Dessa Palm is Young Adult Volunteer site coordinator for the Philippines
• The Rev. Jed Koball is the GEL for Latin America and the Caribbean
• The Rev. Princeton Abaraoha is the U.S. GEL for African support
• The Rev. Irv Porter is the U.S. GEL for Native American support
• Joseph Russ is the U.S. GEL for a region that includes these synods: Pacific, Southern California & Hawaii, Southwest, and Rocky Mountains.

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“Although there is a new structure that has been introduced, what I have appreciated this week is to draw into the intersectionality of the things we do,” Palm said, adding that GELs heard presentations from ministries including Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, the Presbyterian Hunger Program, and the Jinishian Memorial Program, among others. “Even if I am in leadership development, all of these are connected to the vision of Christian witness in the world today.”

“The PC(USA) and its predecessors have been engaging in the world for almost 200 years. Global Ecumenical Partnerships were created to figure out how we engage in the world today,” Koball said. “What does it mean to share God’s love today? What we are hearing from partners across the world and across the U.S. is that there is a lot of suffering and oppression among individuals, and we have a unique role as the church to respond to empire in the world today.”

“We have learned a lot about how these changes are being experienced by our colleagues,” Russ said. “It has been helpful to get a sense of what people are good at and used to doing, and what gifts they bring.” Russ specifically cited Palm, who has experience with using theater to bring about social change, as one example. “She can point me to groups in California that can help us do ministry,” he noted.

“This week was a reminder of what we have,” Abaraoha said. “As far as I am concerned, I have been doing global ministry” by his work supporting African faith communities in the United States. “We can now lift connections and relationships to another level.”

Porter said he used to feel isolated in his station in the Pacific Northwest, where he supports 98 Native American congregations across the United States. “But I am seeing the network develop, and I can tap into it,” he said. “That strengthens and expands the connection that I didn’t have before I came here.”

When Koball served as a mission co-worker in Peru, he said he learned “a tremendous amount” about struggles including those of indigenous people who are suffering the environmental impacts of the practices of extractive industries. After hearing similar impacts on Native Americans described by Porter, Koball now realizes “the people in Peru need to be in connection with the people Irv works with.”

“Our accompaniment in person was invaluable,” Koball said, “but I think we are at a point where we are shifting in our communities. We are the connectors among them.”

Palm said she sees those connections among Young Adult Volunteers as well, with YAVs in Peru working with those in Mexico and YAVs in the Philippines connecting with their counterparts in Korea. That’s enabled by “leaders who are grounded in contexts where God is at work in communities of hope and resistance,” she said. “I think that is a beautiful prospect.”

Russ used to be based in Central America and now serves in the United States. “In a lot of ways, they are the same struggles. They are interwoven,” he said. People in the U.S. whose family members have been taken away by immigration officials “are sharing concerns with people who have disappeared” internationally, he said. “There is an eerie similarity.”

“Within the African context, we are constantly connected to the homeland. There has always been that wall: the church back home doesn’t feel connected to the church here,” Abaraoha said. The new model “is going to link us back and make us one church,” he predicted.

Many Native American congregations “are just trying to survive,” Porter pointed out. “What is going on internationally has not been on the radar.” But Porter is working to help Native American church-goers see connections with their siblings in South and Central America as well as the Philippines. “These are all native people who have been affected by colonialism,” he said.

It can be powerful just to sing a hymn in a native language, he said. “It reminds them that God doesn’t always speak English,” Porter said. “We are tired of apologizing for being Native people and we’re not going to do it anymore. We see we are in a world community, and we are not isolated to reservations. As I work with my colleagues, I can help change that.”

Porter said that Native American congregations in the Presbytery of Yukon fondly remember the Presbyterian Church standing with them in the 1970s during disputes over Native people’s fishing rights. “Native people have a good memory,” he said.

Koball added he’s praying that Presbyterians will display “openness and grace as we walk with this new model.”

“I believe in it,” he said, “but I know change is hard.”

“I trust God is at work in all these spaces of confusion and concern,” Palm said. “There are models for support,” including congregations and mid councils supporting former mission co-workers, and “there are relationships of trust and solidarity embedded in that. Even with the new model, there is a need to listen to how the new model can integrate that.”

According to Porter, Presbyterians have long been interested in what is going on with their Native American siblings, such as the repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery by the 223^rd General Assembly (2018). “With God’s leaning, hopefully they will listen to what we have to say,” Porter said. “My job is not to condemn white people for what they did, but to serve the Gospel.”