wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Pennsylvania pastor, Detroit elder take PHEWA honors

[PCUSA NEWS <PCUSA.NEWS@ECUNET.ORG>]

Note #8617 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

January 21, 2005

Pennsylvania pastor, Detroit elder take PHEWA honors

Bill Thomas, Daniel Stoepker receive biennial awards

by Jerry Van Marter

TUCSON - A pastor adept at keeping churches alive while steel towns die in
the Monongahela River valley near Pittsburgh and a Detroit elder who
continues to fight for better HIV/AIDS care, treatment and research despite
the ravages of the disease in his own body were honored Jan. 15 by the
Presbyterian Health, Education and Welfare Association (PHEWA) with its two
top awards.

	The Rev. Bill Thomas, who has served small churches his entire
35-year career - most of them in struggling steel mill towns outside
Pittsburgh - received PHEWA's John Park Lee Award during the social welfare
ministry coalition's biennial conference here.

	"Whether it was in Stamford, Connecticut, the Appalachians of Eastern
Kentucky or the steel-making strip along the Monongahela River outside of
Pittsburgh," the PHEWA citation read, "Bill pastored and organized, never
separating the church from the community or faith from action."

	Thomas called his lifelong ministry in small, struggling communities
"a blessed pilgrimage."

	"These congregations were all small, but they weren't failures and
they never thought of themselves as failures," he said. "They were loving
communities that respected all. Their love and fellowship was never
predicated on agreeing with each other and they were committed to fairness,
justice and meeting the needs of their communities."

	Stoepker, a longtime elder at Westminster Presbyterian Church in
Detroit, is a leader of the Presbyterian AIDS Network , one of PHEWA's 10
constituent ministry organizations . In receiving PHEWA's Rodney T. Martin
Award he was hailed as "the heart and soul of the Presbyterian Church's
commitment to rid the world of the scourge of AIDS and to strengthen the
church's witness and ministry with persons living with HIV/AIDS and their
families and loved ones."

	Stoepker, who is renowned for the colorful Hawaiian shirts he always
wears, blinked back tears as he told the crowd gathered for the awards
luncheon that "all I ever wanted was to bring color and joy, love and
commitment to everything I could do to make our church care more and do more
for people living with AIDS and for those who love them."

	The John Park Lee Award is named for the Philadelphia native, born in
1903, who in the 1950s coordinated the health and welfare efforts of the
Presbyterian Church through his work with the Board of Pensions and the Board
of National Missions. He guided the National Presbyterian Health and Welfare
Association (now PHEWA) through its organizational period and helped to
establish national Presbyterian standards for neighborhood centers, homes for
the aged, institutional chaplains, children's homes and health services.

	The award was established in 1969 "to recognize and perpetuate the
qualities of concern, sensitivity and involvement singularly exemplified in
John Park Lee."

	The Rodney T. Martin Award, established in 1993, honors the man who
served as PHEWA's executive director from 1972 to1990. It's awarded
biennially to recognize "a significant long-term contribution to the ministry
of PHEWA."

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