Three and One

We are better together has been one of the key affirmations since we began to explore the possibility of creating a single Oklahoma presbytery. Why do we need everything in triplicate? We have three presbytery offices, three General Presbyters, three Stated Clerks, three administrative staffs, and three Councils, COMs, and CPMs. It is more than our state and churches need at this time. This is a practical and reasonable argument. It is simply hard to justify the current structure. 

We are better together is more than an argument for efficiency, however. We are better together is a rallying cry for what we experienced at the Fall Presbytery Meeting on November 14-15 at Sequoyah Lodge. The conversations, fellowship, worship, service, learning, and discernment were incredible. The laughter and joy of the gathering was a testament not to the practical benefit of a single Oklahoma Presbytery, but to the hope we can give one another when barriers (and presbytery borders) start to fall. We are not alone in our individual churches or our individual presbyteries.  We are always connected in Jesus Christ and increasingly in our activities as the three Oklahoma presbyteries meet together.

Perhaps for the first time on Friday during worship, I caught myself thinking, “This is what it could be like for these three presbyteries to be one.” A hundred commissioners were focused on Commissioned Pastor Sandy Bach’s sermon. They then took communion together. They rose and sang joyfully, together, without accompaniment. I had another one of those moments as the group participated in the mission project. A hundred hands putting together bags to support domestic violence prevention. 

This was one meeting and the next step in this process of creating a single Oklahoma Presbytery. Hopefully, it was also a nudge to begin thinking and living more fully into what we are better together could mean.

Blessings,

Rev. Tim Blodgett

General Presbyter

Eastern Oklahoma Presbytery