wfn.org | Detroit’s canoeist-commissioner caps church career

[PCUSA NEWS <PCUSA.NEWS@ecunet.org>]

Note #5949 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

24-June-2000
GA00005

	Detroit’s canoeist-commissioner caps church career

	by Midge Mack

LONG BEACH, June 24 -- Meet Nancy Beauchamp, commissioner from the
Presbytery of Detroit.

	Born in Marinette, Wis., she grew up in Menominee, Mich.  Nancy remembers
she could spend her allowance (usually for a ticket to the Saturday movie
matinee) only if she’d given a proper amount to Sunday School the week
before.  “And every time any of us left the house,” she says, “we went with
the Biblical admonition: ‘Remember who you are and what you represent.’”
(Isaiah 51.1)

	Nancy married in 1948 after graduation from Presbyterian-related Carroll
College in Waukesha, Wis., and with her husband, moved to the Detroit area.

	Unfortunately, he was killed by a drunk driver in 1965.  In 1973 Nancy, now
a teacher and single mother, became a member of a fast-growing young
congregation, University Presbyterian Church in Rochester, Mich., where she
became church treasurer within months. That was only the beginning.

	Nancy has since served three terms on session, the first as chair of
Finance and President of the Corporation, the second as chair of Church in
Society, and the third as clerk.

	She was commissioner to Detroit Presbytery for eight years, taught Adult
Bible Study, rang handbells,  worked in  the congregation’s extensive
gardens, served the presbytery’s Camp and Conference Committee and later its
independent Presbyterian Development Corporation.

	Currently she is a member of the Self-Development of People committee of
the Synod of the Covenant and continues to be active at University Church,
now more than 900 members.

	Still, seated in a canoe with a paddle in her hand is Nancy’s favorite
picture of herself. When she was a Girl Scout leader, her troop, the only
integrated troop in the area at that time, always went on a canoe trip.
Thirty years later, one of  those same young women continues to organize an
annual canoe trip and Nancy hasn’t missed a trip yet.

	As a woman in her 70s, Nancy could qualify as a typical commissioner from a
typical mid-western suburban congregation and urban presbytery, but her
uniqueness and vivacity belies any such typicality. She’s delighted to be
here and to be part of the Theological Issues Committee because a former
associate pastor convinced her that all of us are theologians.

 	“I believe this is a crucial committee  for  dealing with  what the church
believes,” she says.  “I believe the Holy Spirit placed me there at this
time.”

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