Hopes and changes

Presbyterian Mission Agency Board opens its Thursday meeting looking at reform

by Mike Ferguson | Presbyterian News Service

The Rev. Shannan Vance-Ocampo is Chair-Elect of the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board.

LOUISVILLE — Ahead of a Thursday afternoon “Power and Privilege” report delivered by consultant Marian Vasser, the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board broke into two virtual groups —  board members of color and white board members —  to discuss in closed session ways the Board might better serve people of color as it does its work overseeing and supporting the mission agency.

But before doing that that, Board Member Mary Jane Gordon, who offered up the Board’s Thursday devotion, asked her colleagues and others in attendance to name what they hope for the agency in 2021. Their answers included:

• “As agencies of the PC(USA) that we get beyond the thought and belief that there are not enough resources to go around to fund the mission of the whole church.”
• “My hope for the Board is that we be very courageous in all that we do.”
• “To not worry about resources, but focus on mission and ministry, the things we are seeking to be as a church.”
• “That we move forward with courage, confidence and hope, not out of fear and concern.”
• “My hope is to embrace uncomfortable conversations to recognize how we can do better.”

With that final hope in mind, Board members heard the Chair-Elect, the Rev. Shannan Vance-Ocampo, call Vasser’s report “incredibly important.”

“How we live together as a Presbyterian Mission Agency Board is a direct threat to the vision that we espouse,” she said, noting this portion of Vasser’s report: “If PMAB is truly committed to disrupting power and privilege dynamics, it must be willing to acknowledge how deeply embedded hierarchies and traditions are in this organization. Holding onto tradition in a way that the organization continues to operate business-as-usual is in direct conflict with innovation, diversity, inclusion and justice … In essence, to hold onto tradition is to hold onto and perpetuate white supremacy.”

Vance-Ocampo told her own story of growing up in Philadelphia, where her mother worked near the offices of the Presbyterian Historical Society.

“It was embedded in my DNA I was Presbyterian,” a church that “founded the United States” and whose members were “special and good because of that … We have history in this denomination, but I think our history warps our identity,” Vance-Ocampo said. “We have to do so much unlearning.”

“I have spent most of my adulthood unpacking what I was trained to do and who I was trained to be and what worldview I was trained to occupy,” she said. “So much of that was rooted in the white supremacy story.”

Board members are reading Kerry Connelly’s “Good White Racist? Confronting Your Role in Racial Injustice,” published in March by Westminster John Knox Press.

“As a white person on this Board,” Vance-Ocampo said, “I think it’s incredibly important to allow those of us who are not white to have space from us, and that we dive deeper into our work on how we support the agency and the work of Matthew 25.”