Prayer from the Assembly: Together In One Place

Saturday, June 14, 2014

This week, I’m gathering with Presbyterians from across the country for the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Whatever your faith-community or denomination, I invite you to join with me and with others in morning prayer each day this week, engaging the Pentecost text from Acts 2:1-21. Over the course of this week, I invite you to read and engage the full text of that Scripture in your life and in your prayer.

This morning let us pray with the first verse of Acts 2: “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.”

From the very beginning of the church universal, we have been a gathering people, gathering together as the body of Christ. We gather for worship, and for prayer, and for meals, and for mourning, and for celebration, and for discernment. We gather as one way of participating in the holy.

Here are some questions for your prayer this morning:

• Where do you gather with others to experience the holy?
• In those gatherings, where have you experienced trouble and distress?
• In those gatherings, where have you experienced freedom and light?

Let us pray for all the gatherings in our life: for denominations, for churches, for families – for all the ways we are together in one place.

Holy One, may your Spirit be with us in all of our gatherings. May you be present with us and in us, in our coming together and in our sending, in our conversation and in our silence, in tender touch and edifying word. In all of our gatherings, may we experience something of you in our experience of each other. Amen.

Scott Clark is the Chaplain and Associate Dean of Student Life at San Francisco Theological Seminary, a seminary of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and of the ecumenical Graduate Theological Union.  Additionally, Scott’s ministry includes advocacy for the full inclusion of all people within the life of the church.  A former attorney, he has represented Presbyterian ministers who have been brought up on disciplinary charges by the church for celebrating the marriages of same-gender couples, and he currently serves on the board of More Light Presbyterians.

This week, Scott is participating in the national General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA), which will be considering a number of faith issues, including the marriage of same-gender couples.  Scott is participating in the Assembly as an “Overture Advocate” (one of the advocates sent from regional presbyteries on a particular issue).  With others, he is advocating for an amendment to the Presbyterian constitution that would affirm marriage equality for all people, including same-gender couples and their families.  Scott also is participating in the General Assembly as part of the team representing San Francisco Theological Seminary, hoping to open and energize discussion about innovation in ministry and in theological education.