“Love to the loveless shown/that they might know their loveliness.” This paraphrase from a hymn conveys well our Love in Action focus at Bethesda Presbyterian Church. Whatever is good for the loveless is considered good for the whole here. Maintaining this focus on the power of love versus the love of power allows us to explore ways the Spirit can employ our full humanity — good, bad, and ugly — for serving God, God’s creation, and our neighbor. And I am forever amazed how this spirit of service and of justice is employed by our number in their daily lives. Come, Worship and Serve with Us! Join us on our journey into Christ’s relational joy. - Rev. Chuck

The Rev. Charles Booker began his ministry at Bethesda Presbyterian Church in 2009. He arrived here following 11 fruitful years as a pastor in Ann Arbor, MI. Chuck’s background ranges from serving interracial congregations in AZ and CA to staffing a suburban church in NC and pastoring a rural charge in OK. In AZ and CA, he labored for four years resettling Central American refugees seeking sanctuary from torture and slaughter in their homelands.

Three life narratives serve as spiritual signposts for Rev. Chuck’s ministry of wounded healing and love in action …

1. His struggle in his 20s with depression, alcoholism, and other drug addiction. His night-into-light journey included several hospitalizations in the mid-’80s. "Through my frailties," Rev. Chuck says, "I have come to experience the love of Jesus."

2. His call as a young adult to align his ministry with the voiceless by participating in several nonviolent resistance actions. In efforts to close what is known throughout Latin America as the “School of Assassins” — the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) — he is among over 200 who have served federal prison time (in his case, 3 months) for the misdemeanor of trespassing onto the Ft. Benning, GA base where the school is located.

3. His leadership for two decades in an effort that changed national church policies discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identification. Rev. Chuck officiated many same-gender weddings before they were legal — including the first legal same-gender wedding in the country by a Presbyterian clergy.

Rev. Chuck has served on the national boards of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship,  More Light Presbyterians and Presbyterian Health Education and Welfare Association (PHEWA). For his SOA prison witness, he received the Presbyterian Peaceseeker Award.

For fun, Chuck enjoys nonfiction, a lot of walking, and a little golf (he boasts a two handicap: his right hand and his left hand).

Chuck is the father of an adult son and resides in Silver Spring with his life partner, Rosa. He is reachable at revbooker@gmail.com or his cell: 734-646-3550. Feel free to connect with him!