The Rev. CeCe Armstrong unearths some telling memories during the initial ‘Sounding Board’ podcast
The Co-Moderator of the 226th General Assembly (2024) shares a few formative faith moments with hosts Sarah Abushakra and Jeremy Roberts
LOUISVILLE — Those who tuned in for the initial installment of “Sounding Board,” the new podcast offered by the Presbyterian Association of Musicians, got to hear some personal insights and memories from the Rev. CeCe Armstrong, Co-Moderator of the 226th General Assembly (2024) and the associate pastor at St. James Presbyterian Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The 75-minute conversation among Armstrong and hosts Jeremy Roberts and Sarah Abushakra can be viewed here.
Armstrong traced her faith journey back to her parents, who were married in the late 1950s. Her father was Baptist and her mother was a member of an African Methodist Episcopalian (AME) church. The newlyweds agreed they’d join whatever church outside those faith communities that welcomed them with open arms.
Right around the corner from their home in Detroit was Calvary Presbyterian Church. “They happened to be Blacks number 2 and 3 in that space,” Armstrong told the hosts. It was Advent season, and the choir “was making their best effort to sing ‘Go, Tell It on the Mountain,’” she said. Her father leaned over to whisper to his wife, “They sure could use some help with that Negro spiritual.”
“My mom said, ‘I’m looking through this bulletin. Does the community even know they’re here?’” Armstrong said. “She didn’t see [any mention of] Girl Scouts or community outreach.”
Then the pastor told the congregation, “We have visitors among us We’d like to open you with open arms,” Armstrong said. Her parents looked at each other and said, “Well, this is it.”
Her parents joined the church as soon as they could. Armstrong’s father sang in the choir and her mother started the church’s first Girl Scout troop. “They became part of the fabric of the community in that space,” Armstrong said. “Well, that informed my faith.” As a youngster, when she considered her relationship with God, “it was as a heavenly parent, because I saw attributes of God in both my mom and my dad.”
Her most memorable musical moment occurred in the eighth grade. The church’s minister of music, Cedric Dent, one of the original members of the TAKE 6 singing group, gave the green light for Armstrong and a classmate to sing a duet in worship. The two prepared Mahalia Jackson’s “Somebody Bigger Than You and I.” The only problem that Sunday was that Armstrong’s partner, a strong singer, wasn’t in worship.
“I was under the impression we would not sing, but Cedric Dent said, ‘You’ll just have to sing by yourself,’” she said.
Armstrong gulped and did just that. Afterward, a church member asked her, “Don’t you usually do all the speaking parts when the youth do stuff” in church?
“I said, ‘yes, ma’am,’ and she said, ‘you stick to that, baby.’ It ended my quest to ever do solos again,” Armstrong said. “That was in the eighth grade, a long time ago. I am still recovering from that traumatic experience.”
Roberts, who works with children’s choirs, said he’s “adamant that every child can learn to sing.”
Abushakra noted Armstrong’s time as a math teacher before she became a PC(USA) teaching elder.
“I came kicking and screaming” from the classroom to seminary, Armstrong said. “In teaching, I never shied away from work in the church.”
Her service featured years as both a deacon and ruling elder, including a time as assistant stated clerk “because I am tedious in note-taking,” she said.
Then, “I had an argument with God.” Her friends were marrying and having children. She experienced neither marriage nor children. “Children in my mind were like blank canvases, and if you fill them with love they become the masterpieces that God desires,” she said. “That was my notion, that I could love them into greatness and create a society of all these wonderful human beings.”
As she argued with God, the Almighty reminded her, “I told you to go to seminary — which was true,” she said. “I said to God, ‘fine, I’ll go. Maybe my husband is there anyway.’”
She attended the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta while teaching math fulltime for the first two years. “Those children didn’t use x, y and z as variables in their equations. They used Greek letters, and they also used Hebrew symbols,” Armstrong told the hosts. “We were adamant about making sure they were well-rounded children.”
Asked about her years at St. James Presbyterian Church, Armstrong said in its 159-year history, the church has employed only nine pastors, with her the eighth.
A fire just after the Civil War led a handful of church members to walk a half-mile to worship under a large oak tree. This happened for several weeks. Eventually, “either the owners of the land said, ‘here’s the land,’ or they bought it and built a church where the oak tree was,” she said. A parochial school was built to teach the children of formerly enslaved people, and St. James Presbyterian Church is currently building a life center to help preserve the Gullah culture.
Asked about balancing invitations to preach and teach as part of being a Co-Moderator with her pastoral duties at St. James Presbyterian Church, Armstrong said, “believe it or not, I have eliminated the word ‘balance.’”
“I eliminated that to be authentically myself,” she said. “I grow and find the greatest joy in the company of people and not by myself. The going and the being with is what empowers me to keep going and being with.”
When the topic of worship planning came up, Armstrong reminded the hosts that the Holy Spirit is not always an agent of the impromptu.
“The Holy Spirit can work three months or six months or a year out,” she said. “The Holy Spirit can plan and prepare way in advance, before we know what anything is going to be. If you have prayed and sought the Lord and you send this vision to your worship team and your musicians, you have put together a blanket that acts as a comforter — which is also the name we give to the Holy Spirit.”
She reminded any leaders who were listening in to “train your replacement.”
“You won’t be here always. Whatever gifts and whatever knowledge you have will live only if you hand it to the next person to keep it going. Legacy lives in the lives of those who follow you,” Armstrong said. “My encouragement would be to do all the things that your soul must have, but train your replacement in the process so that when your days here are gone — which all of us will come to at some point in time — your legacy will live in the lives of others — in their words, their actions and their deeds, to glorify the same God that you have come to love.”
New editions of “Sounding Board” will drop the first and third Tuesdays of each month. Find the podcast on YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
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