Last night I had my final assessment. This was the last stage before I was approved to receive a call in the PC(USA). I went in nervous figuring they would be grilling me...and I was right.
There was concern and conversation raised about my statement of faith. Some of the people felt as though I was not clear enough in my statements to suggsets that I had strong convictions and belief in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. While I agree with their concerns that those be apparent, I found myself in a quandry. My sense of call is to reach out to those who are un/de/over-churched, and so I try to tailor my language in such a manner as to invite them into a conversation about faith and who Jesus Christ.
Therefore my goal with the statement was to claim mysteries of faith, but then follow those up with statements of absolutes (the stuff to the right of the colon).
In the end my mission was accomplished because after approval the committee sat around for another 20 minutes to discuss my work--now as a collegue.
An interesting question posed to me is how my statement of faith would be (and should it be) rewritten depending upon my audience...I think so.
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