As you read this, the Long-Range Planning Committee has just finished hosting a conference which they hope and pray will be one of those moments when our church will be “turned upside down.” The event was called the Emmaus Project. Representatives of 17 presbyteries (about 150 participants in total) from across Canada gathered with the dream to initiate a movement among Presbyterians from coast to coast that will see them “turning the world upside down.” Is this merely an exaggerated marketing ploy of the project design team or do they really believe it is possible? Having heard the team’s convener, Rev. Wes Denyer, share the dream of the Emmaus Project I am convinced that they do believe. However, I have also heard Wes share his concern that the church at large could “drop the ball” once the Emmaus Project has done its part in initiating this movement to guide a new way of seeing and a new way of believing.
I share Wes’s concern because I am well aware how easy it would be to do just that. We could very easily bury the benefits of this conference by debating and talking it to death at all the levels of church government and through the seemingly never-ending committees. We are very good at doing that. But, in doing so we will only ensure its work and insights get filed away in a dusty archive under the title, “Been there, done that, and nothing changed.” We could study it and theologize it into the ground without experiencing one iota of its spiritual riches. We are very good at that as well. But it is also possible that we could so open ourselves to the working of the Holy Spirit that we would be ready and willing recipients of whatever the Father has in store for us in and through this timely and possibly ground-shaking initiative. We may not be quite so good at doing this. At least, I know I am not!
The story of Acts 17 tells us that the leaders of the Jewish synagogue in Thessalonica knew that in their midst were real “world changers!” But they chose to have nothing to do with them. Even worse, they stirred up a riot to drive them out of their presence. There was no way that they were going to let Paul and Silas, and the gospel they preached, change their world and the world of those over whom they held spiritual authority. They would rather go down in history being known as those who refused to be part of a movement turning the world upside down. They may even have been proud of their stance.
But, what of us? Can we handle the possibility that the gospel may have that kind of world-changing impact when it is unleashed upon the human race? Or, must we feel compelled to downplay the instances in which the Good News of Jesus Christ dramatically takes hold of the world and turns it upside down?
We may have a fleeting moment in the shadow of the Emmaus Project to say to our God, “I am on side for whatever it is you are doing in our midst, in our time through the moving of your Holy Spirit. Give me grace to journey down that Emmaus road with you learning to see as we have never seen before and to believe as we have never believed before.” And do you know what just might happen? Our world might just be turned upside down.
