By Ed Thompson

Ruling Elder Commissioner Whitney Elder of Fayetteville speaks during Good News from the Pews.

I was encouraged by our last presbytery meeting. Not so much by the vote to proceed with plans to sell the presbytery office building. That was an historic vote, a wise, appropriate, and to me, sensible vote. However, the result brought more of a sense of relief as well as the realization that now the real work begins. Yes, we do have our work cut out for us.

What encouraged me the most, however, was “Good News from the Pews.” I get frustrated with this section of the meeting sometimes, mostly when ministers try to sneak in and say a few words about their church even though it’s designed for ruling elders to have a chance to talk. Also, occasionally, someone gets overly excited and instead of talking about 1 or 2 good things their church is doing, they’ll talk about 7 or 8 things. They’re all good, I suppose, but sometimes that list seems to include events that happened 2 or 3 years ago. Sometimes, it seems like they’re begging us to attend an event they’re sponsoring. I suppose all that still falls under our guidelines, but I think talking about the most recent 2-3 good things that have happened at your church is sufficient.

This time, we had none of that. It was all good. Ruling elders talked about their church feeding hundreds of people. They described a laundry ministry. They described how their church was partnering with a group that provided transitional housing for women recovering from addiction. I didn’t keep count, but I think we had ruling elders from maybe 10 churches speak. It was awesome. I was proud. I think Jesus would be proud. It was like people were finally taking his words “Go out into all the world” seriously.

New Commissioned Pastors Jennifer Anderson (left) of First, Whitesville and Debbie Penn of Eleanor.

I was also encouraged by the fact that we commissioned two ruling elders to serve two of our churches. That makes a total of 16 Commissioned Pastors serving churches in our presbytery now, and it looks like we’ll commission at least one more at the August presbytery meeting. That means more than 15% of the churches in our presbytery will be served by Commissioned Pastors. To me, that represents the future. As our churches grow smaller, as the presbytery’s minimum effective salary grows larger, we will need more and more Commissioned Pastors. There’s still time to enter this round of Commissioned Pastor training; the final cutoff date to sign up is coming on Monday, June 6. We will offer another round of training at some point, but if you don’t sign up now while you have the chance, you’ll have to wait for probably another two or maybe even three years before that opportunity happens again.

If you or someone in your church is even halfway thinking about taking this training, I would encourage you to do it or encourage you to encourage them to do it. There is some work involved. I don’t want to hide or diminish that fact. (It helps if you like to read.) But the work will pay off. You will learn a lot. Even if you or they never serve as the pastor of a church, you will be a better, more knowledgeable ruling elder, which will surely help your church. You will also be able help other churches by putting your name on the pulpit supply list. In many parts of the presbytery, that list is pretty limited, and even in the Charleston-Huntington area, it’s not as robust as it once was.

Finally, it felt good to be back in person. I like Zoom meetings. They save time. They save money. We do things more efficiently when we’re online. We’re also able to include folks in our meetings who have moved away and still maintain their membership in the presbytery. Nevertheless, I appreciated the opportunity of being able to see people face-to-face. It’s easier to catch up when we’re together. Fellowship comes easier when we’re sharing a meal. There are sidebar conversations that just happen throughout the day that strengthen relationships.

Was it a perfect meeting? No, we can do some things better. But after a long stretch of doing business online, I appreciated the chance to meet in person. I was encouraged by the day, and I hope you were, too.