“It’s about Jesus. It’s about a God who calls us by name.” Those words echoed throughout the opening worship service of Big Tent, a convocation of the Presbyterian Church (USA), last week at the JW Marriot in Indianapolis.

In his keynote sermon, the Rev. Mark Labberton, a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, urged the crowd of about 1,300 attendees to focus their ministries on the mission given to the church by Jesus Christ.

“The Big Tent has got to be centered in Jesus Christ and not in the church. It’s got to be centered in the first things in our ministry that have to do with making disciples — going and loving, serving and teaching in a way that Jesus himself did,” Labberton said as he spoke on the Great Commission, describing an authentic life of discipleship as being “found in the communion of Father, Son and Spirit.”

Billed as a gathering to celebrate the mission and ministry of the PCUSA, Big Tent features nine conferences over three days and is described by organizers as focusing on growing the shrinking denomination and on the theme of peacemaking.

Teaching from Matthew 28:16-20, Labberton called its message “the smelling-salts Gospel.”

“It’s the aggressive Gospel,” he said. “It’s Jesus’ voice in Matthew expressing this powerful and provocative claim that what God is doing is a new thing,” he added, calling the text the “Church’s mandate.”

Labberton criticized the institutionalization of the Church, saying people often focus on denominational politics rather than “spreading the Good News of Christ’s love.”

“Is the church a work of fiction?” he asked the crowd. “Is the ministry of the love of Jesus Christ a fiction or will it be our life?”

Recalling a conversation he had with a seemingly cynical minister as a college student, Labberton noted that institutions can often turn the ministerial calling into a monetary endeavor. Speaking of his then-newfound faith, Labberton quipped: “I had thought I had begun to know about the God of the universe. It turned out, all I needed was a pension.”