Urban Presbyterians Together

Rare urban church cluster forms in Rochester

‘Urban Presbyterians Together’ wants spirituality to meet city’s needs, create better future

by Paul Seebeck
Communications Associate 

Editor’s note: This is the latest in a series of stories about congregations engaged in significant outreach and evangelism ministries, reflecting the General Assembly’s commitment to “Grow Christ’s Church Deep and Wide.” — Jerry L. Van Marter

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Two and half years ago, two pastors here were having a conversation of lament. The Rev. Judy Hay had served 150 members atCalvary St. Andrews Presbyterian Parish for more than 30 years. The Rev. John Wilkinson had been pastor at 1,380-member Third Presbyterian Church since 2001.

Their collective years of pastoral experience taught them that no church should go at it alone.

So here they were, putting a voice to the loss and fear of an uncertain future facing the 11 churches left in their urban core in Genesee Valley Presbytery. Two Presbyterian churches in Rochester had already been closed. Two others were tenuous at best, barely hanging on. Five were without pastors.

“It’s like we were putting a stake in the ground,” says Hay. “No other churches were going to be closed on our watch.”

As they listened to each other lament, Wilkinson remembers thinking, “If there is going to be a future in our urban core, it will be because young people are coming back, seeking out questions of meaning in the midst of loss, fear and uncertainty, just like we are doing now.”

Wilkinson and Hay began to imagine how they might positively impact their future in Rochester by reaching out to all of the Presbyterian churches in their urban core. They spent a good year getting to know each other. Pastors — those in place, interim and stated supply — all began hosting lunches once a month at each other’s churches.

“We began to get a vision of what each church community was like,” says Hay. “We began to recognize that for all of us to thrive we would have to move out of the survival model, away from isolation into partnership with each other.”

“No church regardless of size should go at alone,” says Wilkinson. “If we believe in the body of Christ we should connect ourselves to each other for the greater good.”

The churches began to work with the Rev. Phil Tom, associate for small church and community ministry serving rural and urban congregations for the General Assembly Mission Council. Tom listened to the pastors’ desires to join together so they could be present to the suffering occurring in their city.

“John Wilkinson was lamenting that when issues came up that affected Rochester the community at large knew the Catholic, the Methodist, and the African American Baptist voices,” says Tom. “But there wasn’t a clear unified prophetic voice about what it means to be Presbyterian in the city. I encouraged them to continue to build relationships with each other and with leaders in each of their congregations around their shared ministry values.”

By 2009, all 11 churches had pastoral leadership in place. They invited elders from each of their urban congregations into the larger conversation. At a training event more than 70 showed up.

These spiritual leaders began to speak about the things in Rochester that weighed heavy on their hearts — youth violence, drugs, alcohol abuse, extreme poverty, and prostitution. “It was like this ‘wow!’ moment,” remembers Hay. “All of the elders were ready to have the church and their spirituality be relevant by dealing with the issues of the moment, creating places of safety and finding ways to share hands-on ministry as Presbyterians committed to the city.”

As members of this larger group listened to each other, there was a moment of clarity. What had started as a prayer of lament between two pastors, through of the work of the Spirit, had become this.

“They were telling us they wanted to know how to speak to non-churched people about their belief that Christ was present in all of the suffering in their communities,” remembers Hay. “They wanted to turn themselves over to Christ in a more radical way so that they could participate together as one voice in meeting the needs of the city.”

“We could tell they no longer wanted their spirituality to have this artificial dichotomy between evangelism and social justice,” says Wilkinson. “They wanted both growth and outreach.”

http://www.pcusa.org/pcnews/2010/10073.htm