Reflecting on Gather 2019
30 Jun 2019 |
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Dear friends,
We are now on the other side of one of the most historic Annual Meetings in our lifetimes. Thank you for your faithful prayers for all involved.
Decisions were made on the following items:
- Ministerium Resolution on Anti-racism: passed
- Ministerium Resolution asking BOOM to reconsider the 2015 guidelines concerning ministers’ participation in same-sex weddings (the resolution asked that pastors participate in ways other than officiating, allowing them to pray or read Scripture): did not pass
- First Covenant Church, Minneapolis (FCCM) Out of Harmony: removed from membership
- Ordinations of Rev. Steve Armfield, retired and Rev. Daniel Collison, FCCM: both revoked and removed from rosters
Dear friends at FCCM, Rev. Collison, Rev. Armfield, and your families,
You rise to a new day unencumbered while we are left bereft.
For the next month, our social media will go black in mourning as we lament the break in our Covenant fellowship and the loss of these dear, faithful friends. After this month of prayer and lament, we will return to share what our discernment is as we move forward, and we are moving forward for we put our hope in God.
LAMENT “Deep Calls to Deep”
(From Psalm 42)
Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.
My soul is downcast within me;
therefore I will remember you
from the land of the Jordan,
the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.
By day the Lord directs his love,
at night his song is with me—
a prayer to the God of my life.
I say to God my Rock,
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning,
oppressed by the enemy?”
My bones suffer mortal agony
as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”
Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.