There is plenty of information regarding the two teams standing for Co-Moderators of the 225th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). The GA website includes a Moderator Candidates page as well as the traditional booklet that includes the questions and answers to a variety of questions. For these posts, I will give a brief introduction to each team but will focus mostly on the answers to the official questions.
The first team listed is Josefina Ahumada and Marilyn McKelvey Tucker-Marek. In their material, they are headlining their team as “Fina & Marilyn”, including on their team Facebook Page. Their tagline is “Rooted in Community – Inspired by the Spirit.”
Josefina “Fina” Ahumada is a member of Southside Presbyterian Church of Tucson, Arizona and serves as a Commissioned Ruling Elder in the Presbytery de Cristo. She grew up and went to college in Los Angeles where she earned a Masters of Social Work. She has worked in that field in a number of different settings including as a faculty member at Arizona State University. She also applies this in her work with Southside as a facilitator for the worker center steering committee and as one of the founding members of the day labor program. As a Commissioned Ruling Elder she serves as the moderator and pulpit supply for Papago United Presbyterian Church on the Native American Tohono O’odham reservation, and moderator for First Presbyterian Church in Silver City, New Mexico. She has severed as the moderator of the presbytery and on multiple presbytery committees. She also serves as chair for the Synod of the Southwest Hispanic Ministries Coordinating Committee.
The Rev. Marilyn McKelvey Tucker-Marek was born in Fort Myers and grew up there and in Montgomery, Alabama. She was ordained a ruling elder at the age of 17 and over the next few years discerned her call to ministry. After completing her M.Div. at Columbia Theological Seminary she was called to Forsyth Presbyterian Church in Forsyth, Georgia. From there she was the founding pastor for the UKirk Ministry at Mercer University where she continues to serve. She has served as the moderator of the Flint River Presbytery and on various presbytery committees.
For the booklet, the candidates were asked to answer the first four questions and any two of the additional five questions.
Fina wrote the answer to the first question about helping the church journey from Lament to Hope. She emphasized the church as a community, and the strengths of Presbyterians as adaptive, learning and growing. She concludes with this:
The beauty of our Presbyterian experience is our call to work with one another as community. The organizational model of single-figure, top-down leadership, which is so often used in the greater society is largely obsolete. In our church experience, we have learned that by being in community with one another, we nourish one another and emerge as adaptive leaders who have the capacity for transformational ministry and missional work.
The second question reflects on what the Co-Moderators do between the Assemblies to interpret the actions of the Assembly. Marilyn reflects on this and how she and Fina represent the majority of the church today coming from small church settings. She says “We believe the skills, gifts, vitality, and witness of smaller communities have the power to inspire and guide congregations and ministries of any size.”
The third question asks “How can the 225th General Assembly (2022) be a sign of hope to the city and the whole church?” In answer to this Fina relates her first-hand experience with the 1965 Watts Riots and as part of her answer she invokes the words of John Lewis and says “Being present in community is following Jesus’ incarnational approach. We connect and we engage not for the purpose of filling the pews but rather to stir up ‘good trouble’ to stir up radical hope.”
The fourth question essentially asks “how do we be church in the new normal?” As we move on from these times what happens now? Marilyn begins with “The church is the same in every age, for Christ promises, ‘Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.’ (Matthew 18:20) And, ‘we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.’ (Romans 12:5)” After relating some of the experiences of the last two years she concludes by saying that the Church is still here and over this time we have developed a new set of skills and have learned new things about the communities we are a part of.
The first optional question they chose was Question 5: How can the church community make room for all people to share their stories of faith? How can we listen to the stories of people who are not in the church? Marilyn begins by pointing out that our polity is a strength here as Presbyterians believe that decisions are best made in groups listening to each other and our councils should bring together a group of people with diverse backgrounds that can listen to each other. And she shares her experience and work making campus ministry a “judgement-free zone.”
Finally, Fina responds to Question 7: How do dialogue and witness help Presbyterians support those of other religious traditions who are targeted with hate speech and acts of violence? She starts by pointing out that Presbyterians have a long history of interfaith dialogue on which to build. But further, she talks about the need for social empathy – where we point ourselves in others’ shoes. “Our ability to walk in another’s shoes is critical to building relationships.”
This information is but a brief summary of the material on the Candidates Page and the Moderator Candidate Booklet. I encourage you to check those out for more detailed information and answers.
The election of the Co-Moderators begins at 8 PM Eastern Time this evening (Saturday, June 18). I will have the post reviewing the second Co-Moderator team published later this afternoon.