Pentecost Offering helps young people flourish

LOUISVILLE — Grace Blackstock knew that she wasn’t dreaming.

Yet when the 18-year-old Denver native was tapped to join the production team that helps plan the 2025 Presbyterian Youth Triennium (PYT) — themed, not coincidentally, “As If We Were Dreaming” — she practically had to pinch herself.

Image

Held every three years, Triennium is a gathering that draws more than 3,000 high-school-age youth, youth leaders and young adults from the U.S. and internationally. Sponsored by the PC(USA) in partnership with the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in America, the 2025 event will be held July 28–31 in Louisville, Kentucky.

Although Blackstock has held numerous leadership roles as an active member of Wellshire Presbyterian Church in Denver Presbytery as well as in her high school’s theater program and student government, the senior honors student and aspiring church leader said that she found the PYT production team’s process to be both exciting and new.

“It was really nice to be able to have my voice heard, no matter what my idea was, as we started to make decisions about which ideas would be realistic and what would be best for the conference,” said Blackstock.

Encouraging young leaders like Blackstock to share their unique gifts with the church and the world is what the Pentecost Offering, one of the PC(USA)’s four Special Offerings, is all about.

For more than 25 years, the Pentecost Offering has not only been empowering young people by providing financial support to the Office of Presbyterian Youth and Triennium, but the Offering also helps to fund the Young Adult Volunteer Program and the Educate a Child, Transform the World national initiative.

Forty percent of the Pentecost Offering is retained by individual congregations for local ministries in their communities, while the remaining 60% is used to support children at risk, and youth and young adults through ministries of the Interim Unified Agency.

Although the Pentecost Offering may be taken anytime, most congregations receive it on Pentecost Sunday, which this year falls on June 8.

“Young leaders are a gift who are all too often seen more as ‘developing leaders,’ which is a shame because many, if not most young Presbyterians, have deeply rooted ideas about how to offer hospitality, service, spiritual practice and witness,” said Gina Yeager-Buckley, manager of the Office of Presbyterian Youth and Triennium. “Our younger Triennium production team members, like Grace, and our volunteers have the ability to shake up what has been done in order to do what is needed now: what will have the deepest impact for ‘the young soul.’”

Because Blackstock knows that the Pentecost Offering is there to help her realize not only her own dreams but also her dreams for the future of the PC(USA), she is bold to invite the church’s support.

“Please give generously to the Pentecost Offering because it’s important that young people like me are given the resources we need to thrive within the church,” she said. “Making a gift to the Pentecost Offering is a significant way to help with these efforts.”

Or, as Yeager-Buckley added, “a way to put our money where our faith is most deeply rooted.”

Discovering and transforming the world through the Young Adult Volunteer program

From the classroom to the locker room — and back again — Steffan Johnson has found himself on a 27-year-long quest to discover the “real world.”

Image

The South Carolina native — who spent his undergraduate education at the PC(USA)-related St. Andrews University playing college football while earning a degree in philosophy and religious studies — said that because those years didn’t bring him anywhere close to finding what he was seeking, he enrolled in Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.

“In seminary, I dove into everything that the professors gave us, including Martin Luther and Augustine,” said Johnson, who received a master’s degree in theological studies in 2023. “And even though seminary was life-changing, I can’t just go and tell a stranger on the street what Martin Luther said. I needed to find the language where I could connect with everyday people.”

And he ultimately did find it — through the PC(USA)’s Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) program.

The YAV program — which has been changing the lives of young people ages 19–30 for three decades — also emphasizes living in intentional Christian community, spiritual formation and vocational discernment.

“I committed to my YAV year as a 25-year-old fresh out of seminary,” Johnson said. “Up until that point, I was just a student pursuing my education, which was a little nerve-racking. I had friends starting families and businesses, and it felt like my first time entering the world. The YAV program helped me understand the flow of the real world.”

An ecumenical, faith-based year of service that is lived out in sites across the U.S., virtually and around the world, the YAV program is supported, in part, through the Pentecost Offering.

“Our slogan, ‘A year of service for a lifetime of change,’ is really true,” said Destini Hodges, coordinator of the YAV program, which has produced more than 1,900 alums over the past 30 years. “I love the way the young adults are ‘transformed’ through their service.”

As one of those alums, Johnson was placed by the program in four different sites across New Orleans during his term as a YAV. His service encompassed stints with the Jefferson Food Bank; Mid-City Ministries, an after-school program; Rebuilding Hope in New Orleans (RHINO), a citywide ministry focusing on service projects and volunteer work originally established in response to Hurricane Katrina by St. Charles Avenue Presbyterian Church; and the Program of Hope, run by First Presbyterian Church, which ministers to New Orleans’ homeless population.

“During my discernment process, one of the aspects that compelled me was volunteering in these multiple communities in New Orleans,” Johnson said. “This was my chance to see where my studies were useful in the world. While learning more about the city, I saw myself helping people in need — youth and young adults — all while sharing a community with other YAVs, enjoying jazz music, great food and even better people.”

Since he found that he was still discerning his vocational path when his year in New Orleans came to a close, Johnson applied for and served in a virtual YAV placement with the PC(USA)’s Asia Pacific and Africa offices.

He was grateful for the opportunity — and for the Pentecost Offering, which largely made it possible.

“Presbyterians should give to the Pentecost Offering so that young people can experience diverse communities, learn more about their place in the world and build an appetite for justice for future generations,” said Johnson. “By giving, young adults are given a chance to grow socially, vocationally, and, more important, spiritually.”

Risking everything to choose life

On last January’s coldest Sunday — with single-digit windchills and temperatures in the low teens — “M.” and her family sat huddled together near a back pew of Beechmont Presbyterian Church in Louisville, Kentucky.

Image

They had walked.

But their 1½-mile walk to worship that morning was nothing compared with the dangerous passage they had just endured.

Because “M.” and her children had been threatened with violence in their native country by drug cartels demanding money, she decided to risk everything to seek asylum and start a new life with her husband and family in the U.S.

Traveling by foot through six countries, “M.” and her four children had to cross the treacherous Darién Gap — a swampy jungle that connects Panama and Colombia — before eventually reaching Louisville.

“They came to church with all their kids and were warmly welcomed,” said the Rev. Debbie Braaksma, parish associate at Beechmont. “They stayed for our potluck and told us their story.”

Beechmont member Sylvette Rivera Pabon came to know “M.” and her two youngest children, “J.” and “D.,” now 13 and 10 years old, when they later enrolled in La Escuelita Learning Hub (ehs – kweh – litah), the congregation’s after-school program, which Rivera directs.

Originally launched by the church and the Presbyterian Hispanic Latino Ministry of Preston Highway, a worshiping community of Mid-Kentucky Presbytery, in January 2021 at the height of the Covid pandemic, today La Escuelita serves some 30 children and youth from refugee and new immigrant families — like “M.’s” — offering them trauma-informed care, including homework help, enrichment activities, English as a second language assistance and family case management support.

Rivera, a native of Puerto Rico, is a certified teacher with more than 20 years of experience. She was attending Beechmont and working as a preschool teacher when she heard that La Escuelita was seeking a full-time director.

Because she also has experience as a youth counselor, an adult adviser at the Presbyterian Youth Triennium and as a deacon at her former home congregation in Puerto Rico, she understands her role as director of La Escuelita more holistically.

“I get involved in case management,” said Rivera, who is often called upon to provide transportation, counseling and a variety of other services for the parents of the children in her care. “All the moms feel that if they need something, they can call me or text me. Sometimes when they need to ask me for something, they are afraid. But they still ask because they know I can help.”

The Rev. Dr. Alonzo T. Johnson, coordinator for the Presbyterian Committee on the Self-Development of People, said that Rivera’s and La Escuelita’s work — which embodies the goals of the PC(USA)’s Educate a Child Initiative under his oversight — is vital to its surrounding communities.

“I have seen the work of nurture, care, compassion and wholeness being fostered by La Escuelita,” Johnson said. “The program’s emphasis on educational access helps to tackle systemic poverty, while their work in counseling, promoting literacy, encouraging artistic expression and promoting overall health is critical in grounding young people and their families with the support needed to live lives of self-determination and wholeness. La Escuelita also understands the importance of promoting diversity, peace and non-violence.”

Since that cold January day, “M.” has become very engaged in both the Presbyterian Hispanic Latino Ministry of Preston Highway and the church, where she has served as a volunteer at Beechmont’s Vacation Bible School and ensures that her children attend Sunday school every week.

“J.” and “D.” also received scholarships last year to Cedar Ridge Camp, a mission and ministry of Mid-Kentucky Presbytery, where they attended summer camp and the Tween Retreat.

Braaksma said that La Escuelita Learning Hub and the camp experience were especially transformational for “D.”

“At first, he was crying a lot, but since then, what I can see is that he is more communicative, he’s working better with his peers and he is happy,” she said. “Instead of being sad, now he says, ‘OK, let’s go and play.’ When you bring kids together in a loving setting, change doesn’t happen overnight, but it does happen.”

And the Pentecost Offering helps to make such positive and lasting change possible.

“I encourage all Presbyterians to give generously to the Pentecost Offering because you can make a considerable difference in the lives of youth at risk,” Johnson said. “Giving to the Pentecost Offering is also a spiritual practice, one which demands us to use our resources to take up the work of bringing Good News to the poor as well as welcoming, loving and affirming all children as Jesus does and calls us to do.”