The Big Tent Experience

Fifteen hundred Presbyterians gathered in Louisville August 1-3 to worship, learn, and enjoy fellowship together at the Big Tent Conference. I was blessed to be one of them.  Worship was uplifting, preaching inspiring, workshops stretching.  The gathering concluded with a grand street party under the Second Street bridge, right next to our General Assembly office building on Witherspoon Street. We celebrated 25 years in that space.  Our move there supported the beginnings of a renaissance and reinvestment in downtown Louisville, which is so evident today.  We also celebrated 30 years since the church reunion in 1983 when two streams of Presbyterians walked down the streets in Atlanta to announce our reconciliation. We are not the same church today.  Nearly every preacher, speaker, workshop leader named the hard realities we face today in the church.  If you loved the past there is so much to grieve. One workshop leader, Stan Ott, stated it in broader terms than the church, "The 20th century is the name of a train that no longer runs." However, the Big Tent gave witness to God's promise of a new day, the young families down front and center on mats, bean bags and rocking chairs during worship; the many racial ethnic church leaders; the new mission coworkers commissioned to service in countries around the world;  and 126 new worshiping communities of faith since last summer igniting a movement toward 1001 such new communities of faith by 2020.

I focused my time at the Big Tent on the Evangelism and Church Growth conference offerings.  I became familiar and impressed with the General Assembly Staff persons called to assist us in learning again, how to make disciples, who provide a discernment process for how to start new initiatives, and refocus the ministries of existing congregations, how to exegete/study/read a community and connect with it.
 
With Labor Day week end arriving and the beginning of our fall schedules, remember to focus on the end outcome of all your efforts, making disciples of Jesus Christ.  It begins with each one of us experiencing God in ours lives, meeting Jesus in the faces of persons we encounter, learning from them, and intentionally identifying a couple of persons to walk along side of to help them grow into Christ.  May God bless your ministry these coming weeks.