Sermon for Sunday, January 6, 2008

WHERE ARE WE NOW AND WHERE ARE WE GOING?

By

Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz

Scripture: Acts 2:37-47

37 Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, "Brothers, what should we do?" 38 Peter said to them, "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him." 40 And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, "Save yourselves from this corrupt generation." 41 So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added. 42 They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43 Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. 44 All who believed were together and had all things in common; 45 they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

Once upon a time shortly after we began as a nation there was a very rocky coastline in New England with dangerous waters where it was not unusual for ships to get in trouble and wreck. Because of the reputation of that coast for danger, some very committed citizens built a small, modest life saving station that would be staffed all hours with volunteers and a few modest boats to go into the dangerous waters and rescue people.

The building was not impressive but it served its purpose which was to be a headquarters for persons to save lives. They were very effective and their reputation grew so more and more people wanted to be affiliated with the life saving station for its important work. They built more space and were able to do more work, but their success attracted some people who only wanted the fame attached to the little community and did not want to get involved in studying the ocean carefully and risking themselves by going out in the boats to help people.

Finally there was a major conflict and the folks who saw the purpose as helping and saving people left the community and went on down the coast to start a new life saving station while the folks who had forgotten the original purpose stayed behind and had a good time as a social club. This second community grew in numbers and reputation and then, similarly forgot their purpose and there was another split, so that as the story goes, there was along that coast, a series of nice clubs that had forgotten their purpose and there were people being wrecked and no one to help them.

Many of you have heard a variation of that story before because we have used it over the past fifteen years to remind our congregation of what our scripture reading from Acts tells us also—we are here to help and nurture each other in our relationship to God and to life—to offer abundant life, the best life possible and to save people from superficial living and hollow living. And when we forget our purpose and become ingrown, we just turn into another club.

It has been easy to see that pattern develop over the story of the Christian movement since the book of Acts. The Jesus movement was successful; new people were attracted to it because of the joy and the fulfillment they saw in others and which they felt when they followed Christ and the teachings of Christ. But every once in a while, the community would stagnate and turn inward because it would forget that it existed to serve and to invite others to that life, and it would become just another club or self-serving institution.

Sociologists see this same pattern in any group, any organization, as it develops and succeeds—it can keep its purpose in mind and thrive, or it can plateau and get comfortable and begin to decline. We were able to see that pattern last spring when thirty of us were in Italy studying Christian history—we could see the stages of church life over the centuries when what had been a dynamic movement got complacent and turned inward and just served the leaders or the people who were already there. That was exactly the case when John Wesley started his renewal movement in England in the 1700’s called Methodism.

That pattern of a movement that is on fire and clear about its purpose and vision and then succeeding and sometimes losing passion and vision and stagnating is always a danger to guard against in a business, a university, a family, one’s personal life, and in the church. Some churches have become social clubs for the “in” group already here instead of continuing the passion of those folks in the Jesus movement who were willing to go to jail so others could learn about the really good life that comes from following Jesus.

I want to lift up these questions of who we are and where we are going for each of us individually in this first week in 2008 and for us a community. Let’s look at the community aspect first. You and I are in a congregation that has an exciting story over the last 47 years—started because some folks had that fiery faith of the book of Acts and who worked hard to invite others to a closeness with God. They started a new church named after Andrew, the friend of Christ, who kept inviting others to look at Christ also. We had a nice cozy location four miles north of here for 45 years. We were comfortable but we were out of space and we could not make room for each other and for others God was sending to us.

Three years ago we did something really difficult and scary and exciting and true to our vision of reaching people: we relocated so we could be true to ourselves. We lost some people who wanted us to stay just the way we were. We began to reach out to other people. In the words from the book of Acts, “God added to our numbers those who are being saved”. And now look at where we are: we had almost 4000 people in our building on Christmas Eve—almost 100 new households here for the first time that day. We had to turn some people away who found no room at the inn for them. And now we are at a cross roads. We have plateaued in our ability to invite and welcome people in our four worship services because we are out of space. It is a desirable problem to have—90% of churches in our country would like to have this problem—but it is still a problem.

In fact it is a crisis; remember that the Chinese character for crisis is two characters that mean “danger” and “opportunity”.  To serve the 3500 folks who are already part of our church, we need more space. And that does not even mention the additional people God is sending us.

And we have leaders and members who understand this and want us to be true to our purpose and vision and identity and keep making room. We have a vision team that has been working hard the past six months to define and reaffirm who we are and where God is leading us. We will look at their work in a moment—it is exciting work.

And we have other voices who are saying—we ought to just stay the way we are and not make room for anyone else or anything else—we are the right size and we can just turn people away and stay the way we are. It is an understandable feeling of not wanting change, but it does not let us be true to the story of the early Jesus movement and does not let us be true to ourselves.

Our vision team has called us to continue the path we have been on and to not plateau or stagnate or turn in on ourselves. They have reaffirmed our mission: TO INVITE, RECEIVE, NURTURE, CHALLENGE AND SEND FORTH COMMITTED DISCIPLES OF JESUS CHRIST. Each of those words is important: we are here not just for ourselves but to invite others as Andrew did. We want to welcome and receive people. We want to nurture each other in the Christian faith and life. We will be challenged by Christ to keep maturing and growing into his likeness. And we want to create in each other a commitment level that takes us into the world not just as admirers of Christ but as followers and disciples and representatives of his way of life.

I like the next statement from our team as they worked to describe our church:

Centered in Christ. That is just what we said. We take our values, our instructions not from the culture of selfishness or greed around us but from that revolutionary teacher and prophet Jesus.

Grounded in tradition: we find our identity in the practices of the Jesus movement over the centuries particularly in the Protestant movement of the past 500 years and the Methodist identity of faith that is heartfelt as well as reasonable, prayerful and justice seeking.

Progressive in thought. We worked on this statement for a long time in order to say that we are not a literalist or fundamentalist community. We read the Bible and take it seriously but not literally. We are different from most of the congregations around us where women are not leaders and where it is not OK to ask many questions. We believe God wants us to have and enjoy abundant life right now and that the emphasis is not on life after death but life after birth.

And generous in service. Look at the list in the bulletin of what you helped to happen during December! This is a very generous congregation. And that generosity is one of the hallmarks of being a follower of Christ as well as part of this unique church.

We pick up that same theme of generosity as we affirm the vision we have for our future: May God’s light so to shine through our passionate worship, radical hospitality, transformational spiritual growth, risk taking mission and extravagant generosity that all may come to know God.

Let me continue this story at a later time as we work together on our next chapter as a community.

The questions of who we are and where we are going are important for our personal life also. I encourage you to take time if you have not yet done so, to ask these questions of yourself in this new year. Start with some sentence completions: Where I am right now is….Where I feel God is leading me this new year is….

Those would be excellent questions for you to pray over as you come forward for communion and kneel here at the altar.

You and I are in a very exciting and critical time in the family of faith named after Andrew. God has helped us thrive and succeed beyond what some people dreamed. We are out of room! And there are others who are coming to be part of this family who need the same spiritual nurture and hospitality and belonging and opportunity to serve that we are finding. We are embarking for the next six months on a building program that will let us add space for worship seats, parking places, and classrooms.

How will we do? Will we make a space and a place for all of us? Will there be room at the inn or will there be no room at the inn?

  Sermon Library