Preacher during the PC(USA)’s Immersion conference says vital congregations remember their true base

The Rev. Dr. Tom Bryson opens the two-day gathering with a tale of two microwaves

by Mike Ferguson | Presbyterian News Service

The Rev. Dr. Tom Bryson

LOUISVILLE — The Rev. Dr. Tom Bryson, the co-pastor at Southminster Presbyterian Church in Vestavia Hills, Alabama, remembers the day as a young boy when his father brought home the family’s first microwave oven. “This thing was huge,” Bryson preached during opening worship of The Immersion, a wo-day conference hosted by the Office of Vital Congregations that opened Wednesday at Montreat Conference Center in Montreat, North Carolina, and online. “We had to change everything in the kitchen to accommodate this microwave oven, but soon we were popping popcorn and melting cheese, and our lives changed.”

That was the last time Bryson ever really thought about microwave ovens until about a month ago, when the built-in unit in his own family’s kitchen stopped working. It was oddly shaped and has proven difficult to replace.

“Life without a microwave oven is a lot harder,” he said. “You have to look on YouTube to find out how to make popcorn on a stovetop, and leftovers are a lot different now. They take planning and time and energy.”

That example is “the human being adjusting to the new baseline, and it’s nothing new,” Bryson said. French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau was writing about it in the middle of the 18^th century, noting “people are unhappy to lose things without being happy to possess them.”

“I never once gave thanks for the wonderful little box that lives in my kitchen,” Bryson said. “It’s something I took for granted and now am devastated to lose it.”

In a similar way, the PC(USA)’s Vital Congregations initiative “seeks to help congregations flip this understanding of the world around us by remembering our true base,” Bryson said. We’ve gotten used to our buildings and our budgets “and other things that either lift us or harm us, and there are things we don’t stop to give thanks for,” Bryson said. “Vital Congregations helps us regain the baseline of who we are as God’s people and allows us the opportunity to be thankful.”

The Office of Vital Congregations teaches there are seven marks of congregational vitality: lifelong discipleship formation, intentional authentic evangelism, outward incarnational focus, empowered servant leadership, Spirit-inspired worship, caring relationships and ecclesial health.

For his preaching text, Bryson used 1 John 5:13-15. “First John is a sermon or a sermon series. It’s a church leader in the midst of the community saying, ‘We are the children of God, saved and blessed to be a blessing,’” he said. “It’s not something that can be lost. Vital Congregations at its best allows us to move forward without that fear. We remember our baseline as a Christian community.”

In September, Bryson heard best-selling author A.J. Jacobs speak during Stewardship Kaleidoscope. In his book “Thanks a Thousand: A Gratitude Journey,” Jacobs, according to Bryson, “suggests this way of living into gratitude: commit to noticing and remembering in order to be part of the story.”

“In gratitude and joy, let us never take our baseline for granted,” Bryson said. “All the things we wish we had is not who we are.” Or, as Jacobs points out in his book, “If we connected the world with threads signifying gratitude, the result would be as think as a blanket,” Bryson said. “Imagine the church of Christ with a blanket that thick! In gratitude to God, thanks be to God. Amen.”