Installation

Dear Family and Friends,

I would like to invite all of you to a worship service of installation and commissioning here at the church on Sunday, September 28th at 4pm. Even though I have been serving as your pastor for almost a month, I don’t officially carry that title. According to the Presbyterian lingo, I am your pastor-elect until installation.

A friend recently quipped, “Installation? What do they think you are? A refrigerator?” Although the way Presbyterians do things sometimes can be confusing, there are good reasons that we install both pastors and elders. We are all called to be disciples of Jesus Christ, and we are also called to particular ministries. Whether in the home, school, church, or on the shop floor, our witness to Christ occurs in a particular place. This may seem obvious to some, but when we forget this fact we are no longer doing ministry. Serving God means that we serve one another. Can one be a shepherd without a flock, a teacher without students, or a leader without those to lead?

The reformer John Calvin once noted that the pastor should be bound to a particular church. According to Calvin, pastors should not be “dashing about aimlessly without an assignment.” Pastors who are not involved in the real lives of real people are, in my humble opinion, a real danger to the church. As Calvin notes, disconnected pastors become “more concerned about their own advantage than the upbuilding of the church.”

Somewhere in here is a lesson for all of us. We all are accountable to God, yet we need to be accountable to each other. Our life in Christ is not an escape from the world, but rather it is a calling to the world. Our faith is strengthened by facing the fire. Trials have come, according to Peter, “so that your faith--of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire--may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed” (1Pet 1:7).

May God bless you in the all the places that you have been “installed.”

Grace & Peace,
James