Nick Pickrell, organizer of The Open Table KC, has never set foot in a seminary. But after five years co-leading this new worshiping community in Kansas City, Missouri, he’s going through the process of becoming a commissioned ruling elder. “I wanted to be more connected to the PC(USA) denomination,” he says in the new 1001 Worshiping Communities video, “Becoming Presbyterian” at
vimeo.com/416070513.
Take a minute to look back on your life. Who all have you lived with? In the earliest parts of our lives, we might live with parents or grandparents or other caring adults. Perhaps siblings. Over the years, we might live with friends and extended family, family of choice or even sometimes with strangers. And sometimes we might find ourselves living alone.
Done right, service to God is not an easy task. From the beginning, the people of God struggled with the issue of faithfulness; and those who were chosen to lead them, especially the prophets, were often confounded by the worldly challenges around them and the inner challenges of disobedience within the community of God’s people.
Pentecost is a time to consider “what becomes possible when God blows through your life with the wind of the Holy Spirit,” says the author of a new Presbyterian worship resource for Pentecost Sunday.
Presbyterians believe that baptism envelops our lives as Christians. As part of the covenant community, we baptize children as they grow into their faith. Believers are baptized as they make a decision to enter the covenant community and to follow Christ. When Christians die, we say that they have completed their baptism in death.
Believing we can change things for the better is risky. When we hope that individuals, communities, and institutions are capable of living more wholly, acting more rightly, and treating others more kindly, there is a good chance we will be disappointed and might even look foolish. It is safer to think people and circumstances will never change than to expend the energy that comes with believing they will. It is safer to minimize our own capabilities and responsibilities than to “be the change we want to see in the world,” as Gandhi challenges us.
