First on my items of the day is to remind everyone that the second and last Review of Minute Books and Registers for the year is coming up on October 5, 2019 at Calvary Presbyterian Church, South Pasadena beginning at 10:00 am that morning and expected to end by noon. I try not to take up too much of everyone’s Saturday and give people a chance to sleep in a little as well. A great many of the churches of this presbytery are expected that day as only a few came to the spring review. I am looking forward to seeing so many of my clerk and pastor friends on that day. Please contact me at my email (statedclerk@sangabpres.org) if you plan to attend.

As the fall gets into full swing, the Executive Presbyter and I look forward to the annual Mid Council Leaders’ Meeting and our respective organizations’ meetings which are held every October somewhere in the United States. This year we will meet in Baltimore, Maryland between October 17 and October 21. We meet in Baltimore because next year’s General Assembly will be held there. We will have the privilege of getting a basic knowledge of the logistics of the Conference Center as well as accommodations for next year. We will attend meetings that will inform us of upcoming foci of the meeting, as well. Workshops are available to each of us that are geared to our various position needs. I have requested a workshop that will discuss the proposed changes to the Book of Discipline, something I really need to understand. I have requested another one that will discuss the difficulties of maintaining records in an age with such climate change, as well as changes in technology. I am truly looking forward to this workshop. I am hoping that the denomination will be coming up with some plans to meet the challenges we are all facing in that area. There is another one specifically geared toward Digital Pastor Files that is of interest to me. Another workshop dealing with the drafting and updating of Sexual Misconduct Prevention Policies to incorporate Child, Youth, and Vulnerable Adult Safety is available again this year. I have made my requests, we will see what I get on my schedule in October. The Executive Pastor will have requested workshops geared to her needs for the presbytery. We’ll see what she gets when we arrive. This is always a busy and long few days and we come back tired but also full of new ideas and information to share with members of this presbytery. We do look forward to sharing when we return.

There will be a notification in the September Presbytery Packet of the dates that have been chosen for Presbytery Meetings for the 2020 year. But, in the event some of you may not see that packet, here are the dates:

January 14th – Tuesday, 7-9 PM

 March 28^th – Saturday, 9am-12noon

 May 30^th – Saturday, 9am-12noon

September 26^th – Saturday, 9am-12noon

November 17^th – Tuesday, 7-9pm

(We have the privilege of having the Co-Moderator, Cindy Kohlmann with us at our May 30^th Meeting. We are excited about that!)

We are now looking for locations for those various meetings. If you would like to volunteer your church as a possible location of one of these presbytery meetings, please contact the stated clerk and/or the executive presbyter. We would love to discuss that idea with your church leadership.

Lastly, I continue to work on an individual basis with new clerks in the presbytery this year. If you’re a new clerk who would like individual training or are a pastor of a new clerk, please contact me and we can set up a time and place for an education meeting to help get a new clerk acclimated. I have done several of these meetings and they have proved very successful for the new clerks. I look forward to meeting with anyone who needs some help.

Blessings,
Diane M. Frasher
Stated Clerk

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.

John 13:34

God calls us to love one another, and while sometimes this commandment leads us to do good things for others, at other times it leads us to do good things in partnership with others.  This is a constant issue we struggle with in the broad area of mission – doing for or doing with.  While I believe that there is a place and actually a need for both, I tend to gravitate toward opportunities that would fall under the “doing with” heading as that can lead to empowerment and self-sufficiency of the individuals or groups we are working alongside.

The Presbyterian Committee on the Self-Development of People (SDOP) is a perfect example of an empowerment model.  SDOP makes it possible for us to financially support the programs or projects of disadvantaged communities through grants.  This may sound very familiar – grants for programs or projects in disadvantaged communities.  But, SDOP grants come with criteria unlike most other grant programs we may be familiar with.  First, the project must be presented, owned, and controlled by the group of disadvantaged people who will benefit from it.  This first criteria makes it impossible for the project to be one where some group is “doing for” others.  Second, the project needs to address a long-term correction of conditions that keep people bound by poverty and oppression.  This second criteria leads directly toward empowerment and self-sufficiency of oppressed people.  There are other criteria that include being sensitive to the environment; not advocating violence; and describing, in detail, goals, objectives, the roles of direct beneficiaries, and the methods used to achieve goals and objectives.  However, the first two criteria are what set SDOP apart and make it harder to find grant recipients sometimes.

The churches in our Presbytery have lots of good programs and connections to organizations with good programs that help poor, oppressed, and marginalized people in our communities in a myriad of ways.  We are very good at “doing for” others and know of lots of organizations that run on that model.  However, are you aware of groups in your community that are working to lift themselves out of poverty and oppression and make their own lives better?  I would encourage all of us to open our eyes and ears and search out the groups of disadvantaged people in our area that are working to empower themselves.  They are both exciting and inspiring!

As a reminder, our Presbytery is part of a joint SDOP Committee with the Presbytery of San Fernando.  This committee has grant money available every year to support the work of groups that meet the SDOP criteria.  If you know of a community group that meets the SDOP criteria and has a project or program that could use some financial assistance, please contact Wendy Gist at gist.wendy@gmail.com and visit https://www.presbyterianmission.org/ministries/sdop/ for more information.

Last week we included a couple of small staff-related announcements, and I wanted to expand on them today. 

The first is the next step in Twila’s decision to move to part-time in 2020, and to focus on the bookkeeping function that has grown so large with the increase in property-related income for the Presbytery.  Twila had initially thought she would go part-time in June of this year, but is staying full-time through December, as she can get better benefits on an upcoming knee surgery through the Board of Pensions (another example of how our Board of Pensions provides superior care for their members, and a reward to us for keeping Twila in Board of Pensions even after their new structure made it more costly to do so).

But Twila is determined to go part-time starting January 1, 2020, and she is already getting her paperwork current in anticipation for training her successor.  The hope would be for us to find a new Administrator/Associate Stated Clerk in time for that person to go through the preparation and work for the November presbytery meeting, so we hope to review applications and interview folks soon.  If you know of someone who is interested (or if you are), please read the position description (please click HERE to download a copy of the position description) and send a resume to me at wendytajima@sangabpres.org by September 14^th, which happens to be our next Presbytery meeting.

When we developed the position description, the Personnel Committee and I discussed the critical attributes of the job.  The contribution to the work of the Presbytery that I am most grateful for is Twila’s combination of efficiency/detail orientation with her supportive attitude towards everyone she works with.  We are all aware that this person is the initial and regular contact for the Presbytery, so how they act and respond is a direct reflection on the Presbytery as a whole—so responsiveness, clear communication, grace, and knowledge are important.  I am also aware that with the staff working in multiple places, this position is the anchor that everyone can rely on, so dependability is key as well.

It sounds like an impossible job, and surely we do not expect to find someone with all of Twila’s gifts and knowledge easily.  The Personnel Committee reminds us that it is unlikely to find someone coming in with all of Twila’s knowledge coming into the job, but over time the person will learn.  So don’t be intimidated!  We will look for someone who has the inherent qualities needed, and we will commit to providing support and training for someone motivated to learn and grow.  For instance, the person does not have to even be Presbyterian—in which case we would likely drop the “Associate Stated Clerk” from the title unless the person becomes a ruling elder (though the compensation and duties would stay the same).

Last week I also briefly announced the resignation of Rev. Jake Kim from his position as quarter-time Associate for Ministry Development.  Jake has been pursuing a pastoral call since he left Northminster at the end of last year.  He has accepted a call as Senior Pastor for Church of the Valley in Apple Valley.  This is a large church that had been a member of Riverside Presbytery, but has since moved to ECO, so COM will be recommending to the September presbytery meeting that Jake be released from his ministry responsibilities with the PC(USA).  This may not be a “forever” thing; there have already been pastors who have moved back and forth between PC(USA) and ECO; in fact the interim at Church of the Valley was Jan Armstrong, the former executive presbyter for Santa Barbara Presbytery.  And Jake is not rejecting the PC(USA) on principle but because the call happens to be in ECO.  While some people may have hard feelings about ECO, this is where the call is for Jake, and I believe that God works through all people and churches in good faith.  So I pray for blessings on Jake’s work with them, and I am sure that people will be inspired by Jake’s infectious love for Jesus Christ.

Of course, given the distance to Apple Valley, he will be moving over that way, and cannot maintain this quarter-time position with the presbytery.  As it happens, the presbytery leadership has already begun to evaluate our current structure, and I am meeting with members of the two committees Jake staffed (Vision and Strategy, and Education), so this is also an opportunity to look at the most effective committee and staffing for the presbytery’s needs today.  More on that as things develop.

As for our newest staff member, Kristi Van Nostran, you have been very welcoming to her as she works to support our asylum-seeking neighbors.  She has already met with several of our churches, and one family will be hosting two people temporarily as they are released from detention and prepare to move out-of-state to await their court dates.  Just yesterday I preached at First Presbyterian Altadena, and some leaders expressed interest in helping with Kristi’s work.  They, and I, see a direct correlation between the detention of Japanese-Americans in World War II and the detention of those lawfully seeking asylum now.  Veronica Ota, a young adult leader at the church, has done ethical reflection on her family’s incarceration during World War II and has researched literature of the hibakusha, the survivors of the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  You are invited to celebrate with the church’s annual Fall Festival on September 21, 3-8 pm, with a presentation at 4:30 pm that Veronica will be leading.

So there are many opportunities to consider in the coming weeks:

• September 14:  Get ready for Presbytery at Puente de Esperanza in La Puente.  And if you are interested in the Presbytery Administrator/Associate Stated Clerk position, please apply by then
• September 19:  Come to Westminster Gardens to learn about “Grateful Stewardship” as you build financial resources for your church’s ministry, 10 am—2 pm; lunch provided.  Please RSVP by September 9 to presby@sangabpres.org
• September 21:  Come to First Altadena’s Fall Festival 3-8 pm, especially the 4:30 presentation on Japanese-American incarceration during World War II and those affected by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
• Anytime, maybe now:  Contact Kristi Van Nostran at presbywelcome@gmail.com to invite her to meet with your church and consider ways you can care for our neighbors seeking a safe place to live for themselves and their families.

Lately I’ve shared with everyone I meet the great work of our presbytery.  As we look ahead to the fall, with a new school year and new church initiatives starting, I am so grateful to be able to work with you all, and in this time of great potential and opportunity for new ways to serve God’s realm, I am excited to see how we all can join together in God’s great harvest.  Thanks for being such faithful leaders in the ministry to your communities, and to this Presbytery.

Your fellow laborer,

Wendy

The Bible makes it clear again and again – God’s people were not made to be alone. It is full of stories of great friendships – Jonathan and David, Ruth and Naomi, Elijah and Elisha, Paul and Timothy, and a number of others. We even have the consideration of Christ’s love being of the kind that means laying one’s life down for one’s friends.

Many of us found it easy to make friends in our youth. After all, we were thrust into years of doing life together with a number of other children our age in school, whether we liked it or not. Eventually, we found others who we thought were interesting enough to pass the time with, and some of us even ended up with lifelong friends as a result. But friendships seem to be a lot harder to make once we hit adulthood, as the opportunities for regular social interaction with people beyond our family and coworkers become slimmer and slimmer.

A joke that has been passed around Christian circles recently says that Jesus’s first real miracle was making 12 friends in his 30s!

But even though real friendships in adulthood might be harder to find and more precious to keep I in our adulthood, friendship may be the key to keeping us happy and healthy as we age, according to an article on the subject from Generations, a magazine published by the American Society on Aging.

If you’ve raised children (or remember being a child yourself!) you might recognize the tendency we all have to listen to our friends more than we do to members of our families. This is because we usually develop friendships with people who are most like us in age, values, interests, and attitudes, people have. For many of us who have kept up one or two life-long friendships, we often take the wisdom of their words as though they came from somewhere within ourselves. And considering how long they’ve known us, it’s easy to understand why!

Even as our lives shift and change, as they inevitably do as we age, the need for the core elements that friendship provides – “companionship, mutual support, reciprocity, affection” – remains a constant within our lives.[1]  In other words, we never outgrow the need we have for our friends. We needed them to help shape us and sustain us in our youth and we need them even more as we age. We are more inclined to lean on our friends rather than our family for words of comfort, or for much-needed direction. We are far more likely to confess our worries or weaknesses to our friends or go to them when we need help.

And the scientific research backs up the warning from Ecclesiastes! Indeed, those who do not have a companion to help them up when times get hard or to buoy their joy when things are good are in worse shape than those who do. According to a study carried out by Rosemary Blieszner, the author of the Generations article in question, older adults without meaningful friendships tend to be more withdrawn, socially isolated, fall more often, and experience higher incidents of heart disease, depression, and cognitive impairment.[2]

As we move towards Labor Day, consider using the holiday as a time to catch up with a friend you haven’t spoken to in awhile. Or have a meal with one you see regularly. It may prove to be one of the best things you can do for your health and your spirit.

Blessings,

Rev. Lauren Evans

Chaplain to Retired Church Workers

[1] Blieszner, R. “The Worth of Friendship”, Generations, Spring 2014, 26.

[2] Adams, R.G., and Blieszner, R., 1995. “Aging Well with Friends and Family.” Aging Well in Contemporary Society. American Behavioral Scientist 39(2): 209-24.