Enlarge The choir sings at .N. Jenkins Memorial Presbyterian Church. Photo by Rhiannon Bowman.

Posted: January 20th, 2010 Ken Garfield

It is not just the pastors swapping pulpits who are taking a stand for reconciliation. In welcoming a preacher of a different color through Xchange Sermons, the Rev. Tom Stinson-Wesley of Pineville United Methodist believes his congregation and others are making the same powerful statement.

He said as much in the sermon he delivered Jan. 17 to the African-American congregation at C.N. Jenkins Memorial Presbyterian Church: Being the body of Christ means being a true democracy – “Where everyone is important,” he says. “Equally important.” On Jan. 24, the Rev. Eustacia Moffett Marshall of C.N. Jenkins will drive him the same point at the 9 and 11 a.m. services to the predominantly white congregation of Pineville United Methodist:

There is unity in diversity, or at least there should be.

“I really do place value on building bridges of relationships,” she says. “To reach out across the boundaries that can so easily divide us.”

Stinson-Wesley and Moffett Marshall have long devoted themselves to the cause of bringing people together. He’s been participating in pulpit exchanges for 16 years. His passion for building common ground goes beyond color. Before putting down church roots in North Carolina, he served a congregation in Sydney, Australia, and was English editor of the Center for Social Development in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Moffett Marshall, associate pastor whose focus at C.N. Jenkins, is on youth and young adults, says faith and outreach run in the family. Her husband, Toure’, pastors Hermon Presbyterian Church in Rock Hill. Raised in Oakland, her father, Mondre, is a jazz musician, and her mother, Diane Givens-Moffett, a Presbyterian pastor.

From such diverse roots, Stinson-Wesley and Moffett Marshall have come together through the Xchange Sermons. So have their congregations.

Pineville United Methodist is a nearly all-white congregation of 550 whose motto – "Love at the Crossroads" – springs from its location at the busy intersection of Polk Street and N.C. 51. Stinson-Wesley says the church maintains a small-town feel – many of its members are long-timer members – even though it’s smack in the middle of a booming suburb teeming with newcomers.

By contrast, C.N. Jenkins is an African-American congregation of 700 located on Statesville Avenue, not far from Crisis Assistance Ministry, in a part of town where many must deal with the challenges of urban life in these harsh economic times.

Stinson-Wesley and Moffett Marshall believe that telling each other’s stories and sharing each other’s joys and challenges must be done not just on one Sunday, but on all the Sundays to come.

The message on unity through diversity that Moffett Marshall will preach at Pineville United Methodist? “I would preach it here (at C.N. Jenkins),” she says.

Says Stinson-Wesley: “We have to know that this is a step in the right direction. But just a step.”

Ken Garfield, former religion editor of The Observer, is director of communications at Myers Park United Methodist Church. He often writes on faith and values for Charlotte Magazine and other forums, and will be profiling clergy participating in the Xchange Sermons.

Click here for a schedule of the exchanges and for more information on the faith leaders who are participating.

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