In case you haven’t heard…Third pres in Dubuque was released by John Knox Presbytery to transfer into the Evangelical Presbyterian denomination. The process was peaceful, amicable, and demonstrated to the world that there is a way of separating in a Christian, godly manner when two ministries have irreconcilable missions! (You can read the press release here: http://www.layman.org/)
This has been a battle fought faithfully, humbly, and with absolute integrity by the people of God at Third for 30 years now. So join me in praising God for this miraculous, Christ-honoring, God-glorifying, kingdom-advancing, godly-precedent-setting victory!
The reason this process occurred in the manner it did is because the task force (made up of people from all sides of the theological continuum) that worked through the issues went the very route that Dr. Colyer has been insisting is the only truly godly path of debate. Namely, they made a covenant right from the start that the goal was to seek the will of our triune God for the mission of God in Dubuque, and to honor and respect each other as brothers and sisters in Christ.
Every time they began to slip into a business mode of arguing, they would stop and pray and remind each other of this covenant. In other words, they entered into authentic trinitarian community and allowed the Holy Spirit to lead! The result is that you had people who absolutely disagreed with each other on core issues all testifying that these “committee” meetings were some of the richest, most transforming, most spiritually refreshing moments of their life!
Brothers and sisters in Christ, may we learn from this experience that such a path of doing the work of the Church is possible!
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I've heard from everybody who was at the Presbytery meeting that this was a true testament to what is possible through prayer and the Holy Spirit. I am glad that both "sides" worked so hard to do it right.
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