Our purpose
Over the
years a number of mission statements have been crafted by First Presbyterian Church
to express the heart of our congregation. One has showed staying power: the proclamation and demonstration of
God’s love.
Through our worship,
education, fellowship and service, by the power of the Holy Spirit, FPC not
only declares, but also embodies the love of God revealed to us in Jesus of
Nazareth, who by faith we call, “the Christ".
Christ
calls us to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. In worship we offer our hearts in love for
God. Through a wide variety of music,
from 19th-century hymns to African choruses, to the profound
simplicity of the Iona community’s songs, we
praise God in song.
Our preaching connects
the world in which we live with God’s vision for the world revealed in
Scripture, inviting us to join God’s kingdom breaking into the world. In prayer, whether at the beginning of our
Session meetings, or in evening prayers born of the Taize community, we open
our hearts to God praying on behalf of our world.
Through our ministry of education, we love God with all
our minds. Our focus is to equip
Christian leaders in our community through our education ministry. From children learning Bible stories through
art, drama, study, and song to young adults engaging the Word through Sunday
School Bible studies, we fulfill this call.
In Matthew 25, Jesus says we meet
him in the least of these. Through our
social outreach ministries, we offer daily opportunities to meet Christ;
whether at mealtime breaking bread with the homeless, or with the Saturday
School children whose joy conquers the sadness of poverty, or among those with
whom we build homes and schools in Juarez, Mexico, or in the eyes of the children
orphaned by the AIDS epidemic in South Africa.
In these
ways and many more, we meet Jesus and serve him with all our soul and
strength.
Echoing
Jesus’ parable of the sower, FPC is good dirt. Throughout our 152 years, many seeds have been sown in our fields. In 1905 Leontine Bailey brought her children
to FPC as she faced imminent death. When
she died, we rented a home, hired a caregiver, and the seed that would become
Presbyterian Children’s Homes and Services was planted, today serving over
3,000 children a year. In 1921, a local
doctor expressed a need for a clinic for impoverished children and in the basement
of the church, the Freeman Clinic was born.
It evolved into a merger that would become Children’s Hospital of Dallas. In 1975, surrounded by urban blight the
church considered moving. A consultant
told us: “There’s no such thing as a bad location, you just have to figure out
what your location is good for.” In
response, the Stewpot was born.
Our meal
service recently moved to the city’s new homeless assistance center, where we
serve three meals a day, seven days a week, offering 2,000 plates of food a
day. While many seeds have been sown,
these yielded quite a harvest.
We’re
filled with gifted and generous people who provide many nutrients for fertile
soil. Our openness and diversity of
thought create a malleability that welcomes freshly sown seeds. Years of harvests provide a natural humus
essential to nourish future crops. Preaching provides plenty of fertilizer to sustain the compost
pile. These gifts nurtured by skills
acquired through years of experience make FPC good dirt.
We live in a world polarized by
the issue of religion. On the one hand,
secularism is on the rise with evocative books from evangelical atheists
climbing the best-seller charts. On the
other hand, religious zealots use this foil of secularism to whip their
adherents into a frenzied spirit, deepening the hues of black and white in a
world that is truly defined by myriad shades of grey. We desperately need a third way; a way beyond
the two sides of this flawed coin of absolutism; a way that refuses to buy into
the either/or polarities of the culture wars; a way to engage the world with
God’s living Word of love revealed in Jesus Christ.
FPC seeks to answer this challenge
by providing worship, education and service that celebrates the diversity of
God’s people while challenging our congregation and our city with the realities
of our world. On a recent Sunday in
worship, we sang a Chinese folk song in remembrance of earthquake victims,
followed by an offertory of “Just a Closer Walk with Thee,” played by a New Orleans-style jazz
band, and closed with the 17th century hymn, “If Thou but Trust in
God to Guide Thee.” Our Sunday School
classes reflect the diversity of thought of faithful people all along the
culture’s political, socio-economic and religious spectrums. We find unity in our diversity through
serving the poor, providing food, housing, healthcare and education.
In these ways FPC embodies a third
way that seeks to engage our world with God’s living Word of love.
In Christ,
Joe