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The first online triennial meeting celebrates innovative service in challenging times
by Gail Strange | Presbyterian news service
LOUISVILLE On Wednesday, Presbyterian Women opened its 2021 Business Meeting and Online Churchwide Gathering with Greetings from Moderator JyungIn Lee’s 2018-2021 Board Team; Joy Durrant, Vice Moderator for Justice and Peace Issues; and Jo Ann Burrell, Vice Moderator for Mission Relations.
The meeting, which will take place on Thursday, is PW’s first online Triennial Business Meeting.
Prior to the start of the business and worship, participants began with a country recognition led by PW board member Danelle Crawford McKinney. In her admission, McKinney said, Long before settlers came to what is now known as the United States, people inhabited this land and cared for their families and future generations.
Indigenous peoples were closely associated with the land they knew as Mother Earth. Mother Earth was a living being and she nurtured and cared for the nations as only a mother could provide nourishment and support, teaching her children the importance of caring for the land for future generations. This land was meant to sustain everything in times of abundance and times of scarcity.
McKinney acknowledged that the Doctrine of Discovery was created to justify ownership of these lands.
Anyone who believed in Christian doctrine had the privilege of the doctrine to do whatever it took to establish their claim to the land they wanted, she said. To this day, the same systemic racism at the root of the Doctrine of Discovery is still used to justify claiming land and protecting those seeking to exterminate families and tribes occupying the land.
The Presbyterian Church (USA) has officially rejected the Doctrine of Discovery, McKinney noted, and continues to try to recognize conscious and unconscious racism and systemic racism in every order of our affairs within the Church.
The judgment of the nations
Using Matthew 25:31-46 as a scriptural basis, the preacher during the worship service, the Rev. Dr. Rhashell Hunter, Former Director of Racial Equity & Womens Intercultural Ministries: This year Celebrate the gifts of women source suggested honoring women who work to break systemic poverty.
the Rev. dr. Rhashell Hunter
It’s hard to break through systems of poverty, Hunter said, but when women can at least earn a living wage, when systems of toxic charity are replaced by partnerships, when underprivileged children receive education, when people have food, then families, communities, and nations. be lifted.
During this pandemic, millions of women left the workforce to care for children or other relatives or because they had high-touch jobs and that work stopped. In the United States alone, 1.8 million fewer women are in the workforce than before COVID-19. And despite labor shortages in many industries across the country, many women remain unemployed.
Hunter says children from low-income families face an opportunity gap. Systemic poverty is a cycle of reinforcing mechanisms that ensure that poverty, once it exists, continues, she said. It lasts for generations unless there is outside intervention. It is almost impossible for many to break the cycle of poverty because these families lack access to economic, social or even political resources. But many of us have this access, and we have a voice.
According to Hunter, in the PC (US), we believe that poverty can be significantly reduced by identifying the root causes and seeking solutions to these causes. We have worked hard, but much remains to be done to shift church ministries from historically patriarchal and paternalistic models of charity to collaborative models of respect, reciprocity and support.
Churches’ approaches to tackling poverty and racism, sexism, classism and gender identity discrimination must be constantly reformed and decolonized, Hunter said.
Letters tell the story of the efficacy of PW
The 2018-2021 secretary and historian for PW, Helane Warren Church, then reported correspondence received by the organization. The correspondence highlighted the critical support and partnerships of Presbyterian Women, Inc.
Photo by Alex Perz via Unsplash
A letter from the Fellowship of Least Coin, a global ecumenical prayer movement for justice, peace and reconciliation long supported by Presbyterian women, included these words:
Dear Beloved Presbyterian Women (PC[USA]) sisters,
Best regards and congratulations on your triennial business meeting! Surely God is watching you with great joy as you continue to strive to love this world that God loved so much!
Please allow us to take this opportunity to convey our deepest appreciation and gratitude to PW for working with the International Committee for the Fellowship of the Least Coin (ICFLC) in its treasury work, and for providing a channel in managing financial transactions on our behalf. We especially thank you for sending one of your own, the competent and wise, Mary Martin, to assist us in this important work of responsible management of the FLC offering and financial work.
You have been a consistent and faithful companion of the Fellowship of the Least Coin (FLC) since its inception to this day. Praise and thanks, God, for
you! We long for your continued commitment to work with us, to carry more passion and grace in witnessing to the world by living out the FLC spirit of unceasing prayer, of gracious reception and generous giving, especially at this critical time and after that. God’s strength and courage are poured out on you!
Our hearts are full. Thank you very much.
In another letter, Gemechu Beyene, the director of Theological College Gidada in Dembi-Dollo, Ethiopia, PW thanked for the 2020 $43,650 Thank Offering scholarship to build a dormitory for the college’s female students. Construction of the Gidada Theological College’s female dormitory will be completed in May 2021.
the board of Shower the people, a nonprofit organization in San Luis Obispo, California, received a $44,000 Thank Offering grant from Presbyterian Women in 2018. The nonprofit’s board chairman, Gwen Watkins, reported that Shower the People launched in 2018 thanks to the generous award it received from a Thank Offering grant.
With the help of PWs, the organization purchased a mobile shower for people who were homeless in San Luis Obispo County, Watkins wrote.
After buying and equipping our three-piece shower trailer, we started showering in November 2018, Watkins wrote. Since then we have provided more than 6,000 showers to the homeless in their community. Shower the People will be closed for two months in 2020 due to the pandemic, then restarted in June 2020 with new protocols, including full personal protective equipment for all volunteers. Shower the People is currently active four days a week in three different locations. The need for showers among the homeless remains high, Watkins writes to PW.
Presbyterian women also collaborated with the Cottage Village Coalition, a small home community for low-income residents in Cottage Grove, Oregon, which received a $100,000 birthday gift in 2018.
Thanks to Presbyterian Women, the organizations wrote Bruce Kelsh, for getting us started, believing in our tiny house village project and helping us make this amazing project possible.
Rejoice in Hope is the theme of the online meeting, which will take place on Thursday. look at it here.
Categories: Ministries for Women
Tags: 2021 churchwide gathering of presbyterian women, cottage village coalition, Danelle Crawford McKinney., doctrine of discovery, fellowship of the least coin, gidada theological college, Helane Warren Church, jo ann burrell, joy durrant, Jyungin Lee, matthew 25:31 -46, Presbyterian Women, Rev. Dr. Rhashell Hunter, Shower the People, Judgment of the Nations
Tags: business meeting, continues Thursday, doctrine of discovery, fellowship of the least coin, first online triennial, gidada theological college, offer grant, online triennial, presbyterian, presbyterian women, received a 2018, san luis obispo, shower the people, thanks offering, offering thanks grant, triennial business, triennial business meeting, vice moderator, watkins wrote, women
Ministries: Presbyterian Women
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