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10-February-1999 
99059 
 
    Notes about People 
 
    by Jerry L. Van Marter 
 
    General Assembly Council executive director John Detterick has 
announced his appointment of Katherine M. Lueckert as deputy executive 
director. 
    Lueckert, an elder at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis, 
is currently assistant city manager for Plymouth, Minn. She has extensive 
experience in general administration and particular experience as a budget 
and telecommunications manager. 
    In his weekly letter to GAC members announcing Lueckert's appointment, 
Detterick said, "I am impressed with Kathy's strong drive and commitment to 
accomplish the task at hand, which she couples with a sensitivity and 
concern for her colleagues." 
    He quoted her as saying about her working style: "I believe that any 
project, process, or issue will have a better result if it is `done with' 
rather than `done to.' In most organizations, the process used is as 
important as the final product. Folks need to have an opportunity to have 
their voices heard, their input considered, and have a role in shaping the 
end result." 
 
    # # # 
 
    United Methodist laywoman Margaret Sonnenday of St. Louis was honored 
by the Consultation on Church Union with its first Christian Unity/Racial 
Justice Award during the organization's recent 18th Plenary meeting. 
    The award was presented during a banquet recognizing veteran ecumenists 
from COCU's nine member denominations, which claim a total membership of 17 
million. The consultation, a unity effort conceived in the early 1960s, 
includes three predominantly African-American churches, and COCU has given 
sustained attention to combating racism. 
    Sonnenday, who is white, was cited for "longtime service on behalf of 
racial justice and Christian unity." She first became active in a local 
unit of Church Women United (CWU) in 1948 and went on to serve as local, 
state and national  president of that organization, which brings together 
Protestant, Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox Christian women in 
advancing interchurch understanding. 
    The soft-spoken Kansas native helped start CWU's "Urban Causeway" 
program, which helped middle-class church women learn about the needs of 
people in the inner city. In St. Louis, she helped bring Jewish, Muslim, 
and Christian women together for dialogue, culminating in an annual "Women 
of Faith" conference. She has been a leader in a local program that sends 
women of different races and faith groups into the public schools to "tell 
their stories," often to youthful listeners who have had no contact with 
people of other races and ethnic groups. 
 
    # # # 
 
    For the first time, an African - the Rev. David K. Yemba - has been 
appointed as moderator of the Faith and Order Commission of the World 
Council of Churches (WCC). 
    Yemba, who succeeds Dr. Mary Tanner (Church of England), is a United 
Methodist minister in the Church of Christ in Congo, and is currently dean 
of the faculty of theology and professor of Christian theology at Africa 
University, a United Methodist-Related Institution in Mutare, Zimbabwe. 
    Four staff appointments also have been announced by the WCC. Karin 
Achtelstetter, from Germany and a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church 
in Bavaria, is the WCC's new media-relations officer. Genevieve Jacques, 
from France and a member of the French Reformed 
Church, is now executive secretary for international affairs. The Rev. 
Nyambura Njoroge, from Kenya and a member of the Presbyterian Church of 
East Africa, is executive secretary for education and ecumenical formation. 
And the Rev. Faitala Talapusi, from Samoa and a member of the 
Congregational Christian Church in Samoa, is executive secretary/lecturer 
at the Ecumenical 
Institute in Bossey, Switzerland. 
    Mary Ann Lundy, the WCC's deputy general secretary since 1995, retired 
at the end of January. 

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