Moderators from across the PC(USA) gather for worship on the opening day of the Moderators’ Conference at the Presbyterian Center in Louisville. Photo by Rick Jones.
The Moderators’ Conference, sponsored each year by Mid Council Ministries in the Office of the General Assembly, got underway Friday in the Presbyterian Center and online with the Rev. Shavon Starling-Louis, Co-Moderator of the 225th General Assembly, leading those who have said yes to God’s call for service in their presbytery or synod during an inspiring and thoughtful worship service.
Starling-Louis is pastor of Memorial Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, and serves alongside Co-Moderator the Rev. Ruth Faith Santana-Grace, executive presbyter of the Presbytery of Philadelphia. Drawing on the Beatitudes found in Matthew 5:1-12, Starling-Louis titled her sermon “Unbounded Blessed Ones,” a takeoff on the theme under which she and Santana-Grace stood for Co-Moderators, “Unbounded We Thrive.”
“Siblings, we can be encouraged we are unbound by the faith of the people who came before us,” Starling-Louis said. She called it “a key liberating joy and a holy mystery of being people of faith, that we can live in the now and the not yet.” Only God knew the strength and the varied skills of the community of men and women Jesus gathered as disciples — “kind of like us, if we’re honest,” she said. “Yet it is God who calls us together.”
Like those disciples, “we, too, can walk and talk and journey and sit with God and siblings. We too can receive and declare blessings right in the middle of our situations,” she said. “This is holy work, amen?”
Those who have said yes to God’s call to become moderators “are blessed to be a blesser,” she said, and those present during worship voiced their approval with finger snaps and shouts of “Amen!”
Enumerating the Beatitudes, Starling-Louis got to the finale where Jesus tells the disciples, “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
The Rev. Shavon Starling-Louis, co-moderator of the 225th General Assembly of the PC(USA), preached during opening worship. Photo by Rick Jones.
“Siblings, sometimes those folks in our congregations and mid councils and communities — those real people are hard to navigate. Amen?”
“And if you can’t say, ‘Amen,’” she said with a wry grin, “just say, ‘Ouch!’”
“My hope is as we gather here, we will remind ourselves we are not alone in the work we do,” she said. “It matters how we support and bless each other. Our theology is pinned together by communal discernment.”
“Blessed are you because you are seen and loved. You are named and claimed in the waters of baptism by the God of all Creation,” she said. “Be blessed, and bless somebody along the way, as we live out the reign of Christ in the now and the not yet. Amen.”
After some hymns led by talented musicians, Starling-Louis offered a meditation on salt. It seasons and it intensifies. How, she wondered aloud, is God inviting these moderators to be intensifiers? Salt preserves. Where are you called to preserve what is precious? Salt adds texture to baked goods. It’s real and gritty. How is God inviting you to bring texture and realness to your ministry? Salt is the key ingredient in brine, which is used to tenderize tough cuts of meat. How is your presence to be a brine? Breaking down what is tough? As a deicer, salt makes roadways safer. How can your ministry and your nature be used to make places safer for those in your community? For metallurgical purposes, a salt bath hardens metal. How might you help strengthen your community so it can endure for the long haul? Throughout the ages, salt has been used as a sign of purification, protection and blessing. “How might it be that you live into your saltiness,” Starling-Louis asked, “turning yourself over to God over and over again for protection and blessing in the spaces in which you have been called?”
Greetings from the Acting Stated Clerk
The Rev. Bronwen Boswell was general presbyter and stated clerk in the Presbytery of Shenandoah before herself saying yes over the summer to God’s call to serve a one-year appointment as Acting Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) following the resignation of the Rev. J. Herbert Nelson, II.
Next year marks the 226th General Assembly for the PC(USA), “and I want you to know you are vital in getting the message out about General Assembly,” she told the incoming mid council moderators once worship had concluded. “Hopefully your presbyteries are well on their way” to electing commissioners and young adult advisory delegates, she said.
“This will be the fourth iteration of what a General Assembly looks like,” she said, following many examples of the traditional in-person assembly, the online plenary-only assembly of 2020 and the 2022 assembly that featured in-person committee meetings and online plenary sessions. In 2024, that model will be reversed, with in-person plenary sessions and online committee meetings.
Boswell reported that “denominational partners and friends” thanked the PC(USA) for holding the 2020 assembly in the worst throes of the pandemic “even though it was painful and hard. You showed us it could be done,” they told her and others.
(L to R) The Rev. Dr. David Gambrell, associate for worship in the Office of Theology and Worship in the Presbyterian Mission Agency; Flor Vélez Díaz, manager of judicial process in the Office of the General Assembly; and Kate Trigger Duffert, director of General Assembly planning for the Office of the General Assembly, lead worship at the Moderators’ Conference. Photo by Rick Jones.
The Acting Stated Clerk asked the new moderators to remind people back home that the Stated Clerk Nomination Committee continues the work of selecting the nominee it will present to the 226th General Assembly, which will be held June 25-July 4, 2024, in Salt Lake City. “The job description is out there, and you can apply to become the next Stated Clerk,” Boswell said, describing her job as the acting clerk as “helping to keep things coming together.”
In fact, on her desk in the Presbyterian Center is a plaque with her name and her designation as the first woman Stated Clerk in the denomination’s long history. On the plaque is a conductor’s baton made by a friend. “I am the conductor at this juncture, and I work with all first-chair musicians” in denominational headquarters in Louisville, she said. “I am there to keep the beat. Staff is here to resource you and your work.”
During a question-and-answer time, Boswell said it’s high time Presbyterians “show our true colors as Christians. When that happens, people will say, ‘That’s why you do that. I’m interested in doing that. Can I come alongside and learn?’”
“And let’s be salty,” she said, in a nod to Starling-Louis’ meditation. “Let’s melt that ‘God’s frozen chosen’ moniker. The church is different, and life is now different. We need to engage as Christ engages.”
The Moderators’ Conference continues on Friday with workshops, gatherings and a conversation with the Co-Moderators. On Saturday, mid council moderators will engage in more workshops and discussions before worshiping and then heading home.