Skip to main content

“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” — Luke 23:42

PHEWA
Subscribe by RSS

For more information

Susan Stack
(800) 728-7228, x5800
Send email

Or write to
100 Witherspoon Street
Louisville, KY 40202

PACT history

PACT

The Presbyterian Association for Community Transformation (PACT) is the successor organization of two previous PHEWA networks —COMANO (Community Ministries and Neighborhood Organizations) and UNCL (Urban Network of Congregational Leadership), the latter of which had been known originally as UPPA (Urban Presbyterian Pastors Association).

COMANO

According to the history related in the March/April 2003 issue of Church & Society devoted to "The PHEWA Story," COMANO came into existence on a wintry day in 1981 at Second Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis. In the middle of a blizzard, young urban pastors, rural mission workers, settlement house directors, folks fighting hunger and homelessness, anti-racism advocates, educators and consciousness-raisers, university professors and poverty program survivors had been gathered together by PHEWA Executive Director Rod Martin to share their stories from widely diverse ministry contexts.

The eclectic character of that gathering came to be reflected in the name COMANO. Although they did not come from a common context, they discovered that their commonality arose from their belief that God had called them to work in the world through a particular framework — the community. They agreed that community is where God's love is made real. Thus the name COMANO expressed their shared understanding that we are Reformed and Presbyterian because we believe that good works accomplished through ordered groups do God's will in the world. This happens not just through congregations, but through any group that builds community and ministers with others in community.

From 1981 to 2003, COMANO served as a network of and for community ministry practitioners. Its members spent time listening to one another, building support and caring for those who served on the front lines of ministry in difficult contexts such as East St. Louis, South Central Los Angeles, Tulsa, Birmingham, the Hill District of Pittsburgh and downtown Detroit. Through gatherings at General Assembly and at the PHEWA Biennial Conferences, COMANO built a community among its participants.

Throughout its existence, COMANO was committed to the task of working strategically within the church to provide resources and support for community ministries. Whether working for the formulation of new General Assembly policies or in calling the church to fulfill mandates adopted by past Assemblies, COMANO sought to increase resources and programs for community ministry.

During its more than twenty years of working within the church and in communities, COMANO was successful in:

  1. lifting up community ministry as a valid form of witness and providing its practitioners with a sense of legitimacy;
  2. empowering, encouraging and supporting community ministry practitioners, who often felt out of step with persons working in more traditional ministry settings;
  3. building a conceptual framework for community ministry, one fruit of which has been the acceptance throughout the church and the broader society of congregation-based community organizing (CBCO), and its more recent manifestation as faith-based community organizing (FBCO);
  4. helping to develop a praxis of contextual theology and ministry, tied to community as a theological reality (rather than merely as a sociological construct), and sharing this understanding and commitment with the broader church;
  5. providing strategic consultations to church-related community ministries/organizations throughout the nation; and
  6. participating in the work of General Assembly to develop and support an urban strategy within the denomination (e.g., the creation of the Urban Task Force and the on-going work of the Urban Ministry Office, as well as connections with seminaries on urban ministry issues).

UNCL (UPPA)

In 1985, more than 150 persons from around the nation gathered in Chicago to discuss a number of proposals for networking various types of ministries, including one for pastors of urban congregations. Thus the Urban Presbyterian Pastors Association (UPPA) came into being.

During its existence, UPPA worked with the PC(USA)'s Urban Ministry Office, which was fully staffed in 1993, to provide leadership training for persons involved in the work and witness of urban congregations, to help sponsor the biennial conferences of the Chicago-based Seminary Consortium for Urban Pastoral Education (SCUPE), to offer retreats for urban leaders and to host a national conference on urban ministry in San Francisco in 1999.

Recognizing that ministries in the city are not just the work of clergy alone, but also involve lay leaders, UPPA evolved into the Urban Network of Congregational Leadership (UNCL) at the PHEWA Biennial Conference in 1999. Even then, however, conversations were taking place between UNCL and COMANO about the shared nature of their ministries. These conversations took place over several years, driven not only by considerations related to membership issues and responsible stewardship of church funds, but also inspired by the prospects of doing a "new thing" within the structure of PHEWA.

PACT — Merging COMANO and UNCL (UPPA)

"I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" (Isaiah 43:19)

By January 2002 COMANO and UNCL agreed to merge into a single network within PHEWA. The new network would be called the Presbyterian Association for Community Transformation (PACT). The first public notice of the pending merger came at the 2002 General Assembly in Columbus, Ohio, when flyers, brochures and buttons were distributed. Subsequently, the merger was approved by the Executive Board of PHEWA and made official at the 2003 PHEWA Biennial Conference held in San Antonio, Texas, January 23-26, 2003. At that moment, the choice of Isaiah 43:19 as the scriptural touchstone of the 2003 PHEWA Biennial Conference seemed especially providential.

Twenty years from now, when someone writes about PACT for a future issue of Church & Society, let us hope and pray that the tradition and spirit of COMANO and UNCL (UPPA) will have been sustained and extended by the ministry of this "new thing" called the Presbyterian Association for Community Transformation.

Tags: