I discovered this sermon by The Reverend Dr. Craig Barnes, President of Princeton Theological Seminary.  Give yourself 17 1/2 minutes to watch the entire sermon.  It’s beautiful, it’s winsome and it will draw you closer to Christ Jesus.

The sermon is most powerful in its whole but here are the closing words…

“All things hold together in the center that is Christ Jesus.  All of it, it all holds.  Our lives hold not by building walls around them that will protect us from evil.  The Church holds not by its exterior walls, because as he (Paul) says in verse 14 (Ephesians, chapter 2) these walls only divide us.  They only create hostility…These walls only divide and they are completely unnecessary to the Church because the Church holds by its center.  If you define the Church at the center you don’t have to worry about the walls any more.  You can give up worrying about who’s in and who’s out of the Church.  We have no business talking about these boundary issues any more of who’s in or who’s out.  Your life will hold together by the center, the God who dwells with us, Jesus Christ.  The Church will hold by its one center, Jesus Christ.  We’re free to dismantle the walls anytime we want.”

Being dismissed from the PC(USA) will not change or narrow the theological positions of most congregations but in all likelihood it will build walls around them.

If we define the Church by the center we don’t have to worry about the walls anymore.  

Let’s #StayPCUSA together.