BALTIMORE – "Welcome, siblings, to Big Tent.” The co-moderators of the 2018 General Assembly, Vilmarie Cintrón-Olivieri and Cindy Kohlmann, greeted the participants gathered for opening worship at Big Tent, a summer reunion of sorts for Presbyterians being held Aug. 1-3 in Baltimore. I hope “you will feel deeply spiritually uncomfortable,” because that’s where God is, Kohlmann said.  “What will you do when you return home to your places of ministry? What will you take back to your churches and ministries?” The first hymn was “Feliz la Gente / How Blest the People.” Soloists sang: “How blest the people who direct their every step on holy pathways. God will make them like a tree, green and majestic, that gives shade and joyful rest to weary travelers.” Worshippers responded with the refrain: “Feliz será, feliz será, feliz será.” Preaching alternately in Spanish and English, Amaury Tañón-Santos preached on Luke 10:15-37, Jesus’ parable of the Good … [Read more...]

BALTIMORE – So Big Tent 2019 is meeting Aug. 1-3 in Baltimore, a city that President Donald Trump recently decried in a tweet as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.” This is city where the next General Assembly will meet June 20-27 – and a place that Tom Hay, director of assembly operations for the Office of the General Assembly, described in the opening Big Tent plenary as this “precious in God’s sight city.” The presenters spoke in that session about visible divisions in this city and in many others in this country; about the Native American history of this place and the understanding of indigenous cultures that “everything is interrelated”; about a Christian faith built on lamentation and prayer rather than sense that the Western church has all the answers. “Welcome to Big Tent,” said J. Herbert Nelson, stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), in welcoming the 794 people who have registered for this conference (that number includes staff from the six … [Read more...]