For nearly 40 years the membership of what is now the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has been in free fall that shows no sign of letting up. That fact, in itself, guarantees a much-diminished presence in the next 10-20 years. How far down we will go, nobody knows. But the most we can hope for is that at some level we would find a new membership plateau.
Does God desire the destruction of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) either as a judgment on its unfaithfulness, or because it has served its purpose and it’s time to raise new contingents in North America to carry the work of the Kingdom forward? We cannot know the answer to that question.
But we can hope that God still has work for our diminishing tribe, and that that work will be made clear to an increasingly large number of the ordained leaders of our church in the four levels of governance — session, presbytery, synod (if we continue to have them) and General Assembly.
We say the ordained leadership of the church because in the Presbyterian polity that is the group which is elected and installed by the governing bodies of the church to discern God’s will for God’s church, to govern and lead the people of God and to represent the church to the world.
Based on past contributions to the work of Christ’s kingdom by the Presbyterian Church, its governing bodies, its congregations, its officers and its members, one would assume that there is work to do, a force gathered by God to do it and countless opportunities to make manifest our obedience to God’s will for our life and mission.
It is to this task of rediscovering our distinctive mission and ministries as Presbyterians that we are called to rededicate ourselves in this time between the times.
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