Why It's Good to Be a Presbyterian

We are finishing our current round of Officer Training—the brief time when Elders and Deacons get acquainted with their jobs as elected leaders within a congregation. For years, as pastor, I have chosen the usual route—a brief overview of the theology behind the offices of Elder and Deacon, then a bucketload of administrative details, practices at our church, and then figuring out who is going to staff what committees. This year, I chose to do something different. 

In our Presbyterian system of being the Church, we live by a two-part constitution, defining our representative form of government (tidbit—the United States borrowed from our system to create our national model of governance, for good or ill). What most Presbyterians pay little attention to is the structure of that constitution. Part 1 is NOT the rulebook—the Book of Order, by which we live and die in our many meetings. No, Part 1 is the Book of Confessions, an encyclopedic collection of credal statements from the earliest Church to the most recent iteration of our faith, “A Brief Statement of Faith,” penned in the mid-1980s. The message is clear—understand what we believe before starting to work. 

With that in mind, we spent several weeks reintroducing ourselves to the praxis of faith. Note that term used is “praxis,” not practice. Praxis, simply, is practice on steroids! In praxis, one takes a discipline of prayer and spirituality, internalizing it until it becomes a piece of one’s identity. Faith is no longer something that you do, but it is who you are. 

Most folks no longer understand this way of faith. Faith, like everything else in our complicated, burdened, stressed lives gets put in its compartment to be used in its space and time, then put away while we get on with the other boxes that order our lives. What our Presbyterian constitution invites us to do is rethink that. It emphasizes that to live is to be in the presence of God. So, as we live, we begin by actively listening for God, waiting for God, and engaging with God, then we move to speaking and doing. 

In order to make this way of being so in the life of faith, there are three tools for our use—prayer, Bible, and community.

Prayer is something most church people think they understand completely—it is talking with God. In worship, at home, as we live, we stop to talk to God. We ask God for help; we thank God for the blessings of God; we confess the things that drive us from God and each other, and we praise God for being God. So far, so good. But did you know that is only HALF of what prayer is? The other work of prayer is LISTENING. In this form of prayer, we say nothing, but rather allow God to speak to us. This happens as we reflect on God, God’s being, God’s work, or God’s revelation. Then, we internalize what it is we hear in those reflections, taking it into ourselves, becoming a piece of our expression of life. Then, we meditate on the presence of God, taking those internalized pieces of being with God, and silently sit with them, waiting to know what to do or say in light of them. Finally, there comes a wondrous moment when all falls still, and we are simply in the presence of God—God with us; us with God—no words, actions, or even thoughts required. Silence. We discover that faith is a process, one maddeningly non-linear—one moves up, down, back, forward, stopping, racing—always shifting through the cycles depending on who and what we are as we pray. 

Bible is the Word written—the human witness to God’s interaction with humanity. God chooses to be know through this tool—through the story. The Bible serves two functions—it is, first, the story of our faith. It is not a history, nor biography, by rather an offering as to why things happen, why they are the way they are, and why we are who we are in the presence of God. It also seeks to tell us what all of those things mean. The story introduces us to life before and with God. In so doing, it becomes, second, a “directions for use” manual. The commandments within the story only make sense as we see them as an architecture in which to live. They are not to be taken at face value, but always demand that we understand who gave them and why. In this, we see the love that is God, and the call to love through the commandments. Remember, Jesus drove the Pharisees nuts by refusing to take the commandments as they came (cf. the Sermon on the Mount), but rather ALWAYS demanded that we see, wrestle with, and understand that they only work when love is the end of obedience—the other-centered, self-emptying love that Christ embodied. 

The community is the embodiment of Christ’s assurance that where two or three were gathered in his name, he would be there (Mt. 18:20). Faith is not intended to be a solo journey. God is love, ergo, faith is the praxis of love; and love requires more than one person. Furthermore, being in a community offers us three essential aids to being able to be faithful. First, the community nurtures its adherents. We are to feed one another as we gather together. We are to nourish the faith within us. Second, we are to support one another. Here is help—each other. We walk together to care for one another, heal one another, and mend one another as we hit the snafus of life. No one need be left alone in trouble. Finally, we are to offer one another security. Church needs to be the place where we can truly be who we are—where we can safely live without fear of retribution, reprisals, or rejection. Moreover, it is to be the place where we can courageously enter the world risking the self-emptying that love requires. We can empty ourselves because someone stands with us. 

It is only as we take in these three tools for faith praxis that we are truly ready to engage in the actual work of being an officer. The tools define the work. The tools give us the skills by which to work. The tools get us into the depths of why we work the way we work and what it all means as we work.The rulebook simply becomes a means by which to love; and we are freed from the human tendencies to Pharisaism—the rules are not an end in themselves, but only work if they are love. Suddenly, the mundane things of budget, utilities, stewardship campaigns, program, etc., get seen in their proper light—do they lead us deeper into faith praxis? That is all that matters in the end.

Now comes the hard part—doing it.

Pray for us all.