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Note #8370 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

Be a headlight, bishop says
GA04076
June 30, 2004

Be a headlight, bishop says

NCC president tells ecumenical group of worshippers to get FAT

by Erin Cox-Holmes

RICHMOND, June 30 - Be a headlight, not a taillight. Be a thermostat, not a
thermometer. Don't be squeezed into a mold by the world, but be a
"transformed nonconformist church." Do it God's way, not the world's way.

The Rev. Thomas L. Hoyt Jr., a bishop in the Christian Methodist Episcopal
Church and the president of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the
USA, pulled out all the metaphors and similes at his command to hammer home
his message during Wednesday morning's ecumenical worship service: Get up and
do something.

The service was a Pentecost parade, a celebration of the common faith
connecting Christians, a multi-language, multinational event as diverse as
the colors of the vestments worn by the celebrants.

Before the preaching came the music: the crooning harmonies of "The Dream
Team" Richmond Boys Choir and the gospel groove of the One Voice Chorus. When
the latter group sang "Credo," from the Gospel Mass, one worshipper said, "I
felt the Apostle's Creed with my heart, not my head." One Voice was created
when members of a predominantly white Presbyterian church and an
African-American Baptist church got together to "sing the beauty and power of
diversity." The chorus fired up the crowd with its last number, "God's Gonna
Set This World on Fire."

They set the stage for the sermon by Hoyt, who was introduced by the Rev.
Clifton Kirkpatrick, the stated clerk of the PC(USA)'s General Assembly, as
"one of the great Christian leaders of our nation ... a person of passionate
heart, prophetic vision for the world, disciple for Christian unity."

Hoyt's message was based on Romans 12, in which Paul asks who can be saved.
The answer is that anyone can be saved who will accept God's gift of grace.

What should "saved" people do? Become FAT people - faithful, accountable and
trustworthy, Hoyt said. In worship we come to God as a living sacrifice,
giving up our desire to go our own way to go God's way instead. Hoyt put it
this way: "God wants to know: Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby?"

God is "strangely mixed up" in the world rather than apart from it, he said.
"The kingdom of God is like that: God enters into the dirt and the dust and
grime of life." And God expects us to be active in the world, where we live,
transforming it by identifying with the powerless among us.

Hoyt said the worshiping community must have a plan, resolutions and
pronouncements, organized action. "Otherwise the children of darkness will be
stronger than the children of light," he said, maintaining that people
transformed by God's mercy and grace don't value women over men, managers
over workers, the rich over the poor. They don't believe it's OK "to invade
someone else's country and tell them it's for their own good," he said.

Transformed non-conformists vote, and vote for candidates who stand with
people who are poor and powerless, he said, quoting the Rev. Martin Luther
King Jr: "I never intend to adjust myself to a society which takes
necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes."

The Rev. Helen Locklear, associate director of the PC(USA)'s Racial-Ethnic
Ministries Program Area, announced that the offering was earmarked for the
Commission on Religion in Appalachia (CORA), an ecumenical group that works
for justice for the people of Appalachia and against racism.

The service was held in the historic Carpenter Center, built in 1928 as an
exotic movie palace, with Egyptian, Italian, and Spanish motifs, satin
curtains, tapestries and stained glass on the walls and twinkling stars
overhead. It was restored in 1983 by the Virginia Center for the Performing
Arts.

The participants included ecumenical representatives and delegates from the
Presbyterian churches of East Africa, Pakistan and Ghana; the National
Evangelical church in Iraq; and the Iglesia Evangelica del Rio de la Plata in
Argentina.

This story and many others may have photos, media, video clips that can be
found at http://www.pcusa.org/ga216/.

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