Stated Clerk's Column
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About This Column
Written by Gradye Parsons
Each month the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the Moderator or Vice Moderator of the 218th General Assembly write a column of general interest for the church-at-large.
Recent posts
- February 2012-Monthly column featuring Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons
- January 2012-Monthly column featuring Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons
- December 2011-Monthly column featuring Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons
- November 2011-Monthly column featuring Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons
- October 2011-Monthly column featuring Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons
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February 2012-Monthly column featuring Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons
Sunday school teachers
Who taught you in Sunday school? I can remember most of my teachers, which included my parents. My father taught the rowdy third-grade boys and my mother, the more mature sixth graders.
Mrs. Arnold corralled the kindergarteners on Sunday after teaching first grade in public schools during the week. She was infinitely kind and had x-ray vision for any good impulse. She was intolerant of meanness. She was an advocate for play and joy. She relayed Bible stories as if she was actually there – and, well, she did seem old.
When I visit congregations across the church, I am often told stories about legendary Sunday school teachers. The teachers are admired for their patience, their faith, and their loving tenacity. These folks are true gifts from God for the church.
I don’t think one will find any uniform approach or single teaching methodology among these folks – other than the uniform ability to earn a child’s trust. Some are great at storytelling, some at crafts, and some at music. Almost none of them are called by their full adult names, which is fine with them. After they’ve taught their classes, they usually arrive for worship a little rumpled with various colors of markers on their hands.
The church has many tasks, including the great apostolic call to go into all the world and make disciples. That big world needs the good news of Jesus Christ and the kingdom-justice of God. Another world also exists – that of the precious interior where a child develops his or her understanding of life. It is there where children build their understanding of what is good, who is good, and how to be good. The interior world that is structured around the stories of God and God’s people will be better able to navigate that big exterior world with all of its struggles. And, it won’t hurt to have some hymn tunes embedded in their heart.
Can you recite the twenty-third Psalm or hum “Jesus Loves Me”? Do you know the great stories of the Bible? More than likely, your Sunday school teachers are the ones to thank.
January 6, 2012
January 2012-Monthly column featuring Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons
The Mayan calendar indicates that the world will end in 2012, which is a claim that several archeologists dispute. Either way, the business of making predictions generates a lot of energy – and money. People are paid to predict everything from the weather to the next president.
The liturgical year, however, is more than a prediction. From Advent to Christmas to Epiphany to Lent to Easter to Pentecost to Ordinary Time and more, the liturgical year is a steady progression – a cycle that tells us over and over again the story of God who comes to us in Jesus Christ.
December 2, 2011
December 2011-Monthly column featuring Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons
Advent is here – the days of preparation for the birth of the Christ child. The root word in Latin for Advent is advenire, which means to arrive. Interestingly, it is the same root word for adventure – to venture.
Where is the sense of adventure in this liturgical season?
November 1, 2011
November 2011-Monthly column featuring Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons
In the Lord I'll be ever thankful,
In the Lord I will rejoice!
Look to God, do not be afraid;
Lift up your voices: the Lord is near,
Lift up your voices: the Lord is near.
This song by Jacques Berthier (Sing the Faith #2195) is one of my favorites of all the Taizé music. It combines the ingredients of gratitude, joy, fear, and the desire for the Lord to be near.
October 3, 2011
October 2011-Monthly column featuring Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons
September 25, 2011, found me worshipping with the spirited folks of the First Dominican Evangelical Church of San Pedro, Dominican Republic. It was a lively service with lots of music, many children, a fine sermon, and a moving celebration of the Lord’s Supper.
Joining me in worship were five people from denominations across the Caribbean. We were one of several small groups that had spread across the region that Sunday morning as part of our meeting of the Caribbean and North American Area Council, a regional part of the World Communion of Reformed Churches.
September 6, 2011
September 2011-Monthly column featuring Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons
The Blessedness of Unity
1 How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!
2 It is like the precious oil on the head, running down upon the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down over the collar of his robes.
3 It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion. For there the LORD ordained his blessing, life for evermore. (Psalm 133)
August 4, 2011
August 2011-Monthly column featuring Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons
Life after disasters is full of stories of tragedy and miraculous survival.
Recently, I visited Joplin, Missouri, which was devastated by a class E-5 tornado in May. It was the deadliest tornado since 1950, killing over 155 people and destroying around 7,000 homes. The tornado tore a path three-fourths of a mile wide and ten miles long through town.
It is difficult to see what force the church has against the magnitude of such destruction. Yet, what impressed me in Joplin is the extraordinary power of the ordinary life of the church.
July 11, 2011
July 2011-Monthly column featuring Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons
It seems only appropriate to begin the July 2011 column with a quote from the new Form of Government. The very first paragraph begins with a statement that lifts up the mission of the congregation where it is planted:
The congregation is the church engaged in the mission of God in its particular context. The triune God gives to the congregation all the gifts of the gospel necessary to being the Church. (Book of Order, G-1.0101)
May 31, 2011
June 2011-Monthly column featuring Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons
I rarely see a really meaningful moment on a television medical drama. But I will have to confess that the writers for Grey’s Anatomy captured just such a moment.
An airplane had crashed into the harbor. The hospital was to be the trauma center where all of the survivors would be brought and families could gather for information. Then comes the sobering news: no survivors. So the doctors who had prepared to do lifesaving surgeries become grief counselors instead. One by one, the families are notified and most leave the hospital.
May 3, 2011
May 2011-Monthly column featuring Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons
Frederick Law Olmsted was the American creator of the craft of landscape architecture. He had no college degree or much experience beyond a little farming when he was awarded the contract to oversee the construction of Central Park in New York City. He later went on to design college campuses, the Chicago World’s Fair, and the beautiful city parks that grace Louisville, Ky.