Francis Makemie: The
Calling to be Connected Together.
Take a moment with me, please, to review some of the
history of our church. To begin at the beginning we must ponder a small group
of rugged, devout and irascible pastors who first gathered in Philadelphia
in 1706 for the first organized meeting of the first Presbytery in the United States England ,
Scotland or Ireland
The great theological divisions within Protestantism
which were now an intimate and centuries old aspect of the history of the England , Scotland
and Ireland were all
imported to America America
The
first Presbytery meeting included seven ministers representing both
Presbyterians and Congregationalist
Churches America Pennsylvania and Delaware
in the spring of 1706 when the first meeting of a Presbytery in America Philadelphia
Why did Francis Makemie and the other six ministers
gather and create that first Presbytery? Certainly they each had a lot of other
work to do with their congregations, and planting new congregations. The truth is
that these pastors each had a powerful and spiritual calling in Christ to be
connected together. I believe an essential question we each need to ponder
today, in an era of stress and strain in our church, is whether or not you are
called to be connected together. I would like to ask each session of each of
our congregations to spend a few moments considering this question: Are we
called to be connected? Are we called to be connected with other Presbyterian
congregations who, in fact, will have practices and convictions very different
than our own? Are we called to be connected in and through the Presbytery and
what do we believe is the purpose and the benefit of those connections? This
calling is where it must all begin.
The presbytery cannot function and, I would say, cannot
exist if the churches in our midst do not know themselves to be deeply and
spiritually called to be connected together. We can deal with a vast diversity
of practices and convictions, we can accept massive differences in style, and perspective
and approach, we can manage our financial and demographic downsizing if we are
called to be connected together. It is very important that your session be
brutally honest about this question. If you are convinced that you truly are
not called to be connected with other Presbyterians congregations through the
presbytery then you need to be true to that. Or if you discern that there are
behaviors, values, or convictions that you simply cannot be connected with then
you need to true to that. Are we called to be connected? This calling is our
starting point; it was so for Francis Makemie.
[1]
Ashbel Green, A Historical Sketch or Compendious View of Domestic and Foreign
Missions, 14.
[2] Wood, Henry. The Presbyterian Controversy, with Early
Sketches of Presbyterianism. Louisville
[3]Briggs,
Charles Augustus, D.D. American Presbyterianism: Its Origins and Early History.
New York :
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1885, 129. Briggs concludes: “At the opening of the
eighteenth century there was no strife between the Scotch and Irish
Presbyterians and the Puritans of England and America , but only the most hearty
sympathy and co-operation.” See here also the text of a “letter of thanks from
the Provincial Synod of Glasgow to the Rev. Dr. Mather in New
England , dated 1700.”
[4]Briggs,
Charles Augustus, D.D. American Presbyterianism: Its Origins and Early History.
New York :
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1885, 127.
[5]Briggs,
Charles Augustus, D.D. American Presbyterianism: Its Origins and Early History.
New York :
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1885, 140.
[6]
Wood, Henry. The Presbyterian Controversy, with Early Sketches of
Presbyterianism. Louisville :
N.H. White, 1843, 26. Rev. Andrews was a “Congregational Presbyterian. That church
was sixty four years without any ruling elders, though under the care of the
Presbytery.”
[7]
Briggs, Charles Augustus, D.D. American Presbyterianism: Its Origins and Early
History. New York :
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1885, 140.
