Author: The Rev. Rebecca Kirkpatrick

This year marks the 35th anniversary of the Rev. Dr. David and Ruth Watermulder Theologian-in-Residence lecture series. The goal at the time was simple. As Dr. Eugene Bay described it in a letter to the Watermulders, the plan was to bring to BMPC on an annual basis, some prominent churchman or churchwoman, who would be in residence for up to a week’s time, teaching, lecturing, and preaching.

Named in honor of the Watermulders and in celebration of their leadership to this congregation and community, the list of those prominent churchmen and churchwomen reads like a retrospective of the most creative and thoughtful biblical and theological minds of the past and current generation. In this anniversary year, we are so grateful to welcome the Rev. Dr. Scott Black Johnston as our Theologian in Residence, adding to the illustrious list of those who have come before.

In his most recent book, Elusive Grace, Dr. Black Johnston begins with the story of a visit that he and fellow Presbyterian pastor Patrick O’Connor made to pray with then President-elect Donald Trump. Both Scott, as the pastor of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church across the street from Trump Tower, and Patrick, as pastor of the Trump family congregation in Queens, felt a calling to reach out in that moment in prayer for our nation moving forward.

To say that the reaction to this act of prayer was “mixed” is an understatement.

Seven years later this is still a moment of high anxiety and conflict in our nation, in our communities and even within some of our own families. That makes the topics of this weekend’s presentations incredibly apt, Fight Like Jesus: How Faith Can Inform Conflict. In his two lectures and Sunday worship, Scott will help us reflect on the wisdom offered to us in scripture for how we experience healthy conflict and how we seek reconciliation.

In Elusive Grace, he writes this on the topic of loving your enemies:

“Sometimes all it takes to lose an enemy is to see a rival as a human, to see them as worth regarding, to see them as bigger than the caricatures our minds have drawn, to see their challenges, to appreciate where they have come from, to listen to their story, all while enjoying a piece of pie together, a delicious slice of grace.

Grace is a game changer. It upends the rules of engagement. It changes us. It changes others. It frees us from everlasting spirals of anger and revenge and opens us to an elusive possibility: peace. Peace with our enemies, and peace within our broken hearts.”

In these days we all are in desperate need of a measure of grace with one another and with ourselves. Come and reflect with us on what that kind of grace looks like for us as a community of believers committed to being engaged in the world around us.

Join us this Saturday at 10:00 a.m. in Congregational Hall, as well as on Sunday in the Sanctuary worship service, and finally again in Congregational Hall at 11:15 a.m. for all our Theologian-In-Residence activities.

An essential part of our congregation’s identity is its foundation in mission. From the beginning, members of Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church were especially committed to sending and supporting mission workers around the world to teach and heal and share the Gospel. But it in the 1960s, the church significantly expanded its mission paradigm and considered what it would mean to give and work in mission in underserved areas of Philadelphia.

Session records describe an intentional effort on the part of Dr. David Watermulder to be in open and thoughtful conversations with African American clergy from Philadelphia so that the leaders of this church could better understand the ways that our culture and institutions disenfranchised people of color.

This is from the minutes of the Session on April 13, 1964:

Elder Baker recommended for the Personnel Committee that the Department of Outreach and its work be reorganized, with our Minister of Outreach designated to serve specifically as our “City Parish Minister,” whose work will be largely in the city under the supervision of the Director of Urban Work of the Presbytery and the Senior Minister of our Church, and that the total cost of this work be included in the benevolence budget of our church. On motion, the Session voted to make this change.

The Moderator presented the Rev. Bryant George, Assistant Executive Secretary in the Department of Strategy of the Board of National Missions, and Elder Hattersley introduced the Rev. Shelton Waters, Vice President of the Philadelphia Council of Churches and Minister of the First African Church at 42nd and Girard Avenue in West Philadelphia.

The Revs. George and Waters were the invited guests of the Session for a frank and thorough-going consideration of today’s racial problems. At the conclusion of an extended discussion, extreme appreciation was extended to both our guests for coming – as well as for their spirit of helpfulness.

More than 30 years later, BMPC leadership and the Session, inspired by the vision of Dr. Eugene Bay to recommit and reimagine the ways this congregation intentionally engaged in mission in West Philadelphia, launched the “Urban-Suburban Partnership.” This is from the fall of 1997:

As part of its 125th anniversary celebration, Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, in all aspects of its life, undertakes a journey in faith with the peoples of West Philadelphia, expecting that our mutual ministry will lead us all to a better place.

Primary Goals:

To reaffirm and build upon BMPC’s longstanding commitment to urban ministry. To develop a fresh way of engaging in urban ministry, which is consonant with the realities of our times. To be a community of faith which grows spiritually as a result of creating authentic partnerships across geographic, racial and socio-economic boundaries.

Rational:

After studying how the Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia engages in urban ministry, we see three key themes BMPC needs to accentuate:

Instead of DOING FOR others, we will do everything in partnership WITH them. As a community of faith, we minister to others in a way that enables us to absorb the spiritual lessons offered to us by those we serve. Individually and collectively, we affirm that love freely given expands and grows, but when horded and packaged in material form, it contracts and loses its potency.

In this 150th Anniversary year, we celebrate all the relationships built, lives impacted, communities shaped, and organizations created over the past 25 years because of the commitment, time and funding invested in this partnership.

Organizations birthed out of this program still thrive today. The Other Carpenter, which assisted residents with home repairs, made a significant impact on the lives of homeowners in West Philadelphia. That work continues to be done by Habitat for Humanity Philadelphia because of funding from BMPC.

West Philadelphia Alliance for Children continues to reopen school libraries in West Philadelphia, encouraging literacy and reading for young children and families. The West Philadelphia Children’s Choir, which eventually became Singing City Children’s Choir, carries on the mission to share a love and commitment to the arts for children and families in the West Philadelphia community. The Urban Suburban Book Group continues to thrive today as a living embodiment of the relationships envisioned when this initiative first began.

This Sunday we are privileged to welcome to our pulpit and to our adult education hour the Rev. Eustacia Moffett Marshall, pastor of New River Presbyterian Church in West Philadelphia. New River is a merger of three historical churches in that community: First African, Calvin and Good Shepherd.

As we celebrate not only our 150 years of mission work, but our 25-year commitment to West Philadelphia, we once again rely on our relationships and partnerships to help us understand how God is calling the church at large and our congregation to respond to the concerns as well as the hopes and visions of our fellow Presbyterians in Philadelphia.

Rev. Marshall will share with us the exciting journey that has brought New River to where it is today, as well as their vision for this next moment of ministry in West Philadelphia. As a recipient of a $50,000 150th Anniversary Grant from BMPC this summer, New River is positioned both to help us value and celebrate our past in mission, while also leading us intentionally and faithful into this next moment in urban ministry as a church.

I especially hope that all of you who have given your time and energy to working and building relationships as a part of the Urban Suburban Partnership will come celebrate with us this Sunday, and even more importantly, hear how we are being called in this next moment.