FOP/ECO Gathering
What are we waiting for?
ORLANDO, Fla. – Don’t lose sight of Jesus and keep doing His work here on this earth. Those were the strong messages sent by the Rev. Dr. Marnie Crumpler as she delivered the closing address to the National Gathering of the Fellowship of Presbyterians (FOP) and ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians on Feb. 1.
Executive pastor at Peachtree Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, Ga., Crumpler used Acts 1: 1-11 as provocation of a simple question: What are we waiting for?
Crumpler used a reference to a U.S. Navy carrier’s catapult system to show what The Fellowship and ECO should be doing in spreading God’s Word. The catapult is not the largest piece of equipment on a carrier, but it is used to get a fully-loaded, 60,000-pound F-14 fighter off a 200-foot deck, rocketing it from 0 to 60 mph in two seconds.
“The Fellowship and ECO are not the carriers or the planes, not the pilots,” she said. “The Fellowship and ECO are catapults launching us to serve and follow Jesus, So through gatherings like this and through mission affinity groups, through our study over the essential tenets and just our life together, God is encouraging us and challenging us … He is doing great things.”
In the passage from Acts, Jesus had returned and spent 40 days with his followers. He tells his disciples they will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon them, and they will be His witnesses to the end of the earth. Then He ascends to heaven, gone from them once more.
Jesus had called these men, taught them, performed miracles in their presence and even told them of His death and resurrection. Even as witnesses to all of that, they still were shocked and surprised that He was alive and they could spend time with Him as the resurrected savior. Then, as quickly as Jesus had appeared to them, He was gone.
Jesus disappeared in a cloud that hid Him from their sight, and two men dressed in white came to the disciples. “Men of Galilee,” they asked, “why do you stand here looking in to the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen Him go into heaven.”
“Whoever they were, they had a message: What are you waiting for? “Crumpler said. “Jesus will come back again. And the unspoken message: Get busy doing what He said.”
In his writing, Luke piles up compelling proof that Jesus was alive. He suffered a cruel death on the cross and then showed up, appearing over and over to His disciples and followers.
And when He left again, all the disciples could do was stare.
“What would they do? Would they listen to what Jesus had told them? Would they receive power and change the world?” Crumpler asked.
That quandary is a lot like what is taking place with the Fellowship and ECO.
“We’ve been in a season of denominational wrangling,” Crumpler said. “There has been fighting and discerning and praying and building a new thing … Many of us have felt paralyzed, whether we’re through the process, in the process or whether we are still trying to figure out a process. We can’t see a way past where we are to the next thing. At best, we’ve been divided and distracted from what we know is the most important stuff of our call. I wonder if we even could admit we’ve lost sight of Jesus. We’ve put our focus on peripheral stuff rather than Him.”
“It’s a good question to ask. What are you waiting for?”
Crumpler said Jesus is telling His followers they are not defined by denominational battle wounds or being part of a new denomination. The mission has not changed.
“If you really believe that this Jesus we love and serve changed your life and is still changing lives, if you believe He changes history and changes people from the inside out and changes the most heartbreaking issues in our culture, hear these words from Jesus: ‘You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be My witnesses.’”
She gave two straightforward points to remember:
- “You have everything you need … because you have the power of God at work in you.”
- “You have everything the world needs … you are His witnesses.”
Because they had followed Jesus and served Him, and experienced His miraculous works, the disciples were changed men. They received the power of Jesus through the Holy Spirit. Then they took Jesus to the world, telling God’s love story of Jesus so that people could be reconciled.
Crumpler used another illustration of a young scientist named Louis Slotin who gave his life to stop a uranium chain reaction that saved the lives of seven other people. She told the crowd how Jesus walked into “sin’s most concentrated radiation” more than 2,000 years ago and allowed Himself to be touched by its curse and take His life, thus breaking the power of sin over us.
“You have what you need; Jesus is what you need,” Crumpler said. “The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is in you … You have the Holy Spirit in you. God has done for you what you could never do for yourself.”
She encouraged people to recommit themselves to their relationship with Christ, to be dedicated in the study of God’s Word and to actively follow Him instead of simply talking about Him.
“Friends, you have everything you need,” she said, “ but you also have everything the world needs.”
Crumpler explained that the disciples were not intended to be gazers of the sky but to be Jesus’ witnesses here on earth. That was to be their focus, to spread His message.
“People, whether they’ve never heard of God or don’t know what to do with Him, whether they’ve got just enough religion to keep them away from Jesus, all of them – all of us – we all need Jesus,” she said. “… We have what they need.”
Crumpler pointed out that people need to have their thirst quenched by Jesus, the living water, noting that we should point people to Jesus in all we do.
“We know that He is on the move, pursuing and wooing people to know Him and love Him,” she said. “We have what we need – the power of God at work in us. And we have what the world needs. We are witnesses.”
Crumpler closed with a personal reflection about riding bikes with her family. Her daughter was about to fall off her bicycle, but Crumpler raced to her quickly, getting there just in time to catch her. Sitting on the curb to recover, Crumpler’s heart was pounding inside her chest, beating faster and faster.
“God wants our heart to beat fast for the things that matter the most to Him,” she said. “God ran after us when He sent Jesus, and He wants us to act and respond to His love by giving witness to the greatest love there ever was. He wants us to love the world because He loves the world. He has given us the power, and He has called us to be His witnesses.
“Friends, we have everything we need. We have what the world needs. What are we waiting for?”
And with that the gathering attendees were sent into the world to be His witnesses.