This week I got an inquiry about our church from someone who is interested in attending, wanting to know a bit about who we are, what we embrace, etc. It’s not an uncommon question and I suspect that if you engage with neighbors about St. Mark you might face the same kinds of questions. This particular inquiry came from someone who has spent most of their life in an evangelical church, so my answer was shaped in that direction. When we tell our story like this, we end up telling a curious blend of “my story,” “our story,” and “God’s story” together. There is no need to try to separate one from the other, because we experience them as an amalgam, not as disparate things. So, let me tell my/our/God’s story below (roughly what I wrote in response to the inquiry, but expanded a bit). And perhaps it will enable you to find fresh ways to tell your/our/God’s story as well.
Many of us at St. Mark have had journeys from evangelicalism to a church that embraces a more capacious view of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That was my experience, raised and educated in the Pentecostal Holiness Church. Back when I left that church for the Presbyterian Church, it seemed like all of the traffic was moving in the other direction. In the years since I became Presbyterian, a lot of folks have taken the journey, who are sometimes called 'exvangelicals,' finding at St. Mark a meaningful blend of commitment to the gospel and attention to what God is doing in our world today. What I still appreciate from my church upbringing is a dedication to meaningful worship, a deep love for the Scriptures, and a strong commitment to sharing the joy and justice of the gospel.
I have spent many years learning to embrace the loves I that inherited differently than I was trained to embrace them. Worship at St. Mark is liturgical, in the sense of following the model of Isaiah 6:1-6, which begins with adoration, recognizes that when we encounter God's glory we realize our own unworthiness, so we offer our prayers of confession and hear an assurance of pardon. And then we listen for the Word of God as a way of instructing us in our life journeys. It can feel a little stilted at times, even though we aim for a proper balance of 'order' and 'ardor.' We have a Sunday morning service that would be called “traditional,” with a choir and activities for children or Sunday School (which resumes Sept. 18). We also have a Saturday evening service that follows much of the same form, but with a more contemplative feel, accompanied by a jazz trio. Likewise, we have a very strong weekly Bible Study, where we spend time in a critical study of the Scriptures, with attention to the historical context and the meaning that the Scriptures have in our contemporary world. And our way of sharing the joy and justice of the gospel is not about coercing someone into making a faith profession, but begins with our trust that God is already at work in everyone’s life, making “evangelism” more a matter of discovery than persuasion.
Much of our church life is shaped around two biblical texts. The first is Micah 6:8, which calls us to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly before God. And much of our faithfulness is driven by the last parable of Matthew 25, where we meet the Christ in the experiences we have with the poor, the imprisoned, and the marginalized. With those Scriptures in our DNA, we are always going to be a church that lives on the cutting edge of justice, whether it is by practicing radical inclusivity, advocating for environmental sustainability, or engaging in anti-racism work. All in all, we are a congregation very committed to inclusion and compassion inwardly, justice externally.
So, how would you tell your/our/God’s story?
Mark of St. Mark
No comments:
Post a Comment