Missionary

Our Covenant Relationship

Welcome To Our New "Affiliated Missionary"
At Memorial Presbyterian Church

The Reverend Nanette Sawyer is our new Affiliated Missionary.  And we are excited about her and her ministry.  Wow...what a bold new thing she is doing!

At its most recent stated meeting, the session unanimously elected Nanette to the honorary staff position we have been calling an "affiliated missionary."

First of all, let me tell you about her and her work in the Chicago area.  The Reverend Nanette Sawyer is ordained as a Minister of Word and Sacrament with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).  Her call is to reach out in the name of Christ and capture the hearts and minds of young adults (in their twenties and thirties) who have not found the institutional church relevant in their lives.  In other words, she is leading the way to form a community of young believers in the city of Chicago who might otherwise be lost to the traditional Christian church.

As a result of her leadership in a ministry called the "Wicker Park Grace" many religiously disenfranchised young adults are discovering the rich heritage of the Presbyterian tradition and are involved in new and creative ways to become part of a strong Christ-centered community . . . a community that practices love, compassion, justice and service to the world around them.

The Wicker Park Grace community is empowering and equipping young adults to "become" the church; that is, as young adults they are accepting the leadership roles and the responsibility to demonstrate the Kingdom of God to their own known world.  The Reverend Nanette Sawyer has the ministry of making Christianity appealing and accessible to a generation of young, intellectually gifted, and highly transient folks who are discovering or re-discovering their need for a relationship with Jesus Christ. 

In the language of Presbyterian polity, Wicker Park Grace is classified as a "new church development" project, and the Reverend Nanette Sawyer is the missionary evangelist for the project.  Nanette pastors the emerging church, which currently worships and fellowships in an art gallery in a hip, trendy city neighborhood (Wicker Park) on the west side of Chicago.  Thanks to her missionary work, many who have been wounded by past negative experiences with a church, as well as those who have fallen away from the church of their past, now find nurture and spiritual fellowship at Wicker Park. 

As our Affiliated Missionary, Nanette Sawyer will receive our financial assistance to help support her salary in this unique and critically important outreach.  As is our custom at Memorial Presbyterian, we will continue to receive an offering for "our" missionary on each communion Sunday.  We will be hearing much more from Nanette in the future as we anticipate a growing relationship between our congregation and the "mission field" of Wicker Park.  Thanks be to God!