Summer 2012 FOP/ECO gatherings
Dunagan and Leeth led worship in Atlanta
The Layman, September 5, 2012
Worship began each day of the recent 2012 Summer Gatherings of the Fellowship of Presbyterians and ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians in Atlanta. Bryan Dunagan of Peachtree Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, Ga., gave the message on Aug. 23, and the following day Julia Leeth, executive presbyter for Stockton Presbytery in Calif., gave the sermon.
Bryan Dunagan
Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another — and all the more as you see the Day approaching. (Hebrews 10:22-25)
It’s a funny thing, said Dunagan, “the writer of Hebrews has to remind others to keep meeting together – to not give up on community. It’s worth fighting for.”
He then discussed three enemies of the kingdom life – this mission that Jesus launched.
Hurry: Dunagan said that a man once said his prayer for Dunagan was that “you would never hurry again.”
“God never gives you too much to do and if you have too much to do, God didn’t give it to you,” he said. “Hurry will empty your soul and take away your joy.”
Dunagan said that pastors don’t get to plan things. “There’s always a crisis … a crisis is never an excuse for living a chronically busy life as if hurry was a badge of honor or as if it validates our identity as people. … Transformational community cannot happen in a hurry.”
A veneer of togetherness: “Life is full of scars and insecurities,” he said, and many think it is “easier to hide behind a facade of perfectness.”
He said that the church is made up of people living plastic lives trying to impress people that they don’t even like very much.
“The world is not impressed by our veneers of perfectness in the church, he said. “Can we be real with people instead of trying to be perfect?”
“We will fail … None of us will live a mistake free life,” Dunagan said. “In this community everyone is welcome. No one is perfect and anything is possible.”
Comfort: “I wonder how often, in trying to make the Gospel more compelling, we make it too comfortable,” Dunagan said.
On the one hand, he said, there’s a deep longing to be courageous, but on the other hand, a Christian can start to “think about all the things that give me security or make me more comfortable and I don’t want to give that up.
He advocated for a less “warm blanket” Christianity and a more “courageous church willing to do what no one else is doing … to reach out to those no one else is reaching … to hold fast to this hope that you professed.”
Julia Leeth
“Therefore since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything hinders and the sin that so easily entangle, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith who for the joy set before him endured the cross scorning its shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1-2)
“God is calling you to take your place in this long line of faithful witnesses,” Leeth said. “It’s not about fancy theology … It’s getting back to the basics so you can worship the God who loves you so much.”
Leeth said that her agenda was that “each of us might be a part of changing people’s lives for Jesus, radically and irrevocably, because there is nothing better to do with our time.”
Throughout Hebrews, she said, “faith demands action” – not wishful thinking or even thinking without action. “We have to decide what we want our life to be about … if you don’t make a decision, you can’t take action and that, in itself, is its own decision and action.”
Leeth said that she loved that, in the ECO and FOP, the Pastoral Rule will be used so that “we are held accountable … How cool is it that we look at the nature of the church and see how we fall short in areas?”
There’s a long list of things that make it “not hard to grow close to God, but they don’t help us,” she said. “Everything [in our life] that becomes more important to us and doesn’t edge us closer to Jesus, we should look at.”
“I want my life to be full and rich in the grace of a God who loves us so desperately,” Leeth said. But Christians must cast off the things that hinder them, the identification that clung to them before they became followers of Christ and everything else that entangles them, so that they might run the race with perseverance.
“We know the struggle and the agony but we are called to run the race,” she said. “Through the hills and valley, through the good and bad times, God is calling you to run the race before you — all the time keeping Jesus before you. It’s not a skip through the park. It is a serious matter.”
“We must take our eyes off all other things … so we can look fully to Jesus,” said Leeth, “seeing who we are meant to be … not to be Presbyterian or FOP or ECO disciples, but be faithful disciples of Jesus.”
She ended by saying that “God did not send you to this place at this particular moment to start the race. God sent you with all your strength and weakness to this particular place to cast aside everything that hinders you and run the race.”