Dear Ones,
As promised in our last edition of the Voice when we featured stories about the work of the Holy Spirit, I want to share with you another amazing young woman who is Sprit led. Sara Hill presently serves as Parrish Associate at First Presbyterian Church in Nashville. When I first interviewed Sara, we talked about the difficulties she has experienced as half of a clergy couple. Sara says that she never imagined becoming a pastor but thought she would do something in Christian education. However, she was encouraged by an associate pastor at her church who told her she had gifts for the ministry. She finally enrolled at Princeton Seminary which was near her home. There she met her future husband who came from the West Coast–a church tradition totally different from hers–no robes, no Book of Order, only contemporary music. In their third year of seminary they married and then came the job search. There were no openings for clergy couples but they ended up in Iowa serving in different churches in separate cities. This worked well enough until children came along. Families that worship together stay together but how could that happen when their parents served different churches. Still, they managed until Covid hit and church changed forever. Their story includes all the funerals and sadness associated with that time with Sara serving as a chaplain to the Fire Department where so much trauma was witnessed. This was the story I set out to tell but it has now changed drastically. Sara’s husband left the ministry; he is now a commercial pilot. She needed to become a fulltime mom since, as of today, she has two children ages 12 and 13 in Middle School. They live in Nashville, to be near his aging parents.
Last month Sara accompanied a group of First Pres members to Rwanda to celebrate a partnership with a Presbyterian church there that started in 1994 after the genocide in Rwanda. A few refugees of that conflict came to Nashville from that East African country. They were Presbyterians and looked for their church and found a home in Nashville. This started a partnership with the Rwandan church and First Presbyterian. Last month they celebrated 25 years of one of the churches there. Sara tells that the entire Rwandan church has a membership of 1.7 million people. In a country that is geographically the size of Maryland, Presbyterians make up 10 per cent of their population. Sara was thrilled to describe the vitality of that church where they have many female pastors and programs for both young and old. Thus we have a story of grace and gratitude during these times when our own Mission Agency is shifting focus. Thanks be to God for a story of how immigrants change lives. Pray for Sara as she struggles with parenting middle school children in our social media dominated world and pray for the global church of which we are a part.