‘If I showed up at your church, somebody other than Jesus would be happy to see me’

Co-Moderators, Stated Clerk team up to share their insights during worship at the Presbyterian Center Chapel

October 13, 2024

From left, the Rev. Jihyun Oh, the Rev. CeCe Armstrong and the Rev. Tony Larson sing a hymn during worship Wednesday in the Chapel at the Presbyterian Center in Louisville, Kentucky. (photo by Rich Copley)

With Ephesians 2:10 as their scriptural basis, the co-moderators of the 226th General Assembly, the Rev. CeCe Armstrong and the Rev. Tony Larson, joined the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Rev. Jihyun Oh, to lead a recent hybrid worship service in the Chapel at the Presbyterian Center in Louisville. One by one, the three recently elected denominational leaders spoke on “Created,” “Called” and “Commissioned.”

Created

Put your hand in front of your face, Armstrong suggested. Inhale and then exhale, blowing air at the hand. “Do you feel anything? That means you have breath in you, and breath means you’ve been created by God,” she said.

Genesis 1 tells us that everything God created is good. “When we consider being created by God, it’s all right if we declare, ‘That’s good!’” Armstrong said. “Friends, I want you to acknowledge that you have been fearfully and wonderfully made and to acknowledge that you have been made good. That ought to make you walk different.”

“I encourage you to be a good creation of God and wear the smile that proves that’s so,” she said. “To God be the glory for the great things God is doing.”

Called

Larson spoke about a recent time and an unlikely place to which he and his wife, Heather, were called: a dive bar in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where a trivia night had been organized.

During the two hours of the trivia contest, people would walk in and out of the bar, Larson said. Some hadn’t had particularly good days. One person told him, “I’m Catholic. I go to Mass every Sunday. People fuss at me all the time. They say, ‘but we see what you’re doing on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.’”

“I go every Sunday, and I get forgiven, but the only person happy to see me there is Jesus.” Then he asked Larson, “Would I be welcome in your church?”

“I said, ‘Of course you’d be welcomed at our church,’” Larson said, telling the man about the ministry of Trinity Presbyterian Church of Surfside Beach, South Carolina, including “our ministry for those in recovery, our ministry to children and families, and our fundamental ministry to people who pick up from some place on the map at this stage of their life and come here and generally have no connections, no roots. They have left their roots behind, and we help those rootless people find roots in the church.”

“I just really get the sense talking to the two of you,” the man replied, “that if I showed up at your church, somebody other than Jesus would be happy to see me.”

“We don’t know,” Larson said of why we are called. “We are called to be in spaces where we are, and to be the very presence of Christ to whoever might be there. Thanks be to God.”

Commissioned

For many people in the worship, the term “commission” has a specific meaning, said Oh, who started her duties as Stated Clerk on Aug. 5. There are commissions, both judicial and administrative, and commissioners to assemblies “who have been given power and authority to speak on and act on behalf of a particular body of people.”

We can think of “commissioned” as “being given the power and authority to speak on and act on behalf of Christ Jesus our Lord, who has called us to be salt and light in the world,” the Stated Clerk said.

Being commissioned can also mean “being taken off of standby, being taken off the sidelines to places where God is calling us.” Ephesians 2:10 calls us “God’s handiwork,” which got Oh to thinking about “what it means to be commissioned to that work. The person creating that handiwork is thinking about a particular context or purpose when the work is commissioned. There is a particular thing we are to be doing in the world.” There can be “a sense of joy that emerges from that commission.”

“We are created, called and commissioned. Thanks be to God. Amen.”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Today’s Focus: Co-Moderators, Stated Clerk team up to share their insights during worship at the Presbyterian Center Chapel

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Larry, and Inge Sthreshley, Mission Co-workers serving in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, World Mission, Presbyterian Mission Agency 
Mindi Stivers, Financial Assistant, Presbyterian Women 

Let us pray

Mighty God, we bless you for the rich soil in which your church is nourishing the seed of your gospel. Continue to transform our lives, congregations and communities so that all will know us by the fruit we bear. Amen.