The Root & Branches of the Church

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“The Christian community ‘has its roots in the future and its branches in the present.,’ writes John D. Zizioulas. The ecclesia (church, community) of Jesus finds its origins in the future. And that future is bright, certain and unshakeable because of Jesus and his finished work. Hope is the bridge from the future into the the present, and the branches of that hope are faith and love.

“N. T. Wright says that ‘a mission-shaped church must have its mission shaped by hope; that the genuine Christian hope, rooted in Jesus’ resurrection, is the hope for God’s renewal of all things, for his overcoming of corruption, decay, and death, for his filling of the whole cosmos with his love and grace, his power and glory.’ Roots in the future, roots in the resurrection, roots in the eternal victory of Jesus, roots that are firmly planted in eternal life, roots that nourish the trunk and branches, and ultimately produce the fruit that draws others into the story. Wright concludes, ‘To be truly effective in this kind of mission, one must be genuinely and cheerfully rooted in God’s renewal.’ We have a real reason to cheer. The more we know the story, the more we rejoice.’”

From “The Good and Beautiful Community,” (2010) James Bryan Smith by way of NextReformation.com

The Church Has Left the Building

When we come together for worship, we are "the church gathered."  When we leave from that place, going out into the world, to enter into discussion and activity and service and work with others in the world, we are "the church scattered."

We never stop being the church.  We are always the church.   Church is not the place we gather or what takes place on Sunday mornings within a few short hours.  No, church is what we are...together and apart.

Today, we practice being the "scattered church" in our "[CHURCH] is a VERB Sunday."  We go out into the world, representing Christ through acts of service and outreach.

Today is an important day.  May it be a witness of who we are to our community.  May it be a reminder of who we are to ourselves.

"[CHURCH] is a VERB Sunday" This Week

We'll be doing service projects instead of having a worship service.  This will be, I think, the fourth time we've done this in the last couple of years.

From Church is a Verb

"[CHURCH] is a VERB" -- Sermon for August 15, 2010

Text:  Matthew 28:16-20 & Luke 10:1-12
Title:  “[CHURCH] Is a VERB”

My first church out of seminary was in __________, Indiana.  There were some good people in that church…really good people.  Some of you know that I've talked openly about how that was a hard place to start out in ministry for a couple different reasons.  And, so, when I say "there were some really good people there" you might expect me to follow it with the traditional Southern, "Bless their hearts."  Sometimes, perhaps stereotypically, Southerners will say something like “Jimmy Ray Miller (bless his heart)…” and then follow it with all the horrible stuff they were going to tell you about Jimmy Ray Miller and the only reason their saying "bless his heart" at all is so they don't feel bad about talking bad about him.

But there were some really good people in that church.  There really were.  In fact Julie and the kids were able to go visit a few of them when they were down in Indiana…although they attend a different church now.  There were, and I'm sure still ARE, some wonderful people in that church.


But I did come out of that church with some stories that have been instrumental in my understanding of what it means to be a church and what it means to reach out, as I am want to say, "IN CONCERN AND SERVICE FOR THE WORLD."

I know many of you have heard this story before.  But, you’re going to hear it again.

See, when I got to the church, one of the first Sundays I was there, one of the folks who had been around awhile said, “Preacher, you know what your job is here.”  My ears perked up, thinking this could be pretty important.  He said, “Your job here is to bring in young people…and make sure they’re upwardly mobile.”  In an economically depressed county seat town in Indiana, he wanted me to find the one or two twenty-somethings who were moving up a corporate ladder somewhere and hadn’t moved out of that town and make them members.  It was going to be a challenge to meet that job requirement.

But that comment wasn't meant to be rude or mean or anything.  It was because the church was hurtin’ for young people in the pews.  Those referred to as “the young women” by the elders of the church were now approaching 60.  And the older ladies were approaching 80.  Most of the kids of those 60 and 80 year old persons had moved away, seeking greener economic pastures.  And the church found almost no one to fill the void.  They weren’t an unfriendly bunch.  They had some studies going on.  There was a lot of experience in the congregation.   That gentleman who gave me my job description was merely putting some words to what, I think, a lot of folks were feeling when they had a 22 year old pastor show up with his young wife to serve a congregation with a lot of graying hair.

While we can have lots of discussions about mission and evangelism and hospitality that this all points to, I want to say that this particular church in ______, Indiana was suffering from BAD GRAMMAR.

See, back in the fifties, after World War II, those returning veterans with their lovely young wives...they were full of energy.  They were planning families.  And they wanted to build a church.  They got together and they worked and they planned and they sacrificed and they built a rather large stone church with a  whole neighborhood around it.

At this time, the church adopted a BEHIVE as their symbol—each worker bee assigned a task in order to raise up a hive…a church…a spiritual home for all of those bees.  It’s no mistake I think that the Freemasons see a beehive as a symbol of industry.  There were a lot of masons among the older members of the church and they were clearly industrious.

Now I’m extrapolating from my own history there as these events took place long before I got there in 1994.  But, I think all of that DOING had one goal…BEING.  There were a group of people who were, by God, going to build and BE the Methodist Church in that neighborhood.  They had young families and they had a facility and the assumption was that persons would be drawn to that place like…well, bees to honey.

And, perhaps it worked for a little while.  The “if you build it, they will come” mentality works well for a while.  The latest new thing always gets a little bit more attention.

But somewhere along the line…they were no longer DOING church.  They merely WERE the church.  All those action words that had described them during their years of construction and growth stopped.  It was all stuff from their PAST.

Their church became a NOUN.  It was a building.  Yes, it was a building where they had friends and had funeral dinners to support the loved ones after a funeral for those who had died in the community.   Yes, they had their Sunday School classes.  And, yes those older women and younger women, who were rapidly increasing in age over the years, supported missionaries far and wide.

But very few people ever set foot in their building, except for Sunday mornings.  For many in the community, it was just that church building over by Lincoln School.  And, by the time I had gotten there, and walked around the community, I found many of the neighbors didn’t even know it was a church.  Because of their need to protect their building…because of a self-satisfaction that comes from being around people just like you that you just really like…because they had gotten undisciplined in their discipleship…they HAD church, all right…but they were failing at DOING church in their community and in the world.

In all fairness, this is way oversimplified.  Factor in an economic depression, an influx of Hispanic workers, and the exodus of young adults from the community and you can see there were other factors involved.  A fifty year history of a midwestern church in a midwestern town can't be condensed down to a 20 minute sermon illustration without using some very broad strokes.

But it’s clear from my time there, that church was NO LONGER AN ACTION WORD.

Two quick stories that get at this:

First, there was a story about why the boy scouts were no longer able to use the building.  I think I remember it correctly at this time.  Apparently, when meeting up on the third floor…long before I got there since I never saw the third floor used but twice…when meeting up on the third floor, one of the boy scouts started a fire in the garbage can.  I understand that this is behavior you don’t want repeated, but the response of the church was excessive.  They determined that no outside groups were going to use their church, particularly not the Boy Scouts.  And I have no idea how long that had gone on before I got there, but they had a facility that had, easily triple the floor space of our new facility we're building over there and it was only regularly used Sunday morning for worship and Sunday school, Thursday morning for “[Older] Women's Bible Study” (and I loved those ladies), and Thursday evening for choir practice…four hours a week.  But they kept it clean and protected it from any fires up on the third floor.

Secondly, and I’ve shared this here, when I got to the church and saw that it was right across the street from Lincoln School, I wanted to know about outreach and ministry with the kids or teachers at the school.  The conversation went something like this:

“So, I notice, we are right across the street from Lincoln School.  So what types of ministries have you all done with the school over the years?”

“What do you mean?

“I mean, have you had any kids clubs or tutoring or have you done something special for the teachers on the first day of school, like a breakfast or something, or brought over gifts at the holidays.”

“No.”

“How long have you been across from the school?”

“Forty years.”

“You mean this church has been sitting directly across the street from an Elementary School for forty years and we’ve never done anything to be in ministry with them or to them?  Well, we should start something!”

“Well, the school is closing down this year.”

And it did.

There was a kid walking home from school right before summer vacation and I was inviting him to the first Vacation Bible School that church had had in years.  I was telling him where it was going to be and pointed to our church which we were standing in front of, and he said he had no idea that it was a church at all.  The church could have evaporated into thin air, right there on the spot, and it wouldn't have made a lick of difference to him...or perhaps his parents...or perhaps many other folks in that town.  That's not just sad.  It's not right.

Many churches, for years, have operated from the ATTRACTIONAL MODEL—meaning churches have felt “if we build it, they will come.”  Churches have felt that all we needed to do was put up pretty signs and have the most awesome praise band and make sure the Yellow Pages (that’s a phone book, kids.  You may not use one), make sure the Yellow Pages listed you as a “FRIENDLY CHURCH.”  And people were going to be ATTRACTED to the church merely because it was the church…it was THERE.  It had persons.  It was a place.  It was a thing.  It was a noun.

And, you know, golly, when you’re working in an environment that is religiously sensitive, where activities revolve around church activities, where persons are being born in the church and raised in the church and married in the church and taught in the church and buried in the church—or nearby it—this just might work for a little while.  Just make the neon sign a little larger than the church next door and you’ll be fine.

But, you know, it just doesn’t work this way.  I know that when I go outside and speak to supporting churches and show them the artist’s rendering of our new facility and show them all the people that are walking in through the front doors I joke that we didn’t have just an artist but a prophet, too…he could see all the people that were going to come to us once we build this place. 

Our shiny new doors aren’t going to reach people for Christ.  And, I’m happy to say, I’M not going to reach people for Christ.  WE ARE.   And to do so, we will need to be sent out through those shiny new doors, to love the people where we are…our neighbors, our coworkers, our teammates.

People will hear the gospel message, they will find comfort in times of trouble, they will have their minds blown by the amazing grace of God, they will find that there are Christians whose company they can enjoy and have fun with…because, instead of an ATTRACTIONAL MODEL of ministry, we have a MISSIONAL model.  We’re not a noun.  We’re a verb.  We’re an action, a ministry, an outreach.  We are a people who do not SIT, we are a people who are SENT.  Amen?

It’s probably about time for a little Bible now.  And, these aren’t hard, friends.

Matthew 28…the Great Commission.

Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go.  When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.  Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

Go.  Baptize.  Teach.  Verbs!

Luke 10:1-12, known as the sending of the 70 (or 72, depending on the manuscript):

He told them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.  Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves.  Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road.

Go.  I’m sending you out.  Go be VERBS!

It was said by one of my teachers down in Nashville, that while much of discussion of mission in the church has revolved around Matthew 28, Luke 10 may be closer to what the church needs today.  We’re not looking for vast hordes of Christians to go out and harvest like a swarm of locusts eating crops.  We need folks to do out two by two…into the places where the unchurched people are--as your friends--and eat and stay and be with them…trying to be good witness in their presence and…over time…through relationship share the story of Jesus...or what Jesus means to you.

Look, next week is our CHURCH IS A VERB SUNDAY.  We're going to be doing service projects in the community again.  But, I don't want to close out the sermon by just listing them.  I want to give you an illustration about what it looks like when a church starts being a VERB.  It’s an illustration I heard from Rev. Sharma Lewis, a United Methodist District Superintendent from Georgia and thought it was so awesome, I put in on my blog.

There was a church (as often these stories go)….

There was a church in a downtown area of some town somewhere and it might have had some resemblance to that church in Indiana that I had been sent to—not much going on, the community not knowing it was even there, and if it had burned down only the people who were there on Sunday morning would have missed it.

In this "somewhere church" there was fire that broke out on a Sunday evening.  Some trustees of this church were in the area and saw the smoke coming out through the old stained glass windows.  The trustees ran in to the building thinking that they could AT LEAST save a picture of Jesus hanging down in fellowship hall.

Now, this was a pretty traditional picture of Jesus and had been in the congregation, hanging on the same wall of the fellowship hall, for 25 years.  It had been painted around, straightened when it got a little crooked, occasionally dusted.  Persons had eaten many a doughnut and drunk many a cup of coffee at its feet.  Children had run wild.  Youth had held lock ins.  All with little regard to its presence in their midst.  But that was many years before.  Recently it had just been dusted around.

Then the fire came.

Well, those trustees raced into the church, raced downstairs into fellowship hall, and raced on out with the picture of Jesus.

There wasn't much else that could be saved that day.  Those two trustees, some other members who got the phone call about the fire, and a lot of the people from the neighborhood gathered around and watched the church slowly burn to the ground.  It was a community event.

As they stood there and watched the church burn, they looked at the picture of Jesus in their midst.  It was traditional.  Jesus was a traditional lily-white, gazing up to heaven.  But there was a beauty about him.  Someone noted an irony of "saving Jesus from the fire."  The trustees got to share why it is that they would run in and save this one thing and why it was important.  Church members got to talk about some of the great, holy, life-changing events that had happened in that little church, even if it had been a long time ago.  And persons, some of whom had been in the community for years, heard about the saving power of this "saved" Jesus for the first time.

We need to be about the business of taking Jesus out onto the streets.  We need to take the message out on the highways and byways…to the neighborhoods and coffee shops and bars and parks and homes and businesses and lives around us.  We CANNOT keep our Jesus confined to our fellowship halls and our libraries and sanctuaries and church offices.  We CANNOT keep our Jesus inside our 30-foot by 30-foot leaky-roofed box of a church or our 126-seat sanctuary church we hope to be in.  We have a world out there that needs to hear about and be transformed by our Jesus.  It may take a spiritual fire to make it happen, but we pray it doesn't take a physical one.

We need to go and preach and teach and love and serve and work and relate and share and play and heal and love.

Because CHURCH IS A VERB.  We are an ACTION WORD FOR JESUS.  Let's GO.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Good Read -- Shane Claiborne "Letter to Non-Believers"

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Hey everyone.  As stated, this is a good read. It's Shane Claiborne's "Letter to Non-Believers" found in Esquire Magazine (how often would you think they'd have Christian writer?).  I used this early on as a way to introduce persons to Shane and to be confronted by some of his writing. 

As with many of the things I've been posting here, go ahead and read the whole thing.

I want to invite you to consider that maybe the televangelists and street preachers are wrong — and that God really is love. Maybe the fruits of the Spirit really are beautiful things like peace, patience, kindness, joy, love, goodness, and not the ugly things that have come to characterize religion, or politics, for that matter. (If there is anything I have learned from liberals and conservatives, it's that you can have great answers and still be mean... and that just as important as being right is being nice.)

The Bible that I read says that God did not send Jesus to condemn the world but to save it... it was because "God so loved the world." That is the God I know, and I long for others to know. I did not choose to devote my life to Jesus because I was scared to death of hell or because I wanted crowns in heaven... but because he is good. For those of you who are on a sincere spiritual journey, I hope that you do not reject Christ because of Christians. We have always been a messed-up bunch, and somehow God has survived the embarrassing things we do in His name. At the core of our "Gospel" is the message that Jesus came "not [for] the healthy... but the sick." And if you choose Jesus, may it not be simply because of a fear of hell or hope for mansions in heaven.

Where I've had people complain about this is the last paragraph:

In closing, to those who have closed the door on religion — I was recently asked by a non-Christian friend if I thought he was going to hell. I said, "I hope not. It will be hard to enjoy heaven without you." If those of us who believe in God do not believe God's grace is big enough to save the whole world... well, we should at least pray that it is.

But, that's pretty much what one of my professors said in seminary -- "It may or may not be Christian to believe in universalism, that all persons are saved.  But it is very Christian to pray that this will be the case."  Or it's like a little skit I remember from youth group days that closed with Jesus up on the cross and asked, "When Christ is up on that cross, arms spread wide, who is it that he cannot embrace, who is outside of his saving arms?"

Leslie Newbigin on church and mission

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I enjoy the stuff over at NextReformation, especially getting deeper into the concept of mission and missions.  The church IS A MISSION.  We participate in the story of God for the world.  And yet, the church is involved IN MISSIONS.  We have a food bank and we do outreach in the community.  And it's interesting pondering what the whole point is of the church without some kind of dance between these two concepts...what the church is and what the church does.  The author of NextReformation is Len Hjalmarson in British Columbia, Canada.  He's making me think.

I've had the following couple of paragraphs from his blog on my radar for over a week now.

Newbigin distinguished between missions and mission. The church both “does mission” and “is a mission.” Missions are specific activities undertaken by a human decision to bring the gospel to places or situations where it is not heard. These efforts have quantifiable results. But while missions activities are a part of healthy churches, they do not adequately describe the fullness of God’s work in the world.

The concept of missio Dei, however, captures Newbigin’s wider intention. The mission of the church is less a “missionary mandate” than a participation in the ongoing work of redemption. The missio Dei is God’s mission – the grand story of creation, fall, and redemption. And it is a “story,” not a list of propositions. Propositions are helpful in particular times and places, but are enculturated by language and ethos. The story, however, rooted in time and place, transcends both. When we attempt to export a set of propositions from one time and place to another, we are usually operating in a colonial mode."

Now, the question I have, as I ponder this at 11:45 PM on a Thursday night is... "Can the church have an adequate understanding of the MISSION of the church without a grounding in MISSIONS?"  My hunch is that it is only when grounded in "mission work" can the church understand the mission of God.  I think this means that the church (and my church) has its work cut out for them (and us).

"Father's Day" & "The Fatherless"

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Well, yesterday was "Father's Day."  I have to confess that I try to "tapdance" around this and "Mother's Day."  I understand the importance of fathers and mothers.  I appreciate fathers and mothers.  However, I recognize that some of our folk...some of any church actually...never knew their biological mothers and fathers.  And we have folks who, because they couldn't have children of their own, went the adoption route and were wonderful, loving parents.  And we know some folks who are just trying...hard...to become parents and have (so far) been unsuccessful.  So, what does "Father's Day" mean for them?

At my wedding today I saw some folks I knew and wished one of them a Happy Father's Day and was told, not rudely, but bluntly, "I don't celebrate Father's Day."  There's probably a story there somewhere.

I know that the holiday is mostly a Hallmark-ready day, with cards and phone calls.  And I know that it can lead into a sappiness that we want to avoid.  But I'm aware of my own father and the relationship we have and have had.  I'm aware of my own joys with fathering and teaching and leading my own children.  I want to celebrate all of this.  I think fathering (as well as mothering) is important and we have too many people in the world who have had bad experiences with their own fathers and mothers.  We don't have enough good role models out there.  We should celebrate that we have some good ones.  And, as we look at Jesus, we know that at least the understanding of "Father" was an important one to him.  It was a way that he related to God and understood God and communicated God.

It is with these reflections going on in my mind after worship yesterday that I read Jamie Arpin-Ricci's missional church blog called "A Living Alternative: A Missional Pilgrimage."  It's a great blog that has helped me as I've gotten into a theology of the "Missional Church."  Jamie has struggled to become a father and has, as he says, mixed feelings about the day--particularly seeing so many 20-somethings with broken relationships with the fathers in their lives.  It's a good read. It is closed out with the following:

It is with this significance in mind that we must understand our call, as the Church, to be fathers to the fatherless.  This is not a poetic way of saying that we need to fund orphanages and combat divorce trends.  Both of these things are good, but when God calls us to be a father to the fatherless, He calls us to follow His example of genuine relationship and sacrificial love.  He calls us to an active love that blasts through the boundaries of cultural propriety and familial loyalties- not the detriment or neglect of our own families, but through the conviction that God is calling us to a devotion to Him and others that must rival all others.

Our world is filled with the fatherless- and in more than just the literal meaning.  This is call to extend the Father’s love to others is not some project or program that interested Christian might get involved with, but rather it is a defining characteristic of what it means to follow Jesus Christ.  And it is a commitment that should not be driven by guilt (though conviction for our failing to do so is surely important), but driven by the same thing that drove Christ to pay the highest price for us: LOVE.

I'm father to five kids.  How am I being a father to the fatherless around me?

"Jesus and the Kingdom of God" -- Brian McClaren

Moving Towards a Missional Ecclesiology -- How you move a church?

Churches move slowly.  Recently, Rick Meigs, over at The Blind Beggar, had given a talk at a suburban church and questioned the steps it might take to gradually shift to a more missional approach to their church and its work in the world.  The following are five directions as churches move this way:

• Leaders have to take seriously the Ephesians 4:11-12 mandate to be equippers and spiritual body builders.
• Discipleship doesn’t equal information, but transformation.
• The apprenticeship model in discipleship should be explored.
• Openly and freely celebrate those who are living out the life you want to see replicated.
• Become a story teller. Story is a powerful tool at illustrating and making the theme clear.

Posted via email from The Prodigal Blog

"What's this About Church Buildings?"

I love our new church building and I know that our church has seen a refocusing of its mission as we approach the “move-in day” sometime later this year.   I know that I’ve grown as pastor over these past seven years – or is it eight – that we’ve been building or planning to build.  But it has taken a lot of energy, a lot of our time, a lot of our focus.  I have to keep reminding myself that this is really not a very big building and it is our hope and our dream that this building will serve the missional needs of our congregation for many needs to come.  We're not building for just today but for 50 years from now, we've said.  At the same time, however, I realize that we have a lot invested in it and, for the sake of that future ministry, we’ll have a mortgage that we’ll be paying off for quite a few years.  There is a burden that comes with this.

It’s these thoughts that come into my head as I read the following:

Christians did not begin to build church buildings until about AD 200.  This fact suggests that, whatever else church buildings are good for, they are not essential for numerical growth or spiritual depth.  The early church possessed both these qualities, and the church’s greatest period of vitality and growth until recent times was during the first two centuries AD.  In other words the church grew fastest when it did not have the help—or hindrance—of church buildings.

That quote is from Howard Snyder’s book, The Problem of Wineskins:  Church Structure in a Technological Age, as recorded in Mike Slaughter’s book, CHANGE THE WORLD:  Recovering the MESSAGE and MISSION or JESUS.

I don’t believe this is a call to abandon our building, although, as I think about it, perhaps we could have done things a little differently along the way.  Perhaps we could have put in only the bathroom needed for the present size.  While it is a beautiful building, perhaps we could have gone with a much simpler architectural design.  Perhaps we could have waited one more year to begin the process of building so we could have gotten more funds on hand.  I'm sure there are always questions with any building project--whether it's your church or your business or your home.  But, now, I think the above sentiment is a call to reexamine how we’ll be using the facility.  Our purpose as “fishers of people” is not to get the “biggest net” in the water but, use the church as a mission outpost to get “many nets” in the water.  We need to see our building as a place to empower folks to go out in the community and bring the gospel message to those around them…and around us.  The building is not the goal of ministry but a tool for ministry.

I think that’s a fundamentally different way of looking at building use.

Posted via email from The Prodigal Blog

Four Things

I have four concepts that are swimming around in my head that are clearly coming out in this blog.  I have appropriate links to help you understand.

1)  The Missional Church -- The church exists to be missionaries in the culture of which it's a part.

2)  The Emerging Church -- This is harder to define but is a "deconstructed," post-modern way of looking at church.  It is closely tied with the Missional Church.

3)  Red-Letter Christians -- This is a movement to save the church from both left and right partisan politics by focusing on the words of Jesus (the "red letters") and living according to his words.  It recognizes all of Scripture as inspired but uses the life of Christ as the lens through which the rest of Scripture is viewed.

4)  Servant Evangelism -- The notion that acts of love have a positive change on communities and is what brings persons into a relationship with Christ.

Posted via email from The Prodigal Blog

Change The World Weekend

See pictures here

This is our official report from our SleepOut For Malaria.  If you don’t know the SleepOut was something that hundreds of groups were doing the overnight on April 24th to the morning of the 25th, World Malaria Day.  While originally, we were going to have a “Sleep-In” at the church, because of the amount of snow on the ground and the constant threat of rain.  However, we had some folks who really thought that camping out in a visible location was the way to go.  If we were trying to raise awareness of malaria in the world then being in a setting that would make more people aware seemed to be the best option.  So, plans were made to camp out in the clinic parking lot and malaria facts and signs were posted around the clinic.

On Saturday, the day of our SleepOut, we got permission from Chair 5 Restaurant to use their bathroom until they closed at 2 AM Sunday morning.  This came with the warning that, since it was Spring Carnival Weekend in Girdwood, the owner expected it to be the busiest night of the entire year for his business.  There would be a lot of people...a lot of loud people...a lot of intoxicated people.  
With this warning, I went to the clinic late in the afternoon and set up pylons and barricades to have a safe place.  I had said that the two things I was concerned about was the safety of the site and the cold--making sure folks were dressed appropriately.


At 7 PM we gathered at the church to watch, “When the Night Comes”--a video produced by The United Nations and to have a presentation by one of our folks who works for the Center for Disease Control.  Then, around 8:15 PM or so, it was time to go out to the clinic.  Tents were set up.  A fire was set in the portable fireplace.  And the passersby kept coming.

It was an interesting experience.  Clearly there was a lot of partying going on all around us.   A loud party was at the house next door.  Chair 5 was rockin’ until about 3 AM.  But that fire of ours kept drawing people over in the 25 degree temperatures.  Some good conversations were had and some very interesting ones were had as well.  We found a person who had participated in the Nothing But Nets campaign at a school and knew the benefit of the treated nets in malaria-ridden regions.  There were those who walked on by but stopped to read the signs that had been posted.  And, clearly, some persons had already had busy nights by the time we saw them.

There were 10 of us camping out Saturday night--10 hardy souls who overlooked their own comfort for the sake of educating persons about malaria in the world.  By 2:30 AM, there were only two of us, Samuel and I, still up and we put out the fire with snow to dissuade persons from coming into our area so we could finally hit the sack.  Morning was going to come at 7 AM.

Well, of course, when we got up it was raining...not hard...but enough to get everything wet.  We broke camp and got ready for church.

At church we focused on malaria and changing the world.  And we raised $520 for “Nothing But Nets.”  Praise God.

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Sermon From 18 April 2010 "Change The World" -- Luke 24:1-49

(NOTE:  I'm a little nervous about posting sermons.  I'll right more about that later.  However, since this gets at my understanding of church and what's been swimming around in my head for a few years, I thought I'd post it here.)

I'm going to start off this sermon offering a little insight into my perspective of theology and church and faith.  Those who have checked out my blog might recognize some of the themes.

When I got to Girdwood, I started doing some of the things I thought I should do as the only pastor here at the time and being part of a community that didn't seem quite so sure it could trust a pastor...or a church for that matter.  I got involved.  I became intimately connected with the community.  I served.  I cleaned.  I planned.  I invited.  And I attended more meetings than perhaps I needed to.  I was not and am not the only one who does this.  I've always said I thought Girdwood was a community that took "community" seriously. I still believe that.

But that involvement wasn't just because I thought Girdwood was a neat place that I wanted to be involved or that I thought community was a good thing and that if I was going to make any inroads in the community that was the way to do it.  It was because I had AND HAVE an understanding of pastoring and the church that said the church does not exist for those in pews, but exists for the world--for those that hurt, for those that have need, for those that are lost, for those who need to know they are found.  Many of you have heard me take a phrase from Disciple Bible Study and say that Jesus and the church exist for "The Least, The Last, and the Lost." And as I was assigned to Girdwood Chapel I have tried to see this particular expression of the Body of Christ not so much as a place TO DO MINISTRY but as a place TO DO MINISTRY FROM.

I guess, theologically, I understand us to be missionaries for Christ and the church then becomes a place, not so much a place to invite people to be fed, but as a place where we give people the tools whereby they can go into the world to feed others--yes, around the world...but perhaps most importantly here in the community of which we are a part (which many of you will know is a phrase I use a whole lot).

Now, the building process has kind of put a damper on this.  It's been a long process.  Some of our most involved leaders and followers have been putting more time than they might have wanted to on this particular task.  It hasn't been so much a matter of "reaching the people out there."  It's been a matter of building this structure that we need to get out of the way first.  It's been a long process.  It's been seven years since we moved to our present location. It's been five years since we moved from one side of the property, right by the entrance, to where we are today.  In 2007 and 2008, in particular, it was wearing on me.  It felt like it was kind of getting in the way of the ministry that I thought we COULD be doing...in the way of the ministry that I thought we SHOULD be doing.

With some light at the end of the proverbial tunnel of our building process, my sermons over the past year or so have been trying to push us in ways to see ourselves as missionaries in this world--sent out as bearers of the Good News on the highways and the byways...to the coffee shops...and the Merc...at the Forest Fair Meeting to the Fire Department...on the chair lift and the classroom chair...on the bike path and in our own families.  We are bearers of the Good News.  More than a list of rules and regulations, this is what it means to be a follower of Christ....something I confess to doing more haltingly than should be the case for someone who is supposed to be setting some sort of religious example.

And so, whether you've seen this coming or not...even whether I've seen this coming or not...we have embodied a theology of mission.  We've had DAYS OF SERVICE, where we've gone out in the community to do service projects.  We've had a series, called "UNCHRISTIAN" that was essentially a guide for those in church to understand how some of those outside of the church may view us.  We had a series called, "OUTFLOW," to biblically construct a framework for you to see how God's love is intended to flow into your lives and then to your families, your friends, your community, and the whole world.  We changed our mission statement, which previously talked of being a "Christian Spiritual=life center," to one saying "Love God.  Love others.  Change the world."  Sending us out.  Telling the bigness of our God and changing our communities as others are brought into the story.

God may have called us to be here, this Sunday...any Sunday...but he calls us only to send us away as lightbearers for this world.

There is a BIGNESS to a church that is doing something like this.  A SMALL church exists for itself.  But it's big when it's changing lives of those that come...and changing lives of those who come in contact with them because of the grace and mercy and love others experience in them.  There is a bigness to the faith that recognizes it is swept up in big salvation story of our God.  There is a bigness to the action.  It is an understanding of faith and Christ that says it's too big to be contained and held and sheltered.  (It's like the children's song today "Hide it under a bushel?  NO!  I'm gonna' let it shine.")

Via that long introduction, we come to the Scripture lesson for today.  In this lesson there are three sections. 

First is the resurrection account.  I know we're a couple of weeks past Easter, but the resurrection butterflies are still hanging above the altar so I thought it was appropriate to recount that story.  This is the story that shapes us and gives meaning and understanding to the power we have from Christ to be the hands and feet of God in the world.

Next we have the famous Walk to Emmaus story where Jesus walks with some unsuspecting travelers and they tell him the horrible and astounding events of the previous days.  This gives Jesus the opportunity to announce to them that it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer and go to glory.  And, my favorite line in that account, verse 27, "Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the Scriptures." He laid it all out there for them, telling him how everything (from Genesis, and Isaiah, and the Psalms, and everything) had brought them to this place...the place where he's telling the story.  It's a call for them and for us to place ourselves in this long salvation story.

Only one of the travelers is named...Cleopas.  They were so enthralled by the teaching of the still-unrevealed Jesus that they invited him to spend the evening with them.  And, as we know, they don't recognize who it is that's among them until Jesus "took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and began to give it to them" (24:30).  We have communion here every week in the hopes that you, too, come to recognize who it is among us.

Here's how Eugene Peterson describes what happened next in "The Message" translation:

They didn't waste a minute. They were up and on their way back to Jerusalem. They found the Eleven and their friends gathered together, talking away: "It's really happened! The Master has been raised up—Simon saw him!"

Then the two went over everything that happened on the road and how they recognized him when he broke the bread.

Jesus leaves and the two men run back to Jerusalem to share the good news that Jesus Christ is really risen. THIS is the part of the Emmaus section of the story that I want to focus on right now.  Cleopas and "the other guy" are transformed by an encounter with the risen Christ and, all of a sudden, become missionaries.  They recognize that they have encountered a message that is too important not to share with the community.  It is hoped that their lives are not just changed for this sprint back to the city but for as long as they live.  They are part of the story.

We read the scriptures, not as history. We sing our songs, not as performance.  I preach, not because I like to hear myself talk (or not ONLY because I like to hear myself talk--and make people laugh.)  We do this so that we can see ourselves in the story and learn how to share this story with the folks we meet in our daily lives...no matter where we come into contact with them.  This is not about "preaching to the choir" in this place but preaching to the world when we go from this place.

Our church then becomes an outpost for the advancement of the Good News into the world.  And how effective we're being as a church is less dependent on the building or the rear ends in the pews but how our folks -- you -- are being Christians in the world -- how much you're putting into your walk of faith with Christ.

There is a third section of our Scripture passage from Luke.  Cleopas and his friend have high-tailed it to Jerusalem and, as they are recounting all that has happened, Jesus shows up...my guess is that he's not even winded.  He shows them his hands and feet.  It says, in verse 41, "while in their joy they were disbelieving, and still wondering."  You gotta' think it seemed too good to be true.  He told them that the Messiah was to suffer and die and that this was all part of the plan.  WHY????  This is why, according to Peterson's translation, The Message:

"a total life-change through the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed in his name to all nations—starting from here, from Jerusalem! You're the first to hear and see it. You're the witnesses. What comes next is very important: I am sending what my Father promised to you, so stay here in the city until he arrives, until you're equipped with power from on high" (Luke 24:47-49).

This mission of the church as a powerful, life-giving, world-shaking, moving, holy entity springs from all that Christ was and is--and did and does.  Our mission is a response to Jesus' mission.  We are to reflect God's mission in and for and to the world in Jesus.  We may be called here, but we are sent out...and we are given the power of the Holy Spirit to be sent out and given message of Good News to take with us wherever we go.  WE ARE WITNESSES to this great story of the love of our God and invite others along for this ride.

I got an e-mail from your former pastor, Chuck Frost, this week.  He doesn't have an opportunity to preach in his current setting and wondered about the following.  Actually, what he said was, "I have a sermon idea that you are free to use.  You may think it stinks, but if you don't, it's yours."  I don't think it stinks.  Here it is...

I was at a friend’s recently playing guitar and singing Americana style songs.  When we came to a song about trains, I mentioned the fascination with trains in roots music and that even my children, who were born in the late 90’s were enamored with trains when you’d think that the modern child might move on to more advanced methods of transportation.

When we lived in Alaska, we would take the boys for a walk during the summer down to a local overpass (very tiny overpass as the town we lived in was much like the one in Northern Exposure) where the train would pass under.

This was a daily highlight…to see the train.

I can clearly remember the high-pitched toddler voices that yelled “TRAIN TRAIN” when they saw it coming around the bend

When I was younger, I am told that I loved to sing Elizabeth Cotton’s “Freight Train” and Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” (“I hear the train a comin’”).

Of course, for children the fascination extends beyond trains.  They are simply fascinated with big objects that move…airplanes, RV’s, Semi’s, motorcycles, and bulldozers.

When my oldest was almost two, we were on a plane taking off from the Mobile, Alabama airport to return home to Alaska.  We put his seat at the window and watched his eyes get bigger with childlike wonder at the enormous planes nearby as we waited to depart.  He started softly, “ehh-plane.”  Then he said it again:  “ehhhh-plane”.  And again:   “ehhhhhhhh-plane.”  Each time stretching the first syllable and increasing in volume until he was saying over and over again as loud as a toddler could get “EHHHHHHHHHHHHH-PLANE!”  The people around us were not annoyed, but amused as they were giggling along with my wife and me.

The childlike fascination with big, moving vehicles is a joy to see, but it’s the one thing that we rarely lose as we get older.   I still look up when I hear a plane or watch a train go by.  I especially take note of motorcycles since I am a rider myself.

There is something elemental about this love of big, moving things.  We are drawn to moving things that are much bigger than we are.  Whether they are physical, communal or spiritual.

We are all drawn to something that’s big and goes somewhere.

Through the death and resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit, we are hooked onto a story that is far bigger than ourselves.  It's big.  It's going somewhere.  We're along for the ride.
And, as a church, we go out into the community, to our community, helping others get along for the ride.  THAT is how we change the community.

And so we have "A Change the World Weekend" along with many United Methodist Churches this weekend.  We'll have an overnight to raise awareness about the world's malaria problem.   And so we hand out cookies indiscriminately (or as we call it, "Cookie Flinging") with the sole purpose of saying "we love you" to folks we share this town with.  And so we have "Bible and Brew" -- our Bible Study in a bar.   And so we have Bible and Brew.  And so we plan Vacation Bible School.  And so we'll build.  And so I preach.  And so, I hope, you listen.

How will you invite others to hop on board, latching onto the big story of our God's love for us?  For that is how we change the community.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

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The Missional Church...Simple

It's Sunday morning and I found this video on YouTube that really goes along with a lot of what I'm preaching about today.

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"Unchurched Harry and Unchurched Mary" for 2010

http://www.flickr.com/photos/decadence/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

It's been 17 years since Lee Stroebel wrote his book, "Inside the Mind of Unchurched Harry & Mary:  How to Reach Friends and Family Who Avoid God and the Church."  It was shortly after that that I found myself at a conference at Willow Creek Community Church up near Chicago.  At the time there were a few mega-churches that were really stepping out and doing something new for the sake of the unchurched.  Fourteen years after that, in 2007, the Barna group had a study that said we were approaching 100 million unchurched folks in the US.

Think about that number for a second.  See, here in the US and, indeed, in my own church, we have a sense that mission work is something that is done "over there."  In Alaska we sent missionaries off to the deep dark corners of our state (and did some horrible things while there).  But it was all done in under the guise of "mission work."  Well, our real mission right now is with our neighbors and friends.  It's the people around us.

There was a follow-up study by a pastor and an atheist who visited a bunch of churches to experience what it was like as a visitor in them.  This, of course, was made into a book, "Jim and Casper Go to Church."  One of the things I found most interesting is the following paragraph that Barna provides:

Many of the insights drawn from the experiences of "Jim and Casper" parallel the findings of Barna Group studies among the unchurched. Some of the critical discoveries were the relative indifference of most churched Christians to unchurched people; the overt emphasis upon a personal rather than communal faith journey; the tendency of congregations to perform rituals and exercise talents rather than invite and experience the presence of God; the absence of a compelling call to action given to those who attend; and the failure to listen to dissident voices and spiritual guidance to dig deeper in one’s faith.

How often have our own churches stressed the personal rather than the communal?  How often have we put an emphasis on talents?  How often have we failed to allow dissident voices in our own congregations?  And, perhaps most troubling for me, personally, how often have we failed to call our people to action?  I, for one, am not challenging enough as a pastor.  It is said that you will get what you ask for.  If you ask for little commitment from your congregation, you'll get just that.

Maybe the problem isn't with the unchurched folk but with those of us who are already churched?

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The "Missional Church"

Things are kind of coming together in my head. 
I'm reading Michael Slaughter's book, Change the World, for a three-part sermon series and preparation for our "Change the World Sunday" in 8 days.  I've been reading some other blogs.  I've been studying. And I've been reflecting about where I've been over the last year or so.   In my preaching and teaching I've been putting great stress on getting out and being involved in communities.  As Director of Communications for the Alaska United Methodist Conference, I have been inundated with all of the PR for our "RETHINK CHURCH" campaign and the slogan, "What if church were a verb?"  I am rooted in the Wesleyan understanding of "practical divinity" and Reuben Job's Three Simple Rules (Do no harm, Do good, Stay in love with God).  Even the first sermon I ever preached was on the Book of James (2:14-18) and it's connection between faith and works. 

¹⁴ What good is it, dear brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but don’t show it by your actions? Can that kind of faith save anyone? ¹⁵ Suppose you see a brother or sister who has no food or clothing, ¹⁶ and you say, “Good-bye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well”—but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do?
 ¹⁷ So you see, faith by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless.
 ¹⁸ Now someone may argue, “Some people have faith; others have good deeds.” But I say, “How can you show me your faith if you don’t have good deeds? I will show you my faith by my good deeds.”

I have always, as far as I remember, had an understanding that our faith was one to be lived out in the world, actively.

The problem is, for most of us Christians and for most of us Pastors, we just haven't operated that way.  And it's shown by how we've "done" church.   We've been up our churches and put our programs into place and have hoped to have a good enough product so that persons are "attracted" to us and come join us.  "If you build it, they will come."  And, with our building process, that's kind of how it's felt.

So, a lot of this has been swimming around in my head.  It's a lot of what I felt and was really how I've been preaching and teaching and hopefully acting.

But there is a term that has come to my attention that gets at what all of this is meaning to me right now.  Just today I came across Ken Carter's blog, "Bear Witness to the Love of God" and the post "Re-thinking church (change the world)."  I wanted to quote some of this for you.

I would encourage United Methodist pastors and leaders to read Slaughter's Change The World, and alongside it Introducing The Missional Church by Roxburgh and Boren (Baker, 2009). To paraphrase Roxburgh and Boren, we will likely discover in the coming years that our constituents are tiring of the attractional pattern of doing church (for many of the reasons I note in the first paragraph above); at the same time, many young adults (16-35 year olds) hunger for missional church, or at least missional experience (evidence: Katrina, Haiti, Bono, Teach for America, the Obama campaign, etc.). To be missional is to enter into the strange world of the Bible---the call of Abraham, Isaiah's prophecy to rebuild the ruined cities, the inaugural sermon of Jesus in Capernaum, the Great Commandment and the Great Commission, not to mention the Book of Acts, a neglected resource among mainline churches in general) and the tradition. At our best, United Methodists have always been missional, and when we have been missional, we have changed the world. There will continue to be attractional churches who do their ministry with excellence, but for the most part they will attract mobile United Methodists seeking similar programs and practices (I am thinking of the United Methodist who moves from Charlotte to Indianapolis, or vice versa).

I think this has bearing for how our church acts in our own community.  We need to see ourselves as missionaries going out to the world around us with the light of Christ.  And, as our church grows, we must never lose sight of the mission of the church.  It is never to have the most beautiful building...or the largest mortgage.  We need to be careful that our own building doesn't become an idol to us that gets in the way of ministry.

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