Theology of Doing Church

Time really flies! Yesterday was the second time I attended San Jose Presbytery Meeting. For the first meeting notes and a theology comments on reformed faith, please refer to my previous articles.

This meeting was held at Watsonville United Presbyterian church. When I arrived, parked, signed-in, got my dockage, the worship before the meeting just started. On the stage there were 6 or 7 people, singing mostly modern worship songs -- big screen, guitars, strong beat rhythms, lead-singers etc – young people’s worship style. I guess they are reaching out to young believers.

I noticed the songs includes “In Christ Alone”, replaced “The wrath of God was satisfied” with “The love of God was satisfied”, which would be very important for young people’s faith growth.

Rev. Robby Olson of the host church shared his own calling to Watsonville from 5 years ago, aimed to transform a small church of elderly into an energetic church reaching out to community. He only preaches two messages: one is “God loves you”, the other is “Let’s be the church to serve the world”. God open ways for them to serve the Watsonville community – prayer vigil, basketball, high-school students, snapchat social network, and homelessness – brothers and sister simply moved into social actions, Pastor Robby’s wife was even invited to run for a city council seat. Turn out they were called to the city rather than just called to a small church.

I open the dockage, looking for any comments on the reformed faith, because I myself had sent some comments. I found none. I guess that is because my comments were not made during the meeting time. I hope someone started to ponder about it though. Also I don’t believe anybody else raised any other comments on the theology and faith issue. – Most people consider theology has nothing to do with how they do church.

But no Christian can escape theology. For example when pastors proclaim "Jesus' saving death" during a communion, which is not from Bible, doesn't anybody wonder what it is? They meant penal substitution atonement theory of personal salvation, that no one wants to ask/explain it, for it boils down to the idea of Jesus saving you from Father, which does not make any sense!

Now, when later people shared “joys and concerns”, a newly commissioned youth minister Jeremiah asked prayers for young people, for many of them struggle with faith in their college years. I cannot help but thinking of the role of “individual and personal salvation” faith, as we all taught and learnt gospel, is simply too thin and too narrow to hold on as a worthwhile goal of life; or things like "Jesus' saving death" problem, wouldn't they cause careful young examiners losing faith?

This meeting has many committee reports, updates, motions, approvals, , mostly had nothing to do with Calvinism. The one caught my attention was that of Puerto Rico mission trip, to help hurricane recovery, since our Foothill church has 5 , people planning to join the mission team. Another was sponsored by San Jose Presbytery Peace and Justice Task Force, learning how even a small group of dedicated individuals can support our immigrant neighbors.

In the last Presbytery meeting, I learnt that our Presbytery is a sanctuary Presbytery; we have decided to join faith communities to act together in solidarity, to stand with, speak up, and take action to protect members of our community, named undocumented immigrants, who are targeted with hate and fear. By now there are 70 congregations in Bay area formed a network.

I don’t know how many of our church members at FPC know and befriend undocumented immigrants, or if we can actually reach out and help them. Won’t that be an expansion of our church and ministries? Our church don’t have a Spanish ministry at this point though. Maybe we should at least do some educational time in our congregation, then see if the Spirit would raise or move people.