As we approach the convening of the 223rd General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) this Saturday afternoon, we look forward to the election of the Moderator(s) on Saturday evening. There are three teams that have declared and been endorsed, two co-moderator teams and a moderator/vice-moderator team. All three announced and were endorsed in quick succession last December. I am going to present these in three consecutive posts over the next two days and will do so in the order they announced, or more precisely the order their announcements appeared in the PC(USA) news outlet of record 😉 , the Presbyterian Outlook. So we conclude with…

Chantal Atnip and Ken Hockenberry

The third announcement for Moderator came from Chantal Atnip who later announced that Ken Hockenberry would be joining her as her Vice-Moderator candidate. While they have no moderatorial web site that I found, they do have three extended articles on the Synod of the Trinity web site news section: One with her announcement, one in interview format with her discussing the sense of call and other matters, and another announcing the vice-moderator choice. Their information and responses to questions is the first set in the Moderators Handbook put out for the General Assembly, beginning on page 3 of the PDF file.

Chantal is a ruling elder who has served as the treasurer for the Synod of the Trinity for the last 13 years. She is an active member of the Pine Street Presbyterian Church of Harrisburg, PA, where she currently serves as clerk of session. She has a degree from Florida State University in Mathematics and Math Education. Her career has been varied including teaching and IT work, particularly software development and as co-founder of a computer consulting company.

While connected with the Synod of the Trinity, she has little experience at the national level, something she describes as an asset for her standing for Moderator [quote from the Synod article]:

“I am not connected to the national church, so I have a different set of eyes and a different voice than the other people who are running for moderator,” she said. “I bring an openness and an ability to cross the different levels of the denomination. I have been asked what I plan to do (if elected moderator). I don’t ‘plan’ to do anything. A moderator is just that – we moderate. We are to be problem solvers.”

You can follow Chantal on Twitter @AtnipChantal.

Ken Hockenberry is a teaching elder in the Presbytery of Chicago serving as the interim pastor at Carter-Westminster United Presbyterian Church in Skokie, Illinois. He did his M.Div. at Princeton Theological Seminary and some additional post-graduate work at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Before his present call he was the pastor of Beulah Presbyterian Church in Louisville as well as serving as the stated clerk (part time) of Mid Kentucky Presbytery. The Synod article also mentions that he has served as the moderator of the Presbytery of Cayuga-Syracuse, and the bio in the Moderators Handbook mentions his decade of service as a pastor in that area.

You can follow Ken on Twitter at @ClerkKennyH.

In their choices on the optional questions in the in Moderators Handbook, they did not answer what the church of tomorrow looks like, but instead chose to give their elevator speechs about what it means to be Presbyterian. Chantal talked a little about her faith journey and wove in the 223rd GA. Here is Ken’s answer, in full, where his experience as a stated clerk is on full display:

To be Presbyterian means I am part of a church community immersed and empowered by grace and gratitude. We believe God’s grace and love is freely given to us, rather than something we have to earn. Because we are immersed in this free gift of grace, we are empowered to engage in acts of gratitude, giving thanks to God through worship, as well as ministry and missional service to others.

To be Presbyterian also means that I am part of a church community where elders are called to rule and to teach. That’s what the word “Presbyterian” means: “governed by elders.” God – through the Holy Spirit – calls ordinary people to general missional service in the church and in the world, following in the way of Jesus Christ. God also calls some ordinary people to particular kinds of missional service, into what we call the ordered ministries of Deacons, Ruling Elders, and Teaching Elders or Ministers. This means our church community operates with a high degree of shared leadership, found and called from the bottom – up, rather than from the top – down.

Best wishes to Chantal and Ken in their standing for Moderator and Vice Moderator. And prayers for the commissioners as they discern the next moderatorial team. We can meet the candidates Saturday morning and I look forward to the press conference with the successful team following the election Saturday evening.

Moving on… A quick summary