From Your Pastor

To the First Presbyterian Church family,

We are now in the middle of summer, and I hope this finds you all well. Summer is a time for vacation, taking it easy, and catching up with friends and family. For the church, summer is part of the longer liturgical period of "Ordinary Time" and we are using this for the 2nd year for a long-form sermon series in the book of Acts. Please click here for my column introducing it. I'll confess at this juncture I have just a few odds and ends for you, all of which I still have a lot more to learn about myself. I hope they can be beneficial for you as well:

Women ordained to the office of elder: The office of elder (Greek: "Presbyter") is foundational for us as Presbyterians and this office includes both session members (ruling elders) and pastors (teaching elders). This congregation has been doing the good work of ordaining women to session for a number of decades now, but I am grateful for the increased presence of women in our pulpit as well. This, I think, is faithful to the book of Acts which places much emphasis on the ministry equality of BOTH women and men and, as most of those passages are still coming up in Acts, I look forward to exploring them with you. Please check out this interview with the first woman ever ordained as teaching elder (AKA "pastor") in our denomination. At 101 she is still with us and will celebrate the 70th anniversary of that ordination this November! I would argue this is not a new development for Christ's church but rather a rediscovery of what had always been intended dating back to the birth of the church in Acts. Furthermore, this is not some kind of "progressive" ideology. I am grateful for several women colleagues in this denomination who have helped me find my voice and network in challenging some of the wrong developments in the PC(USA). These include pragmatic concerns like our mission agency but also ideological ones like the erosion of Biblical gender, sexuality, and marriage.

Name-dropping: On a more personal note, I was working with a colleague on a grant proposal recently and she challenged my habit of "name dropping." Whole columns and sermons could probably be written on this, but this practice of saying "I know so and so" and "I'm important by association" is a major problem in today's celebrity-fixated culture. The book of Acts challenges this as well. It is really the story of the gospel of Jesus going forth so the number of other names that come and go across this book should teach us something. Peter is a huge part of the narrative then suddenly drops out a little past the halfway point, never to return or even be mentioned. (This is precisely where we are in the story right as I just preached from Acts 15 last Sunday.) It may look like Paul takes over but even he doesn't get a proper ending, as Acts ends with no specific fate or future given for him. To this day, we still aren't sure exactly what happened to Paul. Of course, both Peter and Paul would readily admit they were not the point of Acts . . their gospel ministry for Jesus was the point. In today's culture of "here's who I know!" I hope we can rediscover Jesus. He's the name we should be dropping constantly.

Missionaries when they go into a foreign field probably have the easiest time with this. They don't worry about Christian "culture" or celebrity names associated with it. Their ministry is to a people who either haven't heard or need to rediscover the true gospel of Jesus crucified and resurrected. In the middle of this summer series, we were blessed to hear and see slides from one of our own missionaries, Joe Dorris. The recording of this service and his slideshow - along with all the other recordings and presentations from the last 6 years - can be found here. Joe Dorris is an excellent example of what the book of Acts tells the church to do. We raise up and disciple believers in Christ then send them out to carry on the gospel. No big names nor powerful nations, just the church and its disciples. In this emphasis "church," "disciple," and "missionary" become virtually interchangeable and I think that is appropriate to the spirit of Acts as well.

As you enjoy your summer and are probably away for some Sundays, please keep up with our church services via the above links, and please keep your giving current to support missionaries like Joe. We all, men and women, are the church of Jesus, and He is the only name we need!

Acts 4:12

~Pastor Peter Martin