This coming Thursday and Friday, Elder Doug Jenkins and I will be in Minneapolis for something called the Gathering of the Fellowship of Presbyterians. The Fellowship is a barely organized organization.  As the story is told, a small group of large church Presbyterian pastors gathered early this year to discuss ways that our PCUSA denomination might find new ways to be a community of like-minded, Christ-centered congregations, supporting and encouraging one another in the training and discipline of our leaders and in that kind of mission that we best do together, in other words, a new way of doing the old things that mark us as being Presbyterian. They said they saw a denomination that is deathly ill and that they were tired of watching it die a slow death.

Being good Presbyterians, they wrote some position papers and extended an invitation to those who were interested in what they were thinking to join them for a couple of days at the end of the summer to pray and plan about where this might be leading us.  They hoped for a few hundred willing participants.  Instead they got nearly two thousand from 830 congregations and 49 states.

I am looking forward to the Gathering, the worship if nothing else – two thousands voices joining in song and hymn. I hope we sing “O, For a Thousand Tongues to Sing” and “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” Certainly we will sing “In Christ Alone,” “How Deep the Father’s Love” and other more recent additions to our canon of praise.  I am praying that the Holy Spirit might work in the midst of unwieldy numbers and difficult logistics to bring a common vision and lead us in hopeful and healthy new directions.

Please poke around the Fellowship website to learn more and to see some of what might be contemplated during these two days. Personally, I like the idea of non-geographical or “fuzzy boundary” presbyteries, missional synods and simple general assemblies. I like the thought of community being more important than bureaucracy and that despite our diversity we have an unbreakable unity in Christ – rather than insisting that the only basis of our unity is our unbounded diversity.

Just yesterday those of us who are registered for the Gathering were asked to complete a quick online survey.  The last question seemed odd.  Something like: state your hopes for the Gathering in no more than five words. The five words part is correct for sure. I thought for just a moment: Unity that brings change. And one word to spare.

I hope for unity. The organizers of the Gathering have identified at least four broad categories of need and response to the current turmoil in the denomination. Our unity must not be based on our particular needs, however, but on our common Lord. I hope that by our unity in Christ we might find ways, many ways, to change our church from a dying bureaucracy to a living part of the Body of Christ. It’s not going to be easy. Pray for us.

According to the schedule they’ve given us, we are going to gather for worship four times during the event. Maybe we’ll sing “The Church’s One Foundation.”

The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord;
She is His new creation by water and the word;
From heaven He came and sought her to be His holy bride;
With His own blood He bought her, and for her life He died.

Many people have given up on the church altogether. We dare not. Jesus has not. She is his holy bride, bought by his blood, given life by his death. It is a sin to give up on the church. Lord, keep us in Minneapolis and keep us in Langhorne from abandoning your bride.

Elect from every nation, yet one o’er all the earth,
Her charter of salvation one Lord, one faith, one birth;
One holy name she blesses, partakes one holy food,
And to one hope she presses, with every grace endued.

LPC is a church. The PCUSA is a denomination.  We are part of the Holy catholic church, speaking a thousand languages and exercising the gifts of the Spirit and responding to the call to ministry in ways best suited to our time and place. But we are one – our charter of salvation one Lord, one faith, one birth.  Lord, help us in Minneapolis and in Langhorne to find our unity nowhere else but in Christ alone.

Though with a scornful wonder this world sees her oppressed,
By schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed,
Yet saints their watch are keeping; their cry goes up: “How long?”
And soon the night of weeping shall be the morn of song.

Heresy is such an old and discredited word that we hardly know what to do with it. But it is a good word. Mostly it reminds us of our own fallibility. We get things wrong, sometimes seriously wrong.  It also reminds us that there are those who would harm the church, lead her down dangerous paths and that against them we must be vigilant. Lord, keep those in Minneapolis and in Langhorne awake and watchful, diligent to protect the church from error – ours and others.  And in our diligence keep us from giving this world cause to scorn.

Mid toil and tribulation, and tumult of her war,
She waits the consummation of peace forevermore;
Till with the vision glorious her longing eyes are blest,
And the great church victorious shall be the church at rest.

Frankly, our 1960s model of corporate bureaucracy and our late modern fascination with novelty has not served us well. We need new ways of doing things and a return to the old way of seeing things.  But our new ways will soon become old ways. All our ways of doing things will pass away on that day when the church militant becomes the church victorious. Lord, as we gather in Minneapolis and as we live in Langhorne, protect us from insisting on the old ways of doing things or being so enamored of the new that we forget that it is soon to become old.

Yet she on earth has union with God the Three in One,
And mystic sweet communion with those whose rest is won:
O happy ones and holy! Lord, give us grace that we,
Like them, the meek and lowly, may live eternally.

We are not in this alone, nor should we suppose that we are able to effect unity or change in and of ourselves. The Father sent the Son who has promised to be with us to the end through the presence and the power of the Spirit.  And we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses encouraging us to look to Jesus and to finish the race set before us. Lord, as we gather in Minneapolis and as we go about our lives in Langhorne help us to lift our drooping hands and strengthen our weak knees that we might run the race to the glory of God.

Pray for us and those who gather in Minneapolis.