watching a new session be born

on december 14, 2008 mission bay community church will be chartered as a congregation of the PC(USA). as such, the churches leadership will transition from being a steering committee to being a session, and we will ordain our first elders.

in some ways, this is a simple bureaucratic change. but yesterday, sitting with our elders-to-be during our first preparing to be a session retreat, i realized it is so much more.

our eldest elder will be thirty one. our youngest (just by guessing) is an undergrad. more than one person expressed some surprise as being called to this position of leadership in the church. many expressed pride and excitement at the opportunity to serve our congregation and the denomination.

i am taking a presbyterian polity class right now, and this was the most exciting polity moment of the semester so far. when we started to talk about the book of order, what it means, and how we can use it, they got excited. they want to make their voice heard in the denomination. they want to use the avenues available for transforming the church.

and i have never been in a committee, leadership team, or other similar meeting that was so fun (well, maybe an mbcc staff meeting). three and a half hours flew by. the room was often filled with laughter. seriously, i think the state of the global church could be vastly changed if meetings were more fun.

what if once a year, every presbytery birthed one new, fun, excited session (on thereby one new, fun, exciting church)? how different would we be, would the world be?

it can be hard from the inside to understand the significance of insignificance of something accurately. at times, the presence of mbcc, its chartering, its session, feels small. at other times, it feels huge. i think it remains to be seen what the true significance of this community may be. today, i am not sure that it matters. for me, it is the place where i find God. it is the place where right now i am called to serve God. this seems to be the case for a number of fabulous and interesting people. that is enough for me.