All wound up and winding down

Dateline:  Pittsburgh, July 7, 2012, 1:30am

The 220th General Assembly is working far into the night to finish the many items still awaiting their action.  Their spirits are amazingly high and the commissioners' chairs still amazingly occupied by these dedicated presbyters and advisory delegates!  News of the Assembly actions is available at pc-biz.org/. 

I want to reflect in closing on something Brian McLaren said earlier in the week.  Brian is an author (A Generous Orthodoxy, A New Kind of Christian and others books and blogs) speaker, and networker among innovative Christian leaders (listed by Time magazine as one of America's 25 most influential evangelical leaders.)  He addressed the whole assembly and later some of us had a chance to speak with him in an informal, small group setting.  We were wrestling with questions of mission and structure. He noted that denominations had real value but warned that they can also create silos that impede the Church's capacity to cooperate creatively with other Christian bodies.  And then he made the comment that the other danger of denominations is that they can draw attention away from the real units of mission - congregations - and keep us busy engaging what "the denomination or the General Assembly" is doing or has done.  

These words kept echoing through my mind and heart this week. The 220th General Assembly took thoughtful, prayerful, considered action on a number of items. Some of you watched the live-streaming or read the news accounts or followed the action on pc-biz.  All the while the work of the church continued - touching broken lives with healing, offering worship and the radical gospel alternative to a world dying and dealing death, teaching faith to our young, feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, offering a cup of water to those dying of thirst literally and spiritually.I respect the work of the Assembly. My caution and my prayer is that it not divert our attention nor our energy from the lively congregational work that in concert with one another and the Holy Spirit is touching, blessing and transforming the world God loves in and through us.  

Signing off from the 220th General Assembly -