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
- The gift of community
- April 2012-Monthly column featuring Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons
- March 2012-Monthly column featuring Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons
- February 2012-Monthly column featuring Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons
- January 2012-Monthly column featuring Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons
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The gift of community
The following is an account popular in the storytelling world and passed along in William White’s Stories for the Journey (Augsburg Press, 1988).
People in a remote village purchased a television set. For weeks, all of the children and all of the adults gathered around the set morning, afternoon, and night watching the programs. After a couple of months, the set was turned off and never used again.
A visitor to the village asked the chief, “Why do you no longer watch television?”
“We have decided to listen to the storytellers,” he replied.
“Doesn’t the television know more stories?” the visitor asked.
“Yes,” the chief replied, “but the storyteller knows me.”
In the Confession of 1967, we say “The new life takes shape in a community in which men [and women] know that God loves and accepts them in spite of what they are” (9.22).
How do we know God loves us? Yes, we have God’s Word in the Bible. We have the incarnation of Jesus Christ, who died and was raised for us. We also have the Holy Spirit working in us. But the reality of God’s love given through real humans to us is another powerful agent of how we experience our new life in Christ. It means something profound that John or Jane at our church knows our story and loves us just as we are.
The faith community is a gift – those special moments of closeness at Font and Table … the missional sweat equity of working together in disaster relief … the sacred space of folks saying their prayer requests. These are tangible, touchable, tender acts of a group of individual sisters and brothers in Christ becoming a community. In becoming that community, they are transformed into something much more than just their collective numbers.
Look about you the next time you sit in the sanctuary. Most likely, those people know your story, good and bad, and they love you still. That is a gift that should evoke an amen and an alleluia.
March 30, 2012
April 2012-Monthly column featuring Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons
Zippy was a thoroughbred horse that competed in ninety-nine races and never won. Ever. He was finally banned from rack tracks “for the protection of the betting public.”
March 2, 2012
March 2012-Monthly column featuring Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons
I want to salute those silent and often unseen sisters and brothers who have the call of being a church janitor. The position may have a different name where you are, but the functions are the same.
It does not matter whether your congregation’s calendar is filled with daily programs and activities in your building or the space is used just a few times during the week. Someone, paid or volunteers, keeps it clean.
February 1, 2012
February 2012-Monthly column featuring Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons
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.
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.