The title of this piece is a question that I’ve often been asked, as I have ended up in an informal leadership role in this loosely structured, PC(USA)-related collection of partnerships.
The simplest definition is it is a network of Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) entities, mid councils and congregations, that are mission partners with IENPG (Guatemalan Presbyterian Church) entities, including presbyteries, women’s organizations and non-governmental organizations.
Part of what makes us hard to describe is that we are truly a network — a bunch of similar but not identical partnerships loosely connected for purposes of mutual support and information sharing.
My first trip to Guatemala was in 2007. The partnership I represent is the Albany (N.Y.) Presbytery/Mam Presbytery partnership. Since I have been involved with mission with Guatemala, the network has ebbed and flowed from not very active at all to fairly active and interconnected to, as far as I know, our current state of being the most active and connected yet.
There’s no formal structure, though we may be headed there. We don’t know how many PC(USA)/IENPG partnerships there actually are, but we are trying to find out.
At the moment, there is a planning committee of about seven people, including mission co-workers Richard and Debbie Welch, Guatemala and Mexico regional liaison the Rev. Leslie Vogel, myself and Judy Persons of the South Alabama Presbytery/Q'eqchi Chisec Presbytery Partnership as co-conveners of the planning team, along with several other folks representing various partnerships.
We will hold a Big Tent program during a 7 a.m. breakfast on Saturday, Aug. 3, in the Lord Baltimore Hotel ballroom. We’re also planning a full network gathering (meaning it will include PC[USA] Partnership groups as well as the IENPG groups with which they are partnered) to be held Feb. 3-7, 2020, at SETECA seminary in Guatemala City. The PC(USA) groups last met in September 2018 at PC(USA) headquarters in Louisville.
The purposes of the gatherings are to connect, to share best practices and to “encourage one another to greater faithfulness,” the best definition of a mission partnership I’ve ever heard, shared with me by the Rev. Dr. Karla Ann Koll, a longtime mission co-worker in Central America.
Like all of God’s best work, the network is an entity that is always in process, always evolving, with individual members hoping and praying that in our work together, we are being reasonably faithful in being God’s hands, eyes, feet, ears and heart in the world.
The Rev. Kathy Gorman-Coombs is chair of Albany Presbytery’s Guatemala Partnership Task Force and co-pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Scotia, N.Y.