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Note #7761 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

Peacemaker profiles
GA03072

Peacemaker profiles

by Midge Mack

DENVER, May 27 - The commissioners serving on the Assembly Committee on
Peacemaking are a diverse lot. Here are some of their stories.

The Rev. Mike Barron is the pastor of First Presbyterian Church, of Broken
Arrow, OK, a suburb so close to Tulsa that it often isn't identified on maps.

He's attending the 215th General Assembly this week as a commissioner from
Eastern Oklahoma Presbytery.

	Barron's congregation has about 220 active members who work in
partnership with hospice volunteers at a day care center for homeless people.
They collaborate with other Broken Arrow churches in a food program. And they
provide scholarships for neighborhood children and young people to join young
people from First Presbyterian at the presbytery camp. 

	Barron himself has just finished a five-year term on the local Board
of Education, reflecting the congregation's concern about educational issues.
A single parent, Barron has been a widower since his daughter was 12. She has
attended a number of Assemblies with her father, both as observers. This is
Barron's first experience as a commissioner.

	Barron, having observed many other committees in action, commended
the one he belongs to, the Assembly Peacemaking Committee. His fellow members
are a real joy, he said. "It's a diverse group, but they came together and
worked carefully through the issues," he said. "They were indeed a model of
the peacemaking process."

	Janet Noble-Richardson has served St. Timothy Presbyterian Church, of
Livonia, MI, for 14 years, and has led the congregation of more than 250
members to a special relationship with the inner-city congregation of
Southwest United Presbyterian Church in Detroit. 

	A lay pastor who is still a seminary student, Noble-Richardson leads
a corps of St. Timothy parishioners every Monday to Southwest, where they
tutor students and work in Southwest's food program. 

	Deacons from St. Timothy have unofficially adopted eight families
from the area around Southwest, providing support ranging from advice and
encouragement to food aid to medical care and home repairs.

	St Timothy's Vacation Bible School program, which employs a workshop
rotation plan, serves 40 children of its own and more than twice as many from
its neighborhood.

	Noble-Richardson was born and raised in Pakistan, where her parents
served as missionaries for 20 years. Her father's former church was one of
those attacked by Muslim terrorists in recent months.  

	Noble-Richardson's spouse, Matt, is a naturalist who works as a
teacher for Wayne County Parks & Recreation.  

	Elder Clark Davis of the 55-member First Presbyterian Church, of
Prattsburg, NY,  is attending General Assembly in a wheelchair, but he hasn't
missed a beat all week.

	Davis was thrilled by Sunday's Assembly-opening worship service and
has found his committee work stimulating. Retired because of his disability,
he has had more time to devote to working for Geneva Presbytery. He serves on
committees including Church and Social Concerns, Presbytery Strategies, Women
and the Church and Human Sexuality. 

	Davis and his wife have a son, a daughter and seven grandchildren.

	Elder Lawrence Stephens of the United Presbyterian Church, of
Paterson, NJ, is representing Palisades Presbytery at the 215th Assembly.

	Stephens, who is single, works as a technical coordinator for the
Paterson Board of Education and as a systems administrator managing computer
and audio systems for Public School 26.

	He said he was delighted to be appointed to the Committee on
Peacemaking because he has a special concern about the ineffectiveness of the
United Nations in world affairs and about relations between the UN and the
United States.

	Stephens' 150-member congregation, formed in 1991 through a merger of
three small churches, has established a literacy program in Paterson and
supports an adoption agency in Africa.

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