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December 11th, 2024
Dear Friends,
When elders (ruling and teaching) and deacons are ordained, the first question asked of them is:
“Do you trust in Jesus Christ your Savior, acknowledge him Lord of all and Head of the Church, and through him believe on one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit?”
There is a depth of theological musings in exegeting the meanings of this question. And there is one word that always captures my attention and imagination: Trust.
It is one of those words that is thrown around so often, without a lot of meaning. Trust is something that we can know deep in our hearts. Trust often appears in a binary of either it is there, or not. Having served in various capacities in a handful of presbyteries, it is common to hear someone say, “we don’t trust the presbytery.”
I ask, “What does the word ‘trust’ mean to you?”
I was not always sure what trust meant to me. Until I heard a definition offered by author Brene Brown, who credits Charles Feltman (author of “The Thin Book of Trust”):
“Trust is choosing to make something important to you vulnerable to the actions of someone else.”
This definition popped up again in my reading of Prentis Hemphill’s new book, “What it Takes to Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World.” She writes:
Trust is a risk we take with one another to do something bigger than we could have done alone.
She places this in a larger context we live in a destabilizing period of time where institutions demand our distrust and respond with misinformation, fearmongering, promising one thing and doing another. I don’t disagree. Hemphill’s reflection that trust, “is a risk we take with one another to do something bigger than we could have done alone” settles deep into my Presbyterian soul, especially during this Advent Season.
God takes an enormous risk in making God’s very self and love vulnerable to human flesh and the actions of this world.
To be a follower of Jesus is to make vulnerable our human selves to the sovereign love of the triune God that we can never be separated from.
To belong to a church is to risk this idea that in a broken and fearful world we are brought together to love God and our neighbors.
To be Presbyterian is to choose to make vulnerable to an even larger community our belief that together we “find and represent the will of Christ” (F-3.0204)
Friends, that is not easy to do.
I wonder though, when we are feeling frustrated and stifled. When we feel that a group of people have failed to honor with their actions. What is important to us? Before we can focus on the failure in the relationship, what happens when we pause for a moment to first ask the question: What is important to us?
I ask that question in the collective form. As you look back on this year and look forward to a new one: What is important to your church? What is important to your congregation that you make vulnerable to the actions of another (Presbytery of Detroit)?
In my time as your Stated Clerk, I have observed congregations making vulnerable to the Presbytery (and to God):
- A call to ordered ministry as person discerns serving as a Minister of Word and Sacrament or Commissioned Pastor;
- What is important to a church in calling their next pastoral leader;
- The records of decisions made by Sessions (Clerk minute reading!)
- Giving of financial resources to support our connected work (Per Capita);
- The challenge and difficulties of relationships in community;
- A willingness to work for justice, freedom and peace;
- Our very lives, as we discern taking the courageous and faithful step of concluding a ministry or closing a church.
It is a risk to engage in this way of being Christian, that we call Presbyterian. We live in a time and culture where the message is that we not only can do things alone, we should. Self-sufficiency is rewarded as a value. It avoids all the messiness of being disappointed or hurt. It also leads to isolation, burnout and the opportunity to experience the power of the Spirit as God unites us in our baptism.
I would invite us into this season of Advent and a New Year, to consider, what is important to your church?
What does it look like for us to risk doing something bigger, as the Presbytery of Detroit, than what we could do alone?
Peace,
Melissa
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