This year, two slates of Presbyterians are standing for the positions of co-moderators of the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s 222nd General Assembly. Commissioners to the assembly will elect the co-moderators during the 7 p.m. plenary session on June 18.
The first co-moderator team is Denise Anderson, pastor of Unity Presbyterian Church in Temple Hills, Md., and Jan Edmiston, associate executive presbyter for ministry of Chicago Presbytery. Anderson was endorsed by National Capital Presbytery while Edmiston was endorsed by the Presbytery of Chicago.
The second co-moderator team includes David Parker, a lawyer and a ruling elder at First Presbyterian Church in Statesville, N.C., and Adan Mairena, the organizing pastor of West Kensington Ministry at Norris Square, and pastor of Yeadon Presbyterian Church. Parker was endorsed by Salem Presbytery and Mairena was endorsed by Philadelphia Presbytery.
The Office of the General Assembly has released the 2016 Moderatorial Candidates Handbook, which includes biographical information, a statement from each candidate, and Q&A with each slate of candidates.
Anderson/Edmiston
“One of us is a lifelong Presbyterian, raised in the tradition, ordained to the Ministry of the Word and Sacrament (at a time when it was still relatively difficult to do as a woman), and has had a continuous career in a variety of settings. The other of us came to the PCUSA as a young adult at the encouragement of seminary professors and at a church that had been chartered only a few years earlier,” they wrote in the handbook.
“Our stories paint a hopeful picture because we come from places of both established Presbyterian witness and where God is doing a ‘new thing.’ We are witnesses that Christ is calling people from a variety of experiences to service in the Church and in this denomination specifically. Jesus is doing some exciting things in and through his church!”
Citing a “deep love for and commitment to” the PCUSA, they “dream of ways the church can live into its full potential. Despite the changing religious landscape of our country, we believe that God is not finished with the PCUSA. In fact, Christ is still actively working and calling us to follow him, and we intend to do our part to ensure we answer that call.”
Anderson and Edmiston say they are committed to being co-moderators of the whole church. “This is easy to do because we love God’s people and this is not easy to do because we have our own opinions and perspectives. And yet, we strive to see people – including those with whom we might disagree – through the eyes of Christ.”
Parker/Mairena
“David and Adan are very different people: David’s father’s family descended from Mayflower Puritans, his mother’s from English and Scots-Irish settlers who arrived in Philadelphia in 1683 and migrated to North Carolina in 1747. Adan’s parents fled Honduras for their political dissent,” they write in the handbook, “But Adan and David love the Presbyterian Church (USA) and will give being Co-Moderators their all.”
Reflecting on the role of the moderator to be an ambassador, Parker and Mairena write “Moderators reconcile people and institutions in the bonds of peace both within and without PCUSA as Ambassadors of the Body of Christ.”
According to them, the reconciliation begins when the moderator facilitates a “respectful, orderly General Assembly discussion for seven days and flows as a living stream into the other 723 days of the Moderators’ terms.”
They ask, “If we love God with our soul, how can we not love one another in this Church, the body of Christ? … If we love God with our whole mind, we break down any artifice that divide us one from the other by reason of our creation or circumstance, seeing beyond the law to the life-giving Spirit. PCUSA starts with love of God and love of each other.”
To read more of the questions and answer in the 2016 Moderatorial Candidates Handbook, click here.