Salt Lake City — On a single ballot, the 226th General Assembly (GA) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) elected 249-171 and installed as co-moderators Cecelia (CeCe) D. Armstrong and Anthony (Tony) L. Larson. Both are teaching elders; Armstrong is from the Presbytery of Charleston-Atlantic and Larson is from the Presbytery of New Harmony.
Historically it has often taken several ballots before one candidate or team of co-candidates reached the majority of votes required to be elected as moderator of GA.
The co-moderators-elect were immediately installed, answering the constitutional questions in the Book of Order, and welcomed by the assembly. They will assume their roles beginning today as they preside over the election of the stated clerk of the General Assembly.
Moments after their installation, the new co-moderators, who are in adjacent presbyteries in South Carolina, gave a press conference where they were first asked how they felt.
“It’s a mixed bag of emotions right now,” Armstrong said. “The bulk of them cause me to smile, and it’s because I am recalling the ancestors who spoke this on me before I thought anything of it. So grateful for that and feeling good.”
“I am recalling the ancestors who spoke this on me before I thought anything of it. [I am] grateful for that and feeling good.” — Co-moderator CeCe Armstrong
“And I would say, primarily, I’m just feeling grateful,” Larson said. “Grateful for this Presbyterian Church family that has nurtured me, for the faith that I learned from my grandmother and from my mother and all kinds of grandparents in the church that raised me in the faith. Grateful for the church that I serve now, for their support of this endeavor. … Grateful for my wife, who when I called and asked her about this, she sort of said, ‘I wondered when it was going to be time to do this. I thought you should do it for a long time.’
“And grateful, in this moment, also for Marion and Danny, who were on this journey of standing with us and for their faithfulness and their witness and their willingness to share their faith with the church.”
During the question-and-answer portion of the election, David McDowell, a theological student advisory delegate from Union Presbyterian Theological Seminary, asked about congregational vitality, one of three emphases of the Matthew 25 initiative in the PC(USA).
In response, Armstrong said, “In order to determine vitality, you need to know exactly how your congregation will be missed if it were broken. … What in the world would be missed if we weren’t here? And if you can’t name anything, then your vitality is probably very low.”
At the press conference, the co-moderators were asked how the PC(USA) will be missed if it’s gone.
Recalling how her parents became Presbyterian and how she and her siblings were raised in the church as a result, Armstrong said, “If the PC(USA) ever decides to go away, we’ll lose all the intelligence, all the imagination, all the energy.
“And we’ll probably lose love.”
Larson told the story of the challenges his mother endured seeking ordination as a Presbyterian minister. He said, “There are women that God is calling into ministry who would not have a place to live out their calling. And that’s also true about our LGBTQIA+ siblings in Christ. We’re not the only church that welcomes that ministry.
“But even here in the United States, and certainly globally,” Larson said, “we are a minority amongst those churches that do honor those calls, nurture those calls, celebrate those calls, and believe that we can’t be the body of Christ we’re called to be without them.”
The co-moderators were asked about the overture from the Presbytery of Olympia, POL-01, which was approved by the Polity Committee last week by an overwhelming majority and seeks to add gender identity and sexual orientation to the Book of Order’s list of discriminatory protections. Specifically, they were asked how they might keep conservative congregations, many of which have openly opposed POL-01 and threatened to leave the PC(USA) if it is approved by the assembly, engaged with the denomination.
Armstrong said, “Since we don’t know what the assembly is going to do, we do trust the Holy Spirit.”
Reiterating her response to a question posed during the election about the treatment of LGBTQIA+ college students, Armstrong also said, “To anyone who’s in ministry as a member of a church, as a servant of God in any way, my first question to them is: Are you training your replacement? Not your duplicate. Not someone who’s going to imitate you exactly the way you are, exactly how you exist.”
She concluded, “Those folks who want to threaten and say, ‘We’re leaving. We’re not going to do this,’ wherever you go and whatever you do, do everything by giving thanks to God.”
Larson shared a conversation he had with two members of his congregation who were in a fellowship group and were questioned about the PC(USA)’s inclusivity of LGBTQIA+ persons.
“I believe we can’t be the Body of Christ without everyone that God is calling to be a part of this body. “And I accept that, sometimes, sometimes we’re not a right fit. Sometimes the version of the PC(USA) that is in your community might not be the right fit. But I do believe that we need to call all those, welcome all those who come and find their home with us. And that, together, God is calling us together to be the body that [God] needs us to be.”
In response to a question about challenges that have been voiced during committees and on social media that the online format for GA is challenging to building a sense of connection among commissioners, Armstrong said during the press conference, repeating what Interim Stated Clerk Bronwen Boswell told the assembly, “We haven’t had the same kind of General Assembly since 2018. So, we don’t have the data to know what works and what doesn’t work — what’s good, what’s bad, what’s up, what’s down. And Tony and I don’t know what’s to come.
What we do know is that building community requires us to use all of our resources to the best of our abilities. So even in opportunities where committees did not have a lot of time to do communicating while we were meeting, … you could have used another means of communication to talk. … I think if we’re ever going to acknowledge that we’re the Body of Christ, then we have to recognize that all parts and pieces will work together for good. … We don’t know what the future holds, but we do know who holds the future.”
When asked about the challenges of pastoral leadership in small congregations, Larson shared a story from the Presbytery of New Haven about how larger congregations are sharing resources like worship video feeds with smaller congregations and highlighting the partnership with their members. He said, “My hope would be that we embark on shared ministry where we are not silos, but that we are collectively being the hands and feet of Christ across the denomination in the best ways we know how.”
“[I hope] we embark on shared ministry where we are not silos, but that we are collectively being the hands and feet of Christ across the denomination in the best ways we know how.” — Co-Moderator Tony Larson
Also standing for co-moderators were Marian McClure Taylor, a teaching elder from the Presbytery of Mid-Kentucky, and Daniel (Danny) Morales, a teaching elder from the Presbytery of Tropical Florida.
Following the election, Taylor and Morales were asked what the journey of standing for moderator had been like for them.
“It’s been an incredible journey,” Morales said, “a journey where you get to learn a lot about the person who’s joining you on that journey. You get to learn about yourself, how you respond to certain situations, certain questions. You get to learn a lot about the intricacies of the church. Regardless of which way it goes, God’s grace is in the midst of it all.”
Referring to the election of Armstrong and Larson, Morales said, “The church is in good hands.”
“The church is in good hands.” — Co-moderator candidate Danny Morales
“Part of it is figuring out what your own priorities are and how to hone your message, and that’s a good challenge for anybody,” Taylor said. “So it’s kind of a growing experience to figure out what’s the main thing for me and how would I express myself on a huge variety of topics just in case I’m asked.”
In response to the election, McClure Taylor added, “We’ll be praying for CeCe and Tony because they knocked it out of the park, and we’re happy to support them.”
Morales and McClure Taylor will resume their roles as commissioners for the remainder of the assembly.
