Where Did Presbyterians Come From?
July 6th, 2025 “Where Did Presbyterians Come From?” Rev. Heather Jepsen
Summer Sermon Series: Stump the Pastor
Numbers 11:1-17 and Ephesians 2:1-10
My friends, once again this morning we return to our summer sermon series “Stump the Pastor” where I write sermons based on questions or topics you have submitted. This morning, we are looking at the Presbyterian denomination of which this church is a part and in which I am ordained as a Minister of Word and Sacrament.
Our story begins in the 1500s with Martin Luther and the Reformation. Luther was a German Priest who split from the Catholic church in what would become the beginning of the Protestant faith. Luther challenged the authority of the pope and the practice of the church of selling salvation. He thought people only needed to read the Bible to connect to God and they didn’t need to go through an intercessor like a priest. Luther believed that all Christians could be a holy priesthood and that we receive salvation through our faith and that our good works show that.
This was a protest movement against the traditional church. Notice that Protestant contains the word protest, these people were protestors, and the movement spread throughout all of Europe. In France, a man named John Calvin, was speaking out against the Catholic church with his own list of grievances. His life was soon under threat and so he fled to Switzerland and made his home in Geneva.
Calvin shared many of the same beliefs that Luther did including the focus on access to scripture for all people and denying the authority of the Pope. Calvin also believed in grace achieved by faith, and he took it a step farther than Luther. Calvin argued that there is nothing good at all in people, a concept called “Total Depravity”. His idea was that we can do no good thing apart from God and that it is even God within us that moves us toward salvation. This idea was built on what Calvin called the sovereignty of God which meant that God can do whatever God wants whenever God wants to do it. No one and nothing controls God.
Some of Calvin’s ideas don’t sit well with modern believers. One thing Calvin was famous for was his belief that we should have no images of God or Jesus as they would become idols. That’s why Presbyterian churches don’t have statues like catholic churches do. In the years of Reformation battles, Calvinists were known to break into Catholic churches and smash their windows and statues. Churches were supposed to be plain so that we wouldn’t be distracted from God. Thankfully, we won’t be having a field trip to the catholic church to smash statues today. You can tell by our windows here that we have let some of that go.
Another problematic belief of Calvin’s was Predestination. Calvin argued that because God was sovereign, then God chooses who goes to heaven and who goes to hell, those decisions are already made and there is nothing we can do to change it. Obviously, it doesn’t sit well with people to claim you are going to heaven and they aren’t because God said so and there is nothing they can do about it. In our modern understanding, we believe that God chooses all people through Jesus Christ, so everyone is saved.
Martin Luther’s followers became known as Lutherans. The followers of John Calvin became the Reformed churches, and Presbyterian is one of the oldest branches. One of the major things Calvin and Luther disagreed on was church government. Luther kept a top-down structure, like the catholic church, where bishops make decisions for local congregations. Calvin thought that churches should be led by committees of elders. The Greek word for elder is presbuteros hence we get the name Presbyterian.
By the early 1630s Presbyterians were active building churches on this continent. In 1706 they established their first geographical unit, called a Presbytery. They also built Princeton University. Throughout the years different groups branched off the main church. In 1829 our neighbors down the street, the Cumberland Presbyterians began. There was a strong need for Pastors out on the frontier of this growing country, and they argued that clergy did not need the traditional education or to fully subscribe to all beliefs in our Westminster confession to lead these churches. In 1860 the church split again into a southern and northern church based on disagreements over slavery.
The organization of which we are a part today PC(USA) was formed in 1983 when the old southern and northern churches reunited. We still have some outlier branches, the biggest being PCA which doesn’t ordain women or welcome gays.
So, you are here this morning, a visitor or member, wondering what all this has to do with you or what the take home message is for today. Lesson one, Presbyterians believe we are only saved by God’s grace. In our reading from Ephesians Paul writes, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – not the result of works, so that no one may boast.” We don’t walk around asking people if they have been saved or said a special prayer to welcome Jesus into their heart because God has already taken care of all that. God loves you and so you are in a state of grace with God. Period. There is nothing you need to do or even can do to earn that grace. God chooses you to be saved. End of story.
Lesson two, we are organized and lead together. In our reading from Numbers, Moses is struggling to lead the Israelites through the desert. This is one of my favorite readings because I can totally relate to Moses’ complaint that carrying the people alone is wearing him out. God decides Moses doesn’t need to do it alone, that the community can work together to be carried. “Gather for me seventy of the elders of Israel and bring them to the tent of meeting. I will come down and talk with you there; and I will take some of the spirit that is on you and put it on them, and they shall bear the burden of the people along with you so that you will not bear it all by yourself.”
In this church we share the burden of leadership together. If you are currently an elder please raise your hand, now if you have ever been an elder before raise your hand. Keep them up, all deacons raise hands. All committee members raise hands. Anyone who has ever been a part of a committee of any kind at this church get your hand up. As you can see we all work together to share leadership. This is what makes us Presbyterian.
Today we are having communion and of course this is an area where lots of different churches believe different things. Catholics still believe the elements of bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Jesus, transubstantiation. When Martin Luther split from them, he argued that the real presence of Jesus is in the elements, but the elements are not changed. They call this a sacramental union and it’s like a halfway transubstantiation. Calvin had a different idea again, arguing that Jesus meets us at the table but only spiritually, not in any physical sense. Today we believe that this table is a place to meet Christ and to be nourished for the journey ahead.
As you know, the world has changed a lot since the 1500s when our church began. Today the Presbyterian Church considers itself faithful to its mission if it proclaims and hears the Word of God, administers and receives the Sacraments (just two: baptism and communion), and nurtures a covenant community of disciples. We believe the purpose of the church is to proclaim the gospel, to shelter and nurture the spiritual fellowship of the children of God, to maintain divine worship, to preserve the truth, to promote social righteousness, and to exhibit the kingdom of heaven to the world. We believe the Holy Spirit leads us to continuity and change, including celebrating openness and unity in diversity.
This church, which we sit in today was founded by a group of folks in 1852. For 173 years Presbyterians have been worshipping in Warrensburg and sharing the good news of God’s grace for all people. This particular church believes that our mission as a congregation is to share the love of God through Christ by the exploration of our faith; through Christian Education, Worship, and Fellowship; by community service; and in local leadership in Social Justice issues. We have always stood for God’s love and welcome, and together we stand for those things today. Amen.
