That’s the question Anna Carter Florence, an associate professor of preaching at Columbia Theological Seminary, posed during opening worship of the Big Tent gathering June 11 in Atlanta.
Preaching from the second chapter of Mark’s gospel, Florence told of a crowd that grew so large that friends bringing a paralyzed man to see Jesus could not get through, so they climbed onto the roof, tore out a hole, and dropped the man down. Seeing their faith, Jesus declared the man healed.
How big a tent does the denomination need?
Jesus would have us look at the places where there isn’t enough room and where there’s conflict — where people are jostling to get in to see him, and have the faith, the courage, and the creativity to keep trying.
Those are the places, Florence said, to watch for miracles.
Visitor felt like “walking germ”
Cláudio Carvalhaes’ parents met at a small independent Presbyterian church in Sao Paulo, Brazil, married, and then raised their four children in the heart of that same church. “That community made me believe that I was somebody,” Carvalhaes said. It gave him the spiritual tools to see the way ahead, so that he still senses the loving, guiding hands of that church community on him.
Preaching at morning worship at the Big Tent gathering June 12, Carvalhaes, an associate professor of preaching and worship at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, spoke of the idea of Christians being “God’s hands in the world,” the ones with the opportunity and power to show God’s love and grace to one another.
How can God touch the world today, Carvalhaes asked, “if not through you and me?”
Carvalhaes challenged Presbyterians to make three specific changes.
Give what you have. What if the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) took all its money out of the investment markets; if the Presbyterian seminaries sold their buildings and cashed out their endowments; and if all that money was used to help people and to create jobs in which “everybody will receive the same salary,” he asked.
Don’t fear your neighbor. Carvalhaes told about visiting a church with “a huge container of hand sanitizer” by the front door. “That was the welcoming of the church; I felt like I was a big, walking germ.”
Churches can’t become so afraid … that they can no longer share the peace of Christ or reach out a hand, Carvalhaes said.
Become a diverse church. We must become a … Pentecost church of all races and ethnicities and ages and walks of life, Carvalhaes said.
Pentecost a messy proposition
Is it possible for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to experience a Pentecost-like renewal?
Yes, but the church’s life in the world is going to have to get a lot messier, Graham Baird, pastor of fast-growing Highlands Church in Paso Robles, Calif., said at the closing worship service of the Big Tent event June 13.
Preaching from the Pentecost story in Acts 2, Baird said of Presbyterians, “I think we’re way too messy on the inside and not even close to messy enough on the outside. If we started to focus our mess on the outside, a lot of the mess on the inside would clear itself up.”
The disciples huddled in the upper room were so uncertain and so afraid that they were reluctant to leave that upper room and as a result “probably were starting to get at each other’s throats,” Baird said. “Sound familiar?”
Nothing happened until the “rush of the mighty wind, the Holy Spirit, blew through the room and carried them out into the streets of Jerusalem … . The first church in history looked like a bunch of drunken idiots,” Baird said.
He outlined three ways such fear can be transformed into a Pentecost-like experience.
First, Baird said, “We have to come down out of our upper rooms. The Presbyterian Church is the most affluent and best-educated church in this country, but does it help us into the street or just push us further up into our upper rooms?”
Second, the church needs to learn the languages of the people we’re ministering with, Baird said. “Languages are filled with subtleties and we have to master them.”
And third, Baird said, “We’ve got to not be ashamed of our messiness — the outside messiness of ministry, not the internal messiness of strife and disagreement.”
The church must come down from its upper rooms “not because we want church growth,” Baird said, “but because our God came down into our messy lives, loved us and died a messy death … for us.”
