Church Leadership

November Session Update 

• Session mourns our “saints” from the past year. Jean Kalberer, who died this past summer, left a generous bequest to Fairmount.  We thank Walter Kalberer for making the planned giving gift possible.
• We welcome Brenda Horth as Candidate Under Care. Brenda transferred from Presbytery of the Grand Canyon to Presbytery of the Western Reserve, and seeks a pastoral call using her “gifts of: creativity, writing, preaching, hospitality, and compassionate listening to lift up the severity of the situation of homelessness in Cleveland and elsewhere.” Brenda – and husband Peter Horth, Fairmount Parish Associate – in Cleveland since 2017, serves as Co-Moderator on our presbytery’s Ministry Advocating for Homeless Persons; is a Fire Watch volunteer at Denison UCC, where homeless are permitted to sleep; and is a Copy Editor for the homeless peoples newspaper, Cleveland Street Chronicle. Brenda and Peter host those watching the Fairmount 11 o’clock service on Sunday mornings online.
• Session thanks Mark Eisele and the Endowment Committee for their revision of the Endowment Policy, which Session approved.
• Session appointed an Administrative Commission, consisting of Elders Megan Bennett, Sarah Stone and Ben Sperry, to receive with Rev Ryan and Rev Lindsay new members into the church prior to their welcome at the 11 o’clock service on Sunday December 3, 2023. 
• Greater Cleveland Congregations (GCC) initiated the Color of Health Campaign to Cancel Medical Debt.  GCC will raise $40,000 to retire $4,000,000 in Cleveland residents’ medical debt. Other area churches have contributed more than $8,000. Serve Council approved a contribution of $1,000. Session encourages Fairmount members to match that amount. Just Google “rip medical debt gcc color of health” and donate either online or by check.

Session approved communions at the Midweek Sabbatical every Wednesday through December 20, 2023, from 5:30 to 6:00 pm.

Session is reviewing the 2024 budget, and is eager to participate in the Queer Christian Liberation zooms with Rev Jonah Overton during October; as well as the Interfaith Book Study in which we will be reading “The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time” by Judith Shulevitz (available in the church office or at your bookstore), and meeting at the Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple October 24, and at Fairmount November 14.

Session celebrates the work of GCC (Greater Cleveland Congregations) in its work to distribute its “Voter Guide for the 2023 General Election”; its drive to raise $40,000 to erase $6,000,000 in Cleveland residents’ medical debt; its “Youth Bindover Issue Team” meeting with Juvenile Court judges, obtaining the judges’ promise, “We will work with you” in assigning more cases to the Cuyahoga County Public Defender Office; and its use of grant monies to provide primary healthcare in the Lee Harvard neighborhood.

Session invites the congregation to study and discern through prayer and action the 225th General Assembly in 2022 approved offer of apology to African Americans for the sin of slavery and its legacy, and its “Litany of Repentance” which starts with this statement: “As white Christians we repent of our complicity in the belief in white supremacy: the belief that people of European descent are superior in intelligence, skills, imagination, and perseverance. We acknowledge that this belief in white supremacy has been the foundation of, and an excuse for, atrocities against people of African descent in the United States and in the world.” Our church will study how Fairmount can act in its community to counter the Presbyterian Church’s past inaction regarding slavery and white supremacy.