eNewsletter

Welcome to 2025 at the Presbytery!  Many of you are preparing for our first snow storm (so we are told ad nauseum by the weather forecasters), and the PMT staff hopes all of you are warm and looking forward to a chilly but cozy rest of the week.

The new year often brings resolutions to improve our beings – maybe our physical health, our relationships, our mental or emotional health, or myriad other items we see lacking in ourselves.  Isn’t that a quintessentially Presbyterian action?  We are reformed and always reforming—striving to be more at one with the Holy Spirit.

This year the PMT staff is taking on a resolution as well, and we expect it to require courage, dedication, and time.  We plan to encourage and facilitate communication across the presbytery—between congregations, between committees, between members and commissioners…the list goes on. Communication takes lots of courage and effort.  It can be much easier to stay in our individual or small group silos.  Let’s work together to make this year different and to establish different habits within our bounds.  If you are one of the 60+ individuals who have answered the call to serve on a committee or commission, maybe you can be the catalyst to reach across committees and build relationships.  We all have dreams and hopes for our individual congregations and for our Presbytery-wide initiatives – let’s start with trusting each other enough to talk about them.  Thanks be to God for the excitement of new challenges and new success.

Speaking of those serving on Presbytery committees/commissions, don’t forget your first opportunity to practice courage and communication is coming up.  All Presbytery committees will gather by Zoom at 9:00 am for our annual committee orientation.  We will get to meet as a large group and then each committee will have an opportunity to get organized for the year by electing vice-chairs and clerks, determining stated meeting times, and establishing goals.  We meet our incoming leadership and hear an update from the Leadership Visioning Team. Please check your email for the Zoom link and the agenda.

The Leadership Visioning Team, charged with helping us through our Presbytery wide discernment process as we move forward in searching for our next installed EP and setting our initiatives and goals needs your help.  Every voice is important in the team’s work.  To that end, the team has asked each session to respond to three questions by February 1:

1)What are the things that being part of a presbytery provides your congregation that are most important to you?

2)What are the ways that your church has participated in ‘being part of the presbytery’ that you have valued?

3)What are ways that the presbytery could better assist you in being the Church in your particular community at this particular time in history?

If you are serving a session, check with your moderator, clerk, and/or pastor for details on submitting those responses.

Our synod’s annual meeting is coming up at First Franklin on Monday, January 27. Our commissioners, RE Jim Hoobler of Downtown and TE Andy Gay, HR, will be attending.  We look forward to their report at our May Stated Meeting.

Congratulations!  Ruling Elder (Downtown PC) Stephanie Coleman has been named President and CEO of the Nashville Chamber of Commerce. Stephanie has served with great dedication on the Nominating Task Force. Her talents and skills will be great assets to the Nashville community as they continue to be to Downtown and PMT.

TE Adam Devries, parish associate at Westminster, Nashville, is presenting at the Self Care Summit at Day 7.  This time of respite is open free of charge to any pastor and non-profit leader and for a fee to anyone who is interested in self care.  For more information, see

https://www.day-7.org/selfcaresummit