On Sunday afternoon our congregation gathered to do a straw vote on leaving the PCUSA. Our church is the largest Presbyterian church in the country and has been working on this move out of the PCUSA for 10 months. We have had several meetings with Pastor Singleton as he explained the fundamental issues the PCUSA has and what we as a church believe. I was very excited about it especially after we saw a sermon from a Pastor in a church in CA that was at a big meeting in Florida recently. He explained what the new denomination is. It is called Evangelical Covenant Order or ECO for short. You can view the video at The meeting on Sunday was a straw vote to see where the congregation as a whole was at in terms of this move. A final official vote will be taken in a month. It was interesting to hear some of the questions and concerns and I realized that most of them had to do with fears. Fear of what others will think of our church, fear of breaking up the unity of the church, fear of the unknown future of the church and on. But as was said by a few others, it is risky and new but where we are at is dying. Apparently, the Presbyterian church has not grown at all in the last 50 years and is apparently loosing people. We just want to believe the Word of God and believe that Jesus is the son of God, died for us, went to hell and came out of hell and returned to heaven. So I am thankful today for the courage of people to finally stand up and make this move away from beliefs that don't jive with ours. The newspaper said that over 90% voted to leave. We only needed 80% so that is huge. I am excited about the future of our church and of this new denomination.
Mark 5:36 Ignoring what they said, Jesus told the synagogue ruler, "Don't be afraid; just believe."
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