Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

It’s time to move from worrying about success to significance, proclaimed the Rev. J. Herbert Nelson II, director of the PC(USA)’s Office of Public Witness at the July 2 closing worship of Big Tent.

“Truly, this has been a blessed event,” he said. “It’s been a Holy Ghost party in the name of the Lord. A time when we can declare the Presbyterian Church is alive and well. And now we are being moved to return to our places and to do greater things.”

We can draw courage from the story of the Hebrew flock suffering in exile. In fact, our Reformed faith tradition reminds us that suffering is part of the human experience.

“God does not zap us. If we live long enough, we will get sick. We will die,” Nelson said.

But our story also tells us that God comforts the flock in exile, with the reminder that we belong to God, no matter what. And God redeems, gathering the flock for a new awaking. What better time, Nelson asked, for this redemption than the impeding Babylonian collapse?

When God gives a new start, God can do anything except fail. But our part is to give up our success model, which causes despair.

“We have two choices,” Nelson said. “We can lament what we use to be. We used to have clout. We used to have four million members. We used to be able to demand an appointment at the White House and get it.”

Those days of power are gone. In the place of the “top-down” model of success, God is calling the church to be significant, preaching a gospel of power and sharing the love of Jesus.

How do we rebuild a significant framework worthy of God? We need to look at our mission and our message, rather than our mess. We need to quit complaining and focus on our gratitude.

While some churches may be leaving, there are far more people out there who aren’t going to church anyplace.

“We need to tell our story of faith and declare that God is still on the throne, and can do abundantly more than we can imagine” Nelson said.

We need to focus on young adults, who are often “on fire” for justice and are longing to experience God.

We need to give up thinking that we are still the mainline church. When we are excited about serving the Lord, our position outside of the circles of power doesn’t matter.

Nelson recounted the advice his mother and grandmother gave to him when he was lamenting how the church seems to be falling apart in the middle of change.

“Although my grandmother is 102, every time she stands up to speak, a 33-year-old Jesus rises up in her,” he said. “My grandmother told me that the Lord is pruning the Presbyterian church, so that it will be ready to blossom and bloom.”

What we can learn from those who have experienced change before is that God is always doing a new thing. Every appearance of death is on the way to a new resurrection.

God is the only center of our joy. And God is doing a new thing. The question is, can we perceive it?

As an immediate sign of new life, the body commissioned 58 Young Adult Volunteers and 16 mission co-workers for new or continuing service in the United States or internationally.

Erin Cox-Holmes is executive presbyter for Donegal Presbytery. She covered the Healthy Ministries Conference at Big Tent for PNS.