From Sunday to Sunday
A behind-the-scenes journey into the life of the church
The sun is yet to rise over the Midtown skyscrapers when Security Captain Douglas Potts pulls into the parking lot of First Presbyterian Church to start the day. On Sundays, volunteers begin to arrive at 5:30 a.m. to prepare breakfast for women and men in need. All through the day, the halls are filled with people scuttling to Sunday school classes, worship services, and assorted meetings. Those who have time stop for coffee and chatter.
Children race from worship venues to “godly play” with “Miss Katie” Covington, Director of Children’s and Family Ministry and Director of Parents’ Morning Out (PMO). Nursery workers rock babies. Toddlers snack on Goldfish crackers.
The choir rehearses in the sanctuary before singing at the traditional 11:00 a.m. service. In the broadcast room, Production and Audio-Visual Manager Tim Haney sits before a control board streaming worship services over the internet.
The day isn’t over at noon when Dr. Jens Korndörfer, Director of Worship and the Arts as well as the church’s organist, takes his fingers off of the keys following the last note of the postlude. Thirty to forty youth are back in the evening for fellowship, games, and opportunities to grow in their Christian faith.
Many people think of the church as a Sunday institution, but for years, First Presbyterian was busy twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year.
As many as twelve women at a time lived on the fourth floor of the Smith Building in the Edna Raine Wardlaw Coker Women’s Transformation Center. During the pandemic, these women were transitioned to other housing, and the shelter remains closed for the time being due to a massive reconstruction project that will eventually reconfigure the facility. When it reopens, it will have the capacity to house up to nine women, each with her own bedroom and bathroom.
Rev. Dr. Katie Sundermeier leads Word before Work, an early morning Bible study that engages with the previous week’s sermon.
Even without overnight residents, the church operates from before dawn to after dusk. If anyone could estimate how many events and activities take place here each week, it would be Office Manager Beverly Heath, who is in charge of reserving space for meetings. A gospel singer and songwriter in her other life, Heath keeps track of the Bible studies, support groups, councils, women’s circles, committees, and classes that meet in the church. There are also weddings and funerals, special conferences, counseling sessions, and small groups that meet in staff offices.
Babies and small children come to Parents’ Morning Out and the church’s preschool each day. Older children and adults take lessons at the School of Fine Arts, and clients come for sessions at the Samaritan Counseling Center.
Preschoolers wait to be picked up in the afternoon.
However, not even Heath can account for all of the luncheons, Zoom calls, and off-campus meetings that take place regularly throughout each week. Some of these groups formed decades ago and are still going strong. Then there are the hundreds of people who come for food, clothing, hygiene products, counseling, and social services.
Even the most active members aren’t aware of everyone and everything it takes to make the church a beacon to its members, the city, and beyond. What follows is just a sampling of what a busy week at First Presbyterian entails.
Monday
As the morning begins, the carpool line is full of parents dropping off their children for preschool. One hundred and forty-five children attend the state’s longest continuously operating preschool. The Parents’ Morning Out program serves another sixteen.
Later in the morning, pastors meet to pray and coordinate care for members going through illness, bereavement, family turmoil, or other crises.
At about 12:30 p.m., members of the Community Ministries staff greet the people lining up outside of Fifield Hall to receive assistance. By the time the doors open at 1:00 p.m., more than thirty people are waiting, and dozens more will arrive throughout the afternoon.
Case manager Olivia Brueggemeyer takes the names of those who use the church as their postal address and are there to pick up mail; a fellow social worker makes a list of those who want to apply for birth certificates or identification; Le’Terron Lindley, a social work intern, is making note of who needs clothes.
Community Ministries volunteer Adele Shepherd boils eggs for the Sunday Morning Prayer Breakfast.
Security guard Pokhiya Powe, known as “Po,” is standing by in case he’s needed. An eight-year veteran of the staff, he says he grew up in a church that was mostly open for Sunday worship and Wednesday Bible study. “This church is open all the time,” he says. “The best part of my job is in Community Ministries, when I see people who are actually getting the help they need, seeing them be so thankful about how the church and the Lord have blessed them.” Powe says he tries to always remember when he’s dealing with people “that I represent the church. I represent something greater than me.”
As the people enter the building, they form a line to pick up sack lunches that have been prepared by volunteers; then they sit and wait their turns to receive assistance. The laughter of preschoolers in the hallway waiting to be picked up wafts into the room.
When everyone is seated, Community Ministries Director Tricia Passuth stands to speak. “We’re happy to have you here today,” she says warmly. She announces that a grief group is starting, then informs that the church’s MARTA cards have not come in yet. She urges them to register and vote. “I don’t care who you vote for,” she says, “but it’s important to exercise that right.”
Lincoln Simpson, Community Ministries Logistics Coordinator, leads those in need of clothes up to the second floor, where they choose from pants, shirts, jackets, shoes, and backpacks, all donated by church members.
Franchot Bell, fifty-three, has been coming to the church “off and on” for six or seven years. After spending two and a half years in the Fulton County jail, he was released a couple of months ago. An atheist when he was incarcerated, he says he became a Christian when “I finally had a chance to read the Bible.” Besides receiving assistance from Community Ministries, he’s also a client of the Samaritan Counseling Center on the third floor. He says that he’s off of drugs and alcohol and regularly attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. He’s still looking for housing but currently has clothes, food, and a place to receive mail. “Everything I’ve got came from here,” he says.
Calvin Plant has come for lunch, company, and Bible study. “I already got everything I need,” he says. Plant grew up in Moreland but lived in North Carolina before returning to Georgia in June. He worked as a landscaper, a barber, and a motivational speaker before finally succumbing to an unnamed disability. The church’s “opportunities, outreach, and resources are very, very divine,” he says.
At 3:00 p.m., Plant gathers with another handful of men and women in the chapel. Bible study today is led by Justin Farron, an intern from Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. Farron interned at First Presbyterian last year and chose to return because of the church’s Community Ministries. That has a way of happening. Both Rev. Connie Lee, who retired as community minister in 2019, and Rev. Kate Culver, her successor, started out as theological student interns.
On this day, Farron is examining Hebrews 9:15 and Paul’s description of a new covenant: “so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance.”
They discuss how God works through other people. When it’s time to dismiss, a woman offers to close with a prayer.
“Heavenly Father, we just want to thank you for this Bible study,” she begins.
Tuesday
The morning begins with a meeting to review the bulletin for next Sunday’s worship services. What announcements will be included? Will Director of Publications Lee Barrineau need to add an extra page? Which words should be capitalized in the introit by the children’s choir?
In the afternoon, a small group gathers in the chapel to celebrate the life of Judy Ann Stokes Gervais. Rev. Rob Sparks, Associate Pastor for Care, waits for family members who are caught in Midtown traffic. Ten minutes after the designated time of 3:00 p.m., the service begins with words from the Gospel of John: “Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”
Bus driver Julia Brooke brings seniors to church on Sundays and, throughout the week, drives residents in subsidized living facilities to the grocery store.
Gervais and her husband, Felix, attended an On Ramp luncheon for prospective members just nine days before. She had been raised in the church, then worshipped other places as an adult before reconnecting with First Presbyterian online during the pandemic. She attended a mental health fair sponsored by the church and the Samaritan Counseling Center in person. “She was passionate about mental health,” Sparks says. “She talked about becoming a member again.”
Gervais and her husband had planned to join at a Session meeting with other new members the previous Tuesday, but Gervais was hospitalized for tests, she told Sparks. He went to visit her the next day and arrived right after a physician had told her that nothing could be done.
“I walked into her room right after the doctor left,” Sparks says. “Judy looked up at me and said, ‘Rob, I always thought when I got to this point in life I’d have something profound to say, but I don’t. So I’ll just say goodbye.’ Then she laughed. It was her way of breaking up the almost palpable tension in the room.”
They talked for a while, then shared a prayer.
“The last thing she said to me was, ‘Rob, I want my obituary to say I was a member of First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta.’”
It did.
Throughout the memorial service, the work of the church continues elsewhere. Mentors are meeting in the hall with people who have come to Community Ministries. In the women’s bathroom outside of Fifield Hall, a woman is bathing with paper towels and water from the sink. She is thankful, she says, that the church keeps a supply of sanitary products there.
Walking down another hall, custodian Jerome Smallwood is telling another staff member about a baby possum that has taken up residence in front of the church.
Wednesday
Rev. Dr. Katie Sundermeier is in the group counseling room behind the Care Office a little after 7:00 a.m. Other women saunter in for A Word before Work, a gathering in which they discuss the scripture and subject from last week’s sermon.
“I love small groups, and I also love groups open to everyone,” Sundermeier says. Then she jokes, “The way to have a small group that is open to everyone is to have it at 7:30 a.m. in the morning.”
Nine women regularly attend.
This morning’s topic is a sermon in a series titled The Character of the Church: Cruciform Compassion. The scripture is a famous passage from the Gospel of Matthew in which Jesus says that whenever someone feeds, clothes, welcomes, or visits “the least of these brothers and sisters of mine,” it has been done to him.
Discussion focuses on different ways of practicing compassion, including volunteer opportunities at the church. The gathering ends with prayer requests and a charge that “we need to figure out how God is calling us to respond.”
Even as this group ends, women are filing into the church for another study group.
Later in the morning, outside the church’s kitchen, Sandi Harsh is organizing the “meal brigade” for Meals on Wheels, a ministry she has directed for twelve years. It began as a mission to take food to church members who were sick, in mourning, or had new babies. It evolved into a service for elderly homebound people in government-subsidized high-rise apartments. Six drivers deliver a total of forty-plus meals per day to six high-rise buildings. At times, the meal count has added up to as many as seventy per day.
Eighty-year-old Al Sherrod, a parishioner at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, is sorting and packing meals in another area. Special meals are available for people with various dietary restrictions. Sherrod organizes them into bags based on the order they will be delivered in each building.
Retired from his job as Technology Director for Coca-Cola in Europe, Sherrod says he volunteers because he has the time and “it keeps me out of my wife’s hair.” He loads meals into his car and drives to Campbell-Stone, an income-based Buckhead apartment building. He darts up steps and down halls, knocking on doors and leaving meals. He’s recognized by both staff members and residents and receives hearty thank-yous from some. One woman, who is getting onto an elevator as he passes, blows him a kiss and waves.
“It’s a satisfying thing,” he says.
“Along with the tangible gifts of food, our fifty-plus volunteer drivers provide friendship, hope, and caring to our recipients,” says Sandi Harsh.
Early in the evening, as most of the church staff head home for the day, the second floor begins to fill with the sounds of music. First, the orchestra rehearses, then the choir.
Choir and orchestra codirector Dr. Daniel Bara advises the musicians to put “more daylight between dah-dah-dah-de-de-de-dahde-dah.” They understand, play the passage again, and are rewarded with a grin and “Yeah, that’s great.” A few more suggestions, another run-through, and Bara is satisfied. “Really lovely, everybody. Lovely flutes. That’s great.”
As orchestra members pack up their instruments, Bara moves next door to the choir room. He jokes that they will sing a selection “Acapulco,” rather than a cappella. He leads the singers through “muddy chords,” advises them to make sure they don’t lose their o’s, and asks for “a little more conviction from the tenors.”
When practice is over, he thanks them for their hard work and says, “Bravo!”
The choir members make their way to the parking lot. Some stop to talk between the cars.
Thursday
In years past, members of a 9:30 a.m. women’s group would sit in their cars on Thursday mornings waiting for the earlier men’s group to give up their parking spaces. But during COVID, both groups started meeting via Zoom and learned that they could include members who had moved away, and nobody had to fight traffic!
The core of the women’s group, Sisters in Christ, formed more than two decades ago to work with a curriculum called Disciple, which covers the Old and New Testaments.
They followed that up with another smallgroup study called Companions in Christ. The group has completed a four-year program called Education for Ministry, delved into various books of the Bible, and explored topics including Celtic Christianity, world religions, Indigenous spirituality, environmentalism, and anti-racism.
Today, they are discussing Karen Armstrong’s book The Lost Art of Scripture and where to find holiness. Each gathering begins with worship, followed by a question. Today’s question is “What is the source of your experiencing the holy?”
The group has prepared dinners for women in the church’s Transformation Center and lunches for Community Ministries clients. Several members are part of a ministry that knits prayer shawls for people undergoing difficult circumstances or marking special life events.
They have donated coats for the unhoused and chainsaws to a presbytery in south Georgia, where homes were damaged by a storm. A few years ago, disturbed by the news of a cutback in overnight shelter space for women and children, they raised enough money to build out space for forty beds at City of Refuge. They joked at the time that they were “feisty old women,” a phrase that they shortened to “feisties.”
The women have shared their stories with one another and have seen each other through the deaths of siblings, parents, husbands, a grandchild, and one of their own members. They’ve rejoiced in children’s marriages and the births of grandchildren.
“This group is always amazing, often challenging, and never boring,” said Iris Dodge, who is also a leader in the prayer shawl ministry. “Not only have I studied harder than I ever did in college, I’ve learned to think more deeply and to experience God’s creation in new, exciting ways. Every time we meet, we worship, pray, read, and, of course, laugh. This group always engages our minds and hearts.”
While some Thursday groups continue online, a noon men’s group founded a decade ago by Vic Cavanaugh and Charlie Cunningham has resumed in-person meetings in the Archives Room, bringing their lunches as well as their ideas. Unlike some more structured groups, the purpose of this gathering is simple fellowship.
Youth and college ministries at First Presbyterian engage more than 100 students each year.
They’re building on a “shared history among trusted friends committed to the life of the church and who enjoy each other’s company,” says member Ike Cobb. “We’ve all been on different committees and councils in the church and in the presbytery. There’s always a time frame and an agenda. Here there’s a rough time frame but no agenda.”
Conversation this Thursday morning ranges from newspaper articles about the amount of money being spent by statewide political campaigns to the trend in some churches to downplay their denominational identity.
Moncure Crowder stays on after the meeting. As the former chair, and currently most active member, of the Archives and History Committee, he spends most Thursday afternoons sorting through old records and filing new ones. Even during the COVID shutdown, Crowder faithfully tried to keep up with the paperwork and electronic records generated by the church.
He was recruited back in 2010 by Bill Lyons, a previous chairman who was no longer able to participate in church activities. Crowder, a retired bank executive, said being keeper of the church’s history “gives me a purpose.”
He’s written, designed, and published a sheaf of booklets about various architectural features at the church as well as historic events. Lyons, the grandson of former Senior Pastor Dr. Sprole Lyons, wrote about the windows and the church’s founders. Crowder produced an accompanying forty-eight-page illustrated booklet, "An Imaginary Ride to Found a New Church," examining the city of Atlanta during the time when the church first convened. It begins with Crowder’s vision of what founding pastor Rev. John Wilson could have been thinking and feeling as he saddled his horse to ride from Decatur to Atlanta to preside over the founding of the city’s first Presbyterian Church.
Crowder’s most ambitious project was documenting the church’s history and architectural features so that it could be listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
He’s come to appreciate the church even though he arrived relatively late in life. He said that he “hadn’t been to church except for weddings and funerals for thirty-five years” when he married his wife, Sandy, in 1995. She had insisted that he promise to go to church at least once a month. After a few years in another congregation, they began attending First Presbyterian.
“In our church’s 175 years, we have always been a leader in the community in carrying the city forward,” he said. “I think it’s important for current members of the church to understand that they are the caretakers of a fabulous heritage. That creates a responsibility. If you are part of something that’s such an important part of the city, you need to keep it going.”
“Not only have I studied harder than I ever did in college, I’ve learned to think more deeply and to experience God’s creation in new, exciting ways."
Iris Dodge
Friday
Rev. Dr. Tony Sundermeier is at the church for a midmorning wedding rehearsal. The bride is Allison Gail Hendee (Allie), daughter of Pam and Bo, who have been members for twenty years. Allison was confirmed in the church and is walking down the aisle just as her sister Meg did twelve years earlier. Their grandfather, retired obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Armand Hendee, is one of the church’s oldest living members at ninety-eight. That distinction belongs to Ted Shirley, who is 100 years old.
Allie will marry Alan Edward Burleson— whom she met through a mutual friend—in one of fifteen weddings that took place at the church in 2022.
A joyous group of family and friends is gathered near the front of the sanctuary this morning. Among them are Alan’s three children. Three of the church’s volunteer wedding coordinators—Mary Susan Stacy, Carol Dew, and Tina Sharpe-Hansen—stand by, waiting for Sundermeier to begin.
He invites everyone to take a seat, introduces himself, and begins with a prayer thanking God for the day and for Allie and Alan, their commitment, and their love. “We’re better for it,” he says. “The world is better for it.”
Then the program begins. The bridal party and the parents proceed to the narthex, where the coordinators will line them up and send them down the aisle. Sundermeier runs through the ceremony and reminds the couple, “You’re marrying each other; you’re not marrying me, so look at each other.”
Near the end of the rehearsal, he asks Alan’s children, Pierce, Parker, and Jackson, to come up. They will be included in the ceremony to symbolize the creation of a new family.
Sundermeier turns to coordinator Carol Dew, who gives instructions for the wedding the following night, and forty minutes after it begins, the rehearsal is over.
“Have a great day, and don’t forget the license!” Sundermeier reminds the couple.
After the wedding party leaves, the church is in the hands of the nonpastoral staff: the administrators, security guards, custodians, and others whose work is often overlooked by those who take for granted that donations will be recorded, bathrooms cleaned, doors unlocked, tables and chairs set up for meetings, and audiovisual equipment in place and operating.
Custodial supervisor Carolyn Bridges is cleaning the kitchenette across from the work room. With twenty-five years at the church, her term of service is second only to Director of Accounting Peggy McCurdy who has been at the church since 1991. One of Bridges’s three grown sons used to work at the church. Her nephew was a supervisor there, and her sister is now a part of the custodial staff. “I trained them all,” she says. She stays on, she explains, because “I like the teamwork. It’s more like a family atmosphere.”
In Fifield Hall, Bennie Crawford is installing flags of the countries where the church has global partners for World Communion Sunday. Crawford, who started work at the church in 1999, sets up rooms for meetings and other events, supervises the grounds, and helps the security guards.
After growing up in a Pentecostal church, he finds worship services at First Presbyterian a bit staid. “Pentecostals show their emotions more,” he says, but he loves “the atmosphere of fellowship” and the work of Community Ministries at First Presbyterian.
Kathy Kite
Saturday
Kathy Kite is walking across the church parking lot, carrying bright-yellow sunflowers that have been kept in a flower wholesaler’s refrigerator since earlier in the week when she bought them. She and Anne McCloud are the flower guild volunteers whose turn it is to prepare arrangements for Sunday’s 11:00 a.m. service. She goes back for snapdragons, hydrangeas, and something called pistachio foliage, which has clusters of small brownish-purple berries.
Flowers unloaded, she pulls a tarpaulin out of the flower room and spreads it over the carpet, rolls out two plant stands, and gathers water into big white buckets. When McCloud arrives a few minutes later, they divide the flowers evenly between the two buckets, put foam oases into shallow containers, cover the foam with chicken wire, and tape it tightly.
One by one, each of them snips the end off a flower or a stem of greenery and sticks it into her pot. McCloud’s friend Anne Moore, a former church member, has come to help. McCloud and Moore start with some ferns that Moore has brought, arranging them in a circle to form a skirt around the outside of the oasis and to hide the foam.
Kathy Kite, Anne McCloud, and other members of the flower guild assemble large arrangements for worship, then break them down into smaller bouquets for care ministers to distribute.
The women, both new to the twenty-two-member flower guild, explain that they learned about floral design by watching veteran arrangers and by attending a class called Church Flowers 101 at Faith Flowers in Virginia Highland. The shop’s owner, Laura Iarocci, has chaired the fifty-member Flower Guild at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. Philip for twenty years and wrote a book on church floral design.
Kite, who joined First Presbyterian after moving to the area five years ago, says she joined the flower guild because “having flowers in the church is a great way to memorialize and honor people, and to be a part of that is very special.”
Guild member Beth Edwards keeps track of who’s donating flowers. These are being placed by Rose and Michael Roberts in honor of their grandchildren.
McCloud, a church member for about twenty years, is following a family tradition: her mother and both grandmothers were flower guild members at their respective churches. “It’s a good connecting point with them and another connection to the church,” she says. The hydrangeas she’s working with remind her of one of her best friends, Mary Busko, who died in 2021 due to complications from a stroke. “One of the last gifts she gave me was a big bouquet of hydrangeas,” McCloud says.
They continue working, stem by stem, putting in, pulling out, trimming, moving, standing back and squinting, then adjusting.
About two hours after the women arrive, they stand back for a final look.
Checking the back of her arrangement, McCloud smiles. “Those two sunflowers look like eyes,” she says. “And this is a mouth. The flowers will be grinning at the choir.”
Tomorrow, after the 11:00 a.m. worship service, they will break down the large arrangements into smaller vases, putting some around the church and leaving others to be delivered to members and friends of the church. Care minister Rev. Rob Sparks, along with other pastors and church members, will deliver flowers to those who are grieving a loss, those homebound or hospitalized, or those going through a difficult time. Members celebrating anniversaries, birthdays, and other milestones will also receive flowers.
The flower designers are not the only ones preparing for Sunday, however. There’s other preparation going on, for the Sunday Morning Prayer Breakfast and for a meeting of the nominating committee that will recommend the next class of church lay leaders.
In the kitchen, Adele Shepherd, longtime Community Ministries volunteer, is putting twenty dozen eggs into pots to boil. Each guest at Sunday’s breakfast will receive two eggs, an orange, a banana, a sausage biscuit, jelly, coffee, and an orange drink. Shepherd says she’s filling in for fellow breakfast volunteer Karen Thompson, who’s out of town.
Tomorrow morning, Shepherd will be up before dawn and in the church kitchen again, wrapping sausage biscuits, packing to-go boxes, pouring coffee, and visiting with guests, “doing whatever needs to be done.”
In the work room, a printer is churning out big spreadsheets. Sheila Daniely, Executive Assistant to Sundermeier, has come to the church on Saturday to prepare material on nominees for a Sunday evening meeting. Eleven years into her work at the church, Daniely says, “I love my job!”
By midafternoon, the Hendee-Burleson wedding party starts to arrive. The men have brought a television, and when they’re not posing for photographs, they watch college football.
In the narthex, the wedding coordinators discuss last-minute details. Guests start to arrive well before the doors to the sanctuary are opened.
At the appointed time, coordinator Tina Sharpe-Hansen pushes a button to signal to organist Jens Korndörfer that it’s time to transition from the prelude to the bridal march.
With Allie and Alan standing before him, Sundermeier begins. He reads words from the bride and groom, expressing gratitude for their family and friends. When he asks the congregation to promise to support the couple, they respond with a resounding “We do.” Then he reads a verse from Proverbs that Allie and Alan have chosen: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”
The ceremony is very traditional and also very personal. Sundermeier reads quotes he has collected from the couple about each other. He blesses the children, then prays over the new family. When he has presented them as husband and wife for the first time, organist Korndörfer hits the first notes of the celebratory Widor toccata, and the wedding is over.
Sunday
Today the cycle begins again. Volunteers at the breakfast, Sunday school for children and adults, babies in the nursery, three worship services, a World Communion Sunday display in the Wirth Room, quick meetings after church, longer ones later, and two dozen youth gathered at 5:30 p.m. for dinner, Bible study, and games. The average attendance for Sunday night youth ministry is about thirty-five students, six volunteer youth leaders, and two youth directors. Ben Fletcher—codirector with Rachal Little of youth and college ministry—announces upcoming events, then tells the story of Jesus healing a blind man from the Gospel of John. He talks about Jesus as the “light of the world” to help humans see God more clearly and to have the proper perspective on life.
As they prepare to break into small groups with volunteer youth leaders, Fletcher asks them to fill out slips of paper to keep as reminders. “When I experience _______, the light of Christ helps me see that _______.”
Some of the answers come back: “hard days / this too shall pass”; “darkness / I am not alone”; “anxiety / there is peace”; and “stress / we’ll make it through."
The evening ends with hula hoops in the parking lot.
Many more significant things happen at First Presbyterian Church each week. New groups are forming for singles, people who are grieving, and those who are separated or divorced. A renovation is reshaping the buildings to better accommodate the church’s ministries. Babies are being born and baptized. Members are falling ill and dying. People are joining; people are leaving.
Life goes on as it has for 175 years, with followers of Christ seeking to live out his teachings at the corner of Sixteenth and Peachtree Streets. Those who make it happen operate with confidence in the oft-repeated prayer that “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit” will be with them, now and always.
