Pastor's Note | Monday, July 8th

Ellen (not her real name), like many people today, is looking for a church home. She has taken the time and invested herself in a number of different churches - studying what they believe and how they live what they believe. She asked questions about important social issues, political concerns, and theology. She tried to evaluate each church by referring to Jesus' teaching and her own understanding of what it means to follow Jesus. She tried to find a church community where words and deeds matched and where the theology embodied a robust sense of God's love.

Would Ellen find a faith community like this at Good Shepherd?

In a recent sermon Curtis referred to the privilege that we pastors have of seeing the "big picture" of the ministry of Good Shepherd and the many ways people who are part of our faith community are following Jesus' teaching, are loving one another, are caring for people in our community and surrounding communities who are in need, and who are acting in ways that are consistent with what we say we believe.

I am slightly biased, but from my vantage point I see a community of faith that Ellen might just discover to be what she is seeking.

What we believe and how we live out what we believe are what lay beneath our Season of Discernment concerning our Denominational Affiliation. We recently completed a congregational Poll concerning this and the overwhelming majority of respondents indicated they felt we should disaffiliate with the PC(USA) and affiliate with a more like-minded and ministry-focused denomination.

This means the Session will develop a request to enter into a formal Discernment Process with our Presbytery leading to dismissal. The Session will be required to develop the reasons for this request, that is, the rationale for seeking to re-affiliate.

Please read this next statement carefully:

Re-affiliating with another Presbyterian Denomination is not a substitute for us being a community of faith that embodies a deep sense of God's love.

We will be served well by being affiliated with a Presbyterian denomin-ation that has a clear, agreed upon set of essential tenets. We will be encouraged by a Presbyterian denomination that has a clear ministry focus. We will be grateful to be affiliated with a Presbyterian denomination whose business meetings are focused on mission, church planting, making disciples, and conveying the gospel in word and deed. We will be relieved to be affiliated with a Presbyterian denomination that discusses issues at its business meetings with Bibles opened and without constant fighting and political manipulation.

But the denomination is not a substitute nor an excuse for us to not love our neighbor, or to fail to welcome all people into this community of faith.

Being affiliated with a more theologically orthodox Presbyterian denomin-ation carries with it the responsibility to actually live what that theology teaches. And at the heart of our Christian theology is the simple - but demanding - command of Jesus to love the Lord our God with all your heart, mind, strength, and soul, and to love our neighbor as our self.

Let's be a community of faith that has clear beliefs and a clear ministry focus... but most importantly let's also be a community of faith that acts in the ways our beliefs inform us.

Let's be a church in which Ellen would be able to see Jesus.