General Assembly Mission Council

Cover Story

August 2010

Emerging leaders

The face of church leadership is changing. As our nation and church become more diverse, leaders are arising in unexpected places, bringing gifts from a variety of racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Presbyterians Today enlisted the help of Bruce Reyes-Chow and Byron Wade, outgoing moderator and vice moderator of the General Assembly, and others with extensive connections around the church in order to find some of the emerging leaders in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Here are 10 we would like you to meet.

Neal D. Presa

At home in the global church

A glance at 33-year-old Neal Presa’s résumé could make a person twice his age feel like an underachiever. This young pastor of Middlesex (N.J.) Presbyterian Church holds three master’s degrees (two from Presbyterian seminaries) and a Ph.D. in liturgical studies, awarded in May. He has served on an array of church-related boards, committees, commissions and councils.

He’s made friends at the Vatican and has been a delegate to major Reformed church gatherings. What inspires him the most, Presa says, is his involvement in the worldwide church: “I’m really excited about the ecumenical movement.” And he’s well positioned to pursue what he sees as his calling: “to work at all levels for the visible unity and full communion of all parts of the body of Christ.”

Presa already has exercised leadership at the highest levels of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.): as vice chair of the General Assembly Mission Council (2003–04), commissioner to the General Assembly (2006) and chair of a special committee that brought recommendations to this year’s Assembly on retranslating the Heidelberg Catechism.

But Presa’s life is more than all church, all the time. When he travels he packs running shoes so he can work out on a treadmill between meetings. In addition to preparing sermons and leading new-member classes for his small congregation, he joins his wife, Grace, in chauffeuring their sons Daniel, 7, and Andrew, 5, to Cub Scouts, tennis lessons and other sports activities.