Orlando - Fellowship of Presbyterians

I will try to post some comments here about my experience with the Fellowship of Presbyterians Covenanting Conference in Orlando, Florida. You can learn more about the Fellowship of Presbyterians at http://www.fellowship-pres.org/. Basically this is a group of Presbyterians who share varying degrees of concern about the state of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. Some are hopp'n mad about our denomination and are convinced, not without reason, that it has abandoned core essentials of the Christian faith. Others simply have a concern that our denomination lacks vision and structure relevant for today's world - the world we actually live in. (If you're keeping score, I probably fall more into the second kind of concern than the first.)

On the way down here I listened to a podcast of Rob Bell's December 18 farewell address to Mars Hill church. (It's a better listen than a read, by the way.) I was intrigued by this part of Rob's letter in light of this Covenanting Conference I'm attending. Rob writes...

i write this to you because of how many of you have been challenged about your participation in the life of this church, often with the accusation: but what do they believe over there at mars hill?

as if belief, getting the words right, is the highest form of faith.
Jesus came to give us life. a living, breathing, throbbing, pulsating blow your hair back/tingle your spine/roll the windows down and drive fast/experience of God right here, right now.

word taking on flesh and blood.

and so you've found yourself defending and explaining and trying to find the words for your experience which is fundamentally about a reality that is beyond and more than words.

so when you find yourselves tied up in knots, having long discussions about who believes what, a bit like dogs doing that sniff circle when they meet on the sidewalk, do this:

take out a cup
and some bread
and put it in the middle of the table,
and say a prayer and examine yourselves
and then make sure everybody's rent is paid and there's food in their fridge and clothes on their backs
and then invite everybody to say 'yes' to the resurrected Christ with whatever 'yes' they can muster in the moment and then you take that bread and you dip it in that cup in the ancient/future hope and trust that there is a new creation bursting forth right here right now and then together taste that new life and liberation and forgiveness and as you look those people in the eyes gathered around that table from all walks of life and you see the new humanity, sinners saved by grace, beggars who have found bread showing the others beggars where they found it and in that moment
space
place
remind yourselves that
this
is
what
you
believe.

remember, the movement is word to flesh.
beware of those who will take the flesh and want to turn it back into words

Bell seems to delight in tip-toeing right up to the line of orthodoxy and then deliberately trampling over it. However, I can't help but wonder if there's some appropriate caution for us here as we carry on about what ails the PCUSA - as we respond to challenges about our "participation in the life of this church, often with the accusation: but what do they actually believe over there...?" It's not that I think doctrine and orthodoxy do not matter matter. They do. But they matter only because of the One to whom we belong. It's easy for me to forget that I am not my own. It's easy to forget that I, and my church, and my denomination, have been bought at a price and that Jesus did the purchasing, not me (1 Cor 6:19-20). His blood does the owning, not mine. I don't keep the church, the church keeps me.