Barnes to GAC: It's not what you know, but who you know By John H. Adams The Layman Online Wednesday, June 6, 2001 LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Dr. Craig Barnes, minister of The National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., took the General Assembly Council on a boat ride with Jesus on June 5 – to help the denomination's leaders not fear the storms that likely will beset the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA). The General Assembly will meet June 9-16 in Louisville, and there have been storm warnings over proposed changes in the denomination's ordination standard and other issues. Barnes spoke during a worship service that concluded the council's opening day of a four-day agenda that will end on the eve of the General Assembly. His sermon text was Mark 4:35-41, the account of Jesus with his disciples during a storm on the Sea of Galilee. Jesus was asleep in the captain's chair when a storm terrified his disciples. They awakened him by asking, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" Sometimes, that is the greatest fear of the Church – that Jesus really doesn't care and that he merely waits on the other side hoping that his disciples make it across, Barnes said. "We know he cares about AIDS, West Africa," he said. "But what about our shrinking denomination?" Mark quotes Jesus as saying, "Peace, be still," and the storm ended. He then asked the disciples, "Why are you afraid?" "It seems that fear was the only logical response," Barnes said. "But fear is the opposite of faith. 'Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?' Jesus can handle unbelief. He was gentle with the man who said, 'I believe. Help me in my unbelief.' But he never cuts anybody any slack about fear." Barnes told members of the General Assembly Council, "You are the people who are called to lead our community of faith. You dare not be afraid." He described the response of the disciples – "Who then is this that even the wind and the sea obey?" – as a "baptized fear of God." He said the final question in the Mark passage is the "right question." "What gets you through these storms is not what you know, but whom you know," he said. Barnes said the real miracle of the story is not that Jesus calmed the sea, but that he was in the boat with the disciples. "If we believe he is in our boat, we ought to expect a few miracles during the General Assembly," he said. "We ought to smile broadly and say, 'I can't wait to see what Jesus is going to do.'" Fear for our own well-being is misdirected, Barnes said. "If you don't fear God, then you'll fear almost anything else. Don't reduce the church to being about issues. The Church is about who is Jesus Christ."

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