I am a Presbyterian, again

November 16, 2006 by · 6 Comments
Filed under: Church New Member Process, Religion 

Last night, the session of the Presbyterian Church of Lawrenceville, NJ voted to receive me as a member by Reaffirmation of Faith.  This ends my nearly 20 year departure from the church (and at least a few years off the rolls anywhere).

I wasn’t alone – there were 15 others joining at this time.  Three by Profession of Faith, Six by Reaffirmation of Faith and 7 by Letter of Transfer.  As I’ve said before, this was a very diverse group on everything but age.  The new members live as far away from Lawrenceville as Lahaska, PA and Bensalem, PA.  There are two first-year students at Princeton Seminary.  The ages run from early 20’s to “I don’t want to even guess” retired.  When you add the non-member spouses (like mine) and young children, the group ends up being more like 25 people.

In fact, we outnumbered the elder members of the session.  Because the group was so large, the session had to start their meeting in the chapel and move to their usual spot after the new member portion was complete.

We got started about 7pm with new members and session members filtering into the room.  The chairs were arranged in a big circle that just barely fit in the room, and the new members and session members were interspersed throughout the circle.

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After that, the session voted to receive us into membership and to authorize the baptism of one of us.  We then said a common prayer and passed the peace.  The session then left the room to continue their meeting (being 1/2 hour behind schedule due to our group’s size) and the rest of us headed home.

On Sunday, we will be recognized during the service and one of us will be baptized.  We’ve been instructed to sit up front in the reserved pews (along with family) and that we will be called to stand in front of the congregation at some point.  During the final hymn we will be escorted out to form a receiving line in Fellowship Hall.

The one funny point of the evening came when one of the new members talked about the music program and choir being part of his reason for choosing Lawrenceville.  An elder who is in choir (and who was still jet-lagged from the mission trip to Israel) leaned over and told him when the choir meets.  He then informed her that he’s been in the choir for six months!  Apparently short women in the soprano section up front can’t see the big guys in the baritone section in back.

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