An email shared with Beverly Heights Presbyterian Church in their preperation to leave the EPC

In just a few short weeks, Beverly Heights Church will vote on whether or not to remain in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.  It is an important vote, one that will deeply impact the life of this congregation and the future of this ministry.  I, for one, believe there is ample evidence from the Administrative Commission, the Presbytery of the Allegheny, and the EPC that requires us to disassociate with what has become an increasingly liberal and unjust denomination.  However, this vote is not just about what we are hoping to leave behind, it is also about what we are seeking to pursue, God’s Good Future.  I’ll share some reasons why I think we need to leave the EPC in another email, but for now, I’d like to share a vision of what we are trying to preserve and build.    

God’s Good Future Includes Covenant Renewal Worship

We have long said that at Beverly Heights Church, worship is job number one.  We value worship and we’ve done everything we can to make it excellent, but that excellence had the unintended consequence of creating a culture of consumer worship.  Each week we planned the bulletin, and on Sunday we executed worship. Many were satisfied as they sat, watched, and listened.  If someone wasn’t satisfied, or if they didn’t get what they wanted, they were sure to let us know. I knew this needed to change so over time, I adjusted our approach to make sure worship was informed by the word of God and not our preferences.  Last summer our liturgy changed to a covenant renewal service, with a weekly call to worship, confession of sin, consecration through preaching, communion, and commissioning.  Our worship became more biblically saturated, with weekly Psalm reading and Psalm singing. Worship became more participatory as we learned to sing in four-part harmony, bow for confession, and raise our hands to receive God’s benediction.  I’ve adjusted my sermons to be more concrete and less abstract, proclaiming the whole counsel of God, even the parts we’re uncomfortable with, and applying them to our daily lives.  The result of such worship is life-altering, joyful, and emboldening.  Such worship puts the focus on God and not ourselves and makes us a holy people who are ant-fragile and able to live faithfully in an increasingly anti-Christian world.              

God’s Good Future Includes Love that Flows Down

I am working to build a ministry at Beverly Heights Church that will not only get us to our one-hundredth anniversary but one that will benefit generations to come.  We cannot be a church that is concerned about our own interests and still expect to inherit a good future.  If we want a good future, then we must invest in the future.  God’s good future is a fruit-bearing future, filled with growing families. We must encourage the creation of families, support families, and sustain families.  We want our church to be filled with children and grandchildren, and we want our love to flow down to them.  We want to baptize our babies and give them the sign of the covenant as we take vows to help raise little ones in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.  We want to conduct weddings, throw baby showers, and make meals for new parents.  We also want to honor our forebears and thank previous generations for all the love they’ve shown to us.  And we want to invite those same older generations to keep investing in the future.   

God’s Good Future Includes Christian Education

The responsibility upon parents to give their children a distinctly Christian education is not optional, but a duty laid upon us by God.  That is why we have invested more time, energy, and resources in Christian education at Beverly Heights.  Perhaps at one time, we could assume the local school shared with the family a vision of the common good and could partner with us in the education of our kids.  But that day has long since passed.  The modern education system is not disconnected but severed from the truth of God’s law by a wall of separation and it can have no understanding of what is good or right or holy.  Parents need help raising their children in the Lord, and God has called the church, not the state, to partner with the family in education.  And so, we want to see our children’s ministry grow as well as our preschool and academy.  There is no more important and exciting growth edge in the church right now than Christian education.   

God’s Good Future Includes Christian Liberty

The modern evangelical church today is overrun by dower pietism.  Many in the church today are life and world denying, worried that the good stuff of God’s creation has a greater propensity toward corruption than celebration.  Nothing could be further from the truth. God’s good future includes the enjoyment of God’s blessings, which means the future is one of feasting.  Most of us don’t have a problem with celebration, we just think it needs to be done outside of the church. Why?  Maybe it’s because our feasting is more pagan than Christian, and we indulge the flesh more than we ought to.  Others, I suspect, are unwitting Gnostics who try and separate one’s pure spiritual life from this soiled earthly life.  This is wrong.  Christians must feast.  We must gather together as families to sing and eat and drink, even wine!  We’re not less Christian when we do this but more Christian.  As a result, we’ll also be happier, and stronger, for the work God has in store for us.

God’s Good Future is Optimistic About the Future

Beverly Heights Church is strategically located in what is essentially the heart of Mt Lebanon.  And Mt. Lebanon is increasingly becoming Babylon.  Just read the news about the shenanigans that have taken place on our school board and school district.  Just look at all the yard signs that emerge every summer, especially in June.  Mt. Lebanon is a part of “clown world” as one theologian described the spirit of our age.  Some might despair that we’re a conservative church surrounded by a sea of blue, but I don’t.  I only see God’s good hand at work.  I see an opportunity.  I see the victory God achieved in Jesus Christ, to make his church a foretaste of the kingdom of God.  We have the privilege of living in such a day as to defy the spirit of our age and invite the world to taste and see that the Lord is good.  I believe Beverly Heights Church is in Mt Lebanon for a reason and that over time we can have an outsized impact on our community.  I believe we can take Mt. Lebanon for Christ if we’re given the chance.  

Our detractors, especially the AC, will tell us that we can do all these things in the EPC.  They’ll tell us that we can possess God’s future within the Presbytery of the Alleghenies.  I disagree, and I’ll share why in a future email.  But for now, I’ll end by saying that God has a good future, and I for one want to pursue it.  I’d like to pursue it with you at Beverly Heights Church, and I hope that on February 4th, you’ll decide to join me, the Session, and the staff as we look forward to God’s good future together.  

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash