A recent call from a presbytery executive indicated that his pastors were hungry for fellowship and that a new program for bringing pastors together for study, fellowship and inspiration was being launched. Another presbytery executive is putting together a gathering of several dozen pastors in a conference center to experience life in an “intentional community” for a three-day period, in which participants will work, cook, clean, study, pray together, using Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s well-known tract, Life Together, as the centerpiece of study and discussion.
Yet another presbytery executive recently sent out a note to his pastors talking about the value of the most recent presbytery meeting, in response to questions that had been raised about its usefulness. He spoke sincerely of the new pastorates being established, of a guest lecturer/author who helped the group focus on the larger picture of what it means to be a Presbyterian community of God’s people in the 21st century, and of those who stood before the presbytery to be taken under care as candidates.
Each of these reports indicates the church is trying at the most important level — of presbytery, congregations, pastors — to create time and space for the rebuilding of community, for getting to know one another spiritually as brothers and sisters in Christ, for returning to the wellsprings of faith, of opening individuals and groups to the love and goodness of the sovereign God, the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the revivifying power of the Holy Spirit.
The Apostle Paul’s description of the church as body — as an organic unity — created by God, with Jesus Christ as its Head, and its life supported in every respect by the Holy Spirit, is most apt for the task and goal of the Presbyterian Church today.
The culture speaks increasingly of interest in “spirituality” — and, indeed, that word represents a spiritual hunger, which is nearly unlimited, abroad in the land. But much of this spirituality is divorced from any connection with the visible body of Christ.
We Presbyterians know well that nothing is totally isolated in the visible body of Christ. It is all connected — organically. Every member, every congregation, every governing body above the session: the whole is in every part, and each part depends for its very existence on every other part. Hence, the need for creating time and space throughout the church for the rebuilding of Christ’s body which we receive, not as something we create, but rather as a gift from God.
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