Here is Hugh Anderson, General Presbyter of the South Region of Cascades Presbytery.  The Presbyterian Church really is amazing in how we are connected with one another all across the world.  I managed to slow Hugh down for long enough to snap this photo.  We are all scrambling to keep up with everything.

 

Many of the speakers are urging us to return to our roots, while others focus our thoughts on embracing the future.  Many find ways of combining appeals to consider our history with challenges to apply that history to the future.  I feel we need to look backward and forward in three ways.  1.  We need to re-examine what we believe and find ways to speak timeless truths in ways that reach our world today and tomorrow.  2. We need a renewal of the vitality of our spiritual lives so that faith moves us to live out what we believe.  3.  We need to find ways beyond our discomfort in sharing our faith with others.

 

To use older words for these three challenges, we need orthodoxy, renewal and evangelism.  The first letters of those three words spell “ore.”  Ore is metal in a rough state that has not yet been refined.  At the end of my third day I am willing to venture that this church is gold, but not solid 24 karat jewelry material.  We need a potentially painful process of refinement before we will be solid gold.

 

What words would you use to describe it?