In return, Nelson offers up a valedictory on his seven years of service as the denomination’s top ecclesial officer
by Mike Ferguson | Presbyterian News Service
The Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II is Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
LOUISVILLE — The National Black Presbyterian Caucus held a banquet Friday night honoring the retiring Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II, and Nelson honored caucus members right back with an hour-long valedictory that was clearly heartfelt, sometimes funny and always insightful.
Nelson, who’s served since 2016 as Stated Clerk, the denomination’s highest ecclesial office, has announced he’ll retire June 30.
“We have a great heritage in the life of our denomination. We have had strife and struggles … We’re not a perfect denomination, nor are any others. We’re all striving to do what the Lord Jesus Christ calls us to do,” Nelson said. “When I look out onto this room tonight, I give thanks to God for friendships and relationships … that have been given over the years — those who got me out of a lot of trouble and some other folks like Jimmie Hawkins [who succeeded Nelson as the director of the Office of Public Witness on Capitol Hill] who got me into trouble.”
“It has been a rewarding opportunity to serve this denomination,” Nelson said, “and to serve my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”
“Thank you for saying I did some good things,” Nelson said after many people had done just that. “But the reality is I have to acknowledge my wife, the Rev. Gail Porter Nelson. Jimmie talked about me going to jail — actually, Gail is the one who kept me out of jail. There’s something about having a real strong woman. My mother was like that,” Nelson said, realizing he was making a public comparison that can sometimes lead to trouble, and the crowd laughed. “I have to always acknowledge there were women who kept us in line, who reasoned with us, and most times kept us out of the trouble we didn’t have to be in.”
Nelson looked back fondly at “the individuals who nurtured me and cared for me growing up” in Goodwill Presbyterian Church in South Carolina, “where my granddaddy pastored. Wow! It’s been a journey,” he said. “I give thanks to God for people like you,” he told the large crowd. “The challenges are great, but the opportunities are even greater. It’s about spirit, mind and heart, and about how we learn to gather people in.”
Even as the pandemic has wound down, “there are children who have not been to church in their lifetime,” Nelson noted. “What does it mean to open our hearts and our minds to a world that is struggling with who to love?”
For too many people today, “sometimes the only hope they have” is by showing up at the front door of a church on Sunday morning, Nelson said. “We as preachers are under the gun: We’ve got to have a good sermon every Sunday morning,” especially for those unexpected visitors who may desperately need to hear a word from God that day.
Before the pandemic, Nelson said, many people made this determination: I’ll go to church if nothing else to make sure “I’m in good standing with the Lord.”
“We used to be able to guilt trip them on Sunday morning: ‘If you don’t come to church, the Lord’s going to strike you down,’” Nelson said. “Doesn’t work anymore, does it?” he said to a chorus of laughter. “It’s a different time, my friends … People have come through challenges, some we thought we would never see in our lifetime, and yet we see people dying on the vine, looking for a place of hope and possibility. They’re looking for someone to show a little bit of love, to hold their hand while they run this race, to remind them there’s hope somewhere.”
When people do show up with their difficult questions, “pastors themselves often don’t have the answers, and they feel like failures,” Nelson said. But that’s been the case “since the beginning of time. We have come through slavery. We have come from brokenness and pain. We’ve come through nothing to eat and nobody to love, and yet we’re sitting here today. Just take a look at yourselves,” Nelson urged those in attendance at the Marriot Hotel in North Charleston, South Carolina. “How does that happen? It happens from a faith … that somehow or another, despite everything that takes place, the Lord God still holds our life in God’s hands.”
“We know the Lord has brought us a mighty long way,” he said.
Nelson said he was “with some folk the other day who were talking about this phrase, ‘the frozen chosen.’ Y’all ever hear that?” Nelson told his laughing audience. We are the chosen frozen.” The problem Nelson has with that phrase is that “everything I’ve ever known that’s been frozen is cold, and everything I’ve ever known that’s chosen was determined by somebody else.”
The hope “that the world needs right now,” he said, “is to see somebody just like us who will go outside the church door, put their arm around somebody and tell them, ‘I don’t know how you’re going to make it, but the Lord can make a way.’”
Jesus would walk up to people and start talking, “and nobody understood what he was saying,” Nelson said. “But he kept on going, and he used somebody as an example and suddenly everybody knows what he’s talking about because they see it in themselves. When I was being brought up, they called that witnessing. Over an over again, Jesus heals people and walks through struggles with them and is with people who others said, ‘They aren’t even worthy of your presence. What’s Jesus doing?’”
“We have to be real with God’s people,” Nelson said. “We don’t come to them as individuals who have all the answers. Nor do we have the greatest track record. What we see in a brother or sister or child who’s struggling, quite frankly, that’s also something in us.”
“We have to be able to have those conversations and walk every step of the way,” Nelson said. “That’s what church is all about.”
“Humble yourself. Tell the truth. That’s what Jesus did,” he advised. “For those people you don’t know how to engage, just pray with them and walk with them for a while. If you do it long enough, you’ll find out they know a whole lot more than we thought.”
“We don’t like to have these kinds of conversations, but if the Presbyterian Church is going to be relevant in the 21st century, we’ve got to be real. We’ve got to tell the truth in love and stand beside those who cannot stand for themselves.”
“People need to have folks with a conscience who will not stop [advocating for change] until justice comes,” Nelson said, lamenting that “we are too soft these days.”
Nelson expressed frustration that during a recent trip to Capitol Hill, he heard from lawmakers and staff members that “we aren’t even talking about immigration.”
“People want freedom for their children, and we aren’t even talking about it in the U.S. government? Think about if it was your child. Think about what’s happening every day in our underfunded schools,” he said. “If the church is absent from that discussion, don’t expect the world to change.”
As a church, we will “either be the healers of our problems, or the perpetuators of them,” he said. “The church has been the place where Black folk went when they had nowhere else to go. They took in people and said, ‘come on in here.’ That’s the community I grew up in.”
The biennial conference of the National Black Presbyterian Caucus concluded Saturday with worship.
The Stated Clerk reminded listeners of the words of the Great Commission: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
“Go where they are! Make them a part of who we are,” Nelson said. “That’s really what it’s about. I get tired of us talking about losing members. We are losing members because we don’t go to the people,” Nelson said to applause.
“I’m just a child of God who grew up in South Carolina, preached a little while and tried to help folks along the way,” he said. “At the end of the day, I’m still a sinner saved by grace through faith. I don’t have all the answers, but I’ve got some, and I’m still searching for others. All I know to do is hold onto [God’s] hand.”
“I’ve been thinking about this stuff for a long time,” Nelson said. “Every now and then you run into a few friends who come together like this, and you can stand up and just share a little bit of what has come your way. I’ve been blessed on the journey called life, been blessed to serve this church, been blessed to be part of Black Presbyterians united and all we have gone through … Be faithful, my friends. Stand firm because Christ Jesus has set you free. It’s been a good journey. Thanks be to God.”
Once again, Presbyterian News Services offers its thanks to the Rev. Jimmie Hawkins, who supplied the audio recording of Nelson’s remarks.
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