What We Believe
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
To learn more about what we believe, visit the PCUSA website.
